go-ipfs v0.9.0 Release

We're happy to announce go-ipfs 0.9.0. This release makes go-ipfs even more configurable with some fun experiments to boot. We're also deprecating or removing some uncommonly used features to make it easier for users to discover the easy ways to use go-ipfs safely and efficiently.

As usual, this release includes important fixes, some of which may be critical for security. Unless the fix addresses a bug being exploited in the wild, the fix will not be called out in the release notes. Please make sure to update ASAP. See our release process for details.

🔦 Highlights

📦 Exporting of DAGs via Gateways

Gateways now support downloading arbitrary IPLD graphs via the /api/v0/dag/export endpoint. This endpoint works in the same way as the ipfs dag export command.

One major thing this enables is ability to verify data downloaded from public gateways. If you go to https://somegateway.example.net/ipfs/bafyexample you are using the old school HTTP transport, and trusting that the gateway is being well behaved. However, if you download the graph as a DAG archive then it is possible to verify that the data you downloaded does in fact match bafyexample.

Additionally, it was previously quite painful to download things other than UnixFS (files + directories) using gateways. It is now possible to download arbitrary IPLD graphs from gateways, making them useful as a general-purpose alternative to p2p transports.

This opens exciting opportunities in areas like thin clients, mobile browsers and IoT devices, which now can delegate IPFS resolution to any public gateway, and have ability to verify that the data received matches the requested hash.

☁ Custom DNS Resolvers

Resolution of DNS records for DNSLink and DNSAddrs means that names are sent in cleartext between the operating system and the DNS server provided by an ISP. In the past, the only way to customize DNS resolution in IPFS stack was to set up own DNS proxy server.

There is now the ability to customize DNS resolution and override the default resolver from the OS with DNS over HTTPS (DoH) one. We made it really flexible: override can be applied globally, or per specific TLD/FQDN. Examples can be found in the documentation.

👪 Support for non-ICANN DNSLink names

Building off of the support for custom DNS resolvers it is now possible to create DNSLink names not handled by ICANN and choose how that domain name will be resolved. An example of this is how ENS is supported, despite .eth not being an ICANN TLD you can point .eth to any ENS resolver you want (including a local one).

While go-ipfs may have some DoH defaults for a few popular non-ICANN DNSLink names (e.g. ENS), you are free to use any protocol for a naming system and as long as it exposes a DNSLink record via a DNS endpoint you can make it work.

🖥️ Updated to the latest WebUI

Our web interface now includes experimental support for pinning services, and various updates to Files and Peers screens.

Remote pinning services added via the ipfs pin remote service add command are already detected, one can also add one from Settings screen, and it will appear in Set pinning interface on the Files screen.

Data presented on the Peers screen can now be copied by simply clicking on a specific cell, and a list of open streams gives better insight into how a local node interacts with a specific peer.

See release notes for ipfs-webui v2.12 for screenshots and more details.

🔑 IPNS keys can now be exported via the CLI without stopping the daemon

ipfs key export no longer requires interrupting ipfs daemon ✨

🕸 Experimental DHT Client and Provider System

An area of go-ipfs that has been historically tricky is how go-ipfs finds who has the data they are looking for. While the IPFS Public DHT is only one of the ways go-ipfs can find data it tends to be an important one. While since go-ipfs v0.5.0 the time to find content in the network has dropped significantly the time to put/get IPNS records or for a node to advertise the content it has still has much room for improvement.

We have been doing some experimenting and have an alternative DHT client that essentially trades off some resources and in return is much more performant. We have also included with the experimental DHT client a bulk provider system that takes advantage of the new client to more efficiently do many advertisements at a time

This work is quite new and still under development, however, the results so far have been promising especially for users with lots of data who have otherwise been having difficulty advertising their data into the IPFS Public DHT

As described in the experimental features documentation the experimental client can be enabled using the command below (or modifying the config file).

ipfs config --json Experimental.AcceleratedDHTClient true

A few things to take note of when AcceleratedDHTClient is enabled:

• go-ipfs will likely use more resources then previously
• DHT queries will not be usable (i.e. finding which peers have some data, finding where a particular peer is, etc.) for the first 5-10 minutes of operation depending on your network conditions
• There is an ipfs stats provide command that will help you track your provide/reprovide usage, if you are providing lots of data you may want to consider how to reduce the amount you are providing (e.g. Reprovider Strategies and/or Strategic Providing)

See the documentation for more details.

🚶‍♀️ Migrations

Migrations are now individually packaged

While previously the go-ipfs repo migration binary was monolithic and contained all migrations from previous go-ipfs versions the binaries are now packaged individually. However, the fs-repo-migrations binary is still there to help those who manually upgrade their repos to download all the individual migrations.

This means faster download times for upgrades, a much easier time building migrations for those who make use of custom plugins, and an easier time developing new migrations going forward.

Configurable migration downloads enable downloading over IPFS

Previously the migration downloader built into go-ipfs downloaded the migrations from dist.ipfs.io. While users could use tools like ipfs-update to download the migrations over IPFS or manually download the migrations (over IPFS or otherwise) themselves, this is now automated and configurable. Users can choose to download the migrations over IPFS or from any specified IPFS Gateway.

The configurable migration options are described in the config file documentation, although most users should not need to change the default settings.

The main benefit here is that users behind restrictive firewalls, or in offline/private deployments, won't have to run migrations manually, which is especially important for desktop use cases where go-ipfs is running inside of IPFS Desktop and Brave.

🍎 Published builds for Apple M1 hardware

Go now supports building for Darwin ARM64, and we are now publishing those builds

👋 Deprecations and Feature Removals

The ipfs object commands are now deprecated

In the last couple years most of the Object API's commands have become fulfillable using alternative APIs.

The utility of Object API's is limited to data in UnixFS-v1 (dag-pb) format. If you are still using it, it is highly recommended that you switch to the DAG ipfs dag (supports modern data types like dag-cbor) or Files ipfs files (more intuitive for working with dag-pb) APIs.

While the Object API and commands are still usable they are now marked as deprecated and hidden from users on the command line to discourage further use. We also updated their --help text to point at the modern replacements.

X-Ipfs-Gateway-Prefix is now deprecated

IPFS community moved towards dedicated Origins (DNSLink and subdomain gateways) which are much easier to isolate and reason about.

Setting up Gateway.PathPrefixes and X-Ipfs-Gateway-Prefix is no longer necessary and support will be removed in near future.

Proquints support removed

A little known feature that was not well used or documented and was more well known for the error message Error: not a valid proquint string users received when trying to download invalid IPNS or DNSLink names (e.g. https://dweb.link/ipns/badname). We have removed support for proquints as they were out of place and largely unused, however proquints are valid multibases so if there is renewed interest in them there is a way forward.

SECIO support removed

SECIO was deprecated and turned off by default given the prevalence of TLS and Noise support, SECIO support is now removed entirely.

Changelog

❤️ Contributors