Proposal 158: Clients download consensus + microdescriptors

[Roger Dingledine]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 11:39:56PM -0500, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> > Does this mean that the ports should (assuming it's possible) get
> > moved into the microdescriptor?  I think exit policies are relatively
> > stable.
> 
> Yes, we could move ports, exit policies, and the version line into the
> microdescriptor.
> 
> We could also dump the descriptor digest and timestamp-of-descriptor
> as well.
> 
> Both of these steps involve breaking the consensus for current clients,
> though (you can't do them until all clients are using microdescriptors),

Nick pointed out that the "p" lines (exit policies) are not yet used. We
could move them now, and take them out of the main consensus. We should
do that.

I am also wrong above that we could move the 'version' line. Even though
it is probably mostly static, clients need it to make decisions about
which mirrors they're allowed to ask for microdescriptors. So that means
I left out a constraint in my original heuristics for which elements go
where: if clients need it in order to properly fetch microdescriptors,
it must go in the consensus proper.

--Roger