[tor-bugs] #28067 [Core Tor/Tor]: Annotations should be documented in dir-spec.txt

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#28067: Annotations should be documented in dir-spec.txt
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 Reporter:  rl1987        |          Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement   |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium        |      Milestone:  Tor: unspecified
Component:  Core Tor/Tor  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal        |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                |         Points:
 Reviewer:                |        Sponsor:
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Changes (by atagar):

 * cc: karsten (added)


Comment:

 Stem now has a couple tickets from irl that are pending this (#28503 and
 #28502). I gave a summary of the situation
 [https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28503#comment:1 here].

 TL;DR annotations are **not** presently part of descriptors. Cached server
 descriptors have a couple (@downloaded-at and @source) and CollecTor adds
 one of its own (@type). However, none of these have been formalized in a
 spec and as such are not part of the descriptor per say. Just ancillary
 data of those services that must be stripped off to produce a valid
 descriptor.

 For me there's a few questions here, this first of which I think is
 particularly important...

 1. What is the goal here? I'm assuming there's a set of annotations we
 would like to add?

 2. Do we want these to become a valid, optional part of the descriptor?
 That is to say, something parsers (tor, stem, metrics-lib) should consider
 valid and ignore if unneeded?

 3. Finally, what do we want the spec to be? I suspect it'll be pretty
 simple. I could draft something if you'd like though first I'd
 particularly like to know the answer to #1.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/28067#comment:5>
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