ECC PeerIds messed up again!

[reardenlife]

On the version v0.4.19-dev, the peerids generated from ECC keys were looking like that:

[root@v48807 dompoc]# ipfs key list -l
QmQBojsRJJrwvqDdbmWbmbZ7GCTnhHmzri5DhEqLP2zVXq self
QmafEdQrhntRYzKu3V2Mn4Rd21Px9Hpfgbw6YBvCNJyDJH addr1
QmVHUFuEj1v8YvWKS3p5NHNdZy66Ds4bLevt8KrbPPgWHh addr2
QmafEdQrhntRYzKu3V2Mn4Rd21Px9Hpfgbw6YBvCNJyDJH mykey

They were the hashes of public keys.

Now on v0.4.20-dev they look like they were looking on pre-v0.4.18, like instead of the hash of public key, the public key is embedded:

[root@v48807 ~]# ipfs --version
ipfs version 0.4.20-dev
[root@v48807 ~]# ipfs key list -l
QmQBojsRJJrwvqDdbmWbmbZ7GCTnhHmzri5DhEqLP2zVXq        self
16Uiu2HAkvFCkHqvuhXpEUKknhaQprNhXW8TsDnrWEM49vY9nK348 addr1
16Uiu2HAm42ijSRphjMk23ZZXbeena1zSsWo7gyTh6fcRzLo8CWfv addr2
16Uiu2HAkvFCkHqvuhXpEUKknhaQprNhXW8TsDnrWEM49vY9nK348 mykey

This is insane! The behaviour switches back and forth. How I am suppose to develop the software in such circumstances?

Can anyone explain to me what is going on?

[reardenlife]

I would like to hear the further policy on what will be happening with PeerIds based on ECC keys.
For example, when I am getting a public key of a peer (not via IPFS) and want to retrieve the files that that Peer published, what should I do in this case? How I suppose to generate an address in IPNS?
Given that the behavior of IPFS (which actually suppose to be a part of a basic protocol stated in the whitepaper) is a subject to change, I am deeply confused. So what should I do? Should I generate the PeerId from the hash or from the PK itself?

[Kubuxu]

@reardenlife please see libp2p/specs#138 it explains the context behind the changes.

[reardenlife]

@Kubuxu,

The document you provided states that:

Current State
...
The latest go-ipfs and go-libp2p masters are not inlining keys into peer IDs.

So ... now the latest masters are inlining keys?
Can I be certain that this behaviour will not change in the future?

EDIT:

Also, in addition:

If we're running a 0.4.19-dev go-ipfs node, we'll compute sha256 peer IDs for ed25519 keys.

It doesn't state anywhere that v0.4.20+ will embed the keys.

[Kubuxu]

The 0.4.19 release reintroduced inlining. Sorry for these changes but as you can see it is quite a complex issue.

[reardenlife]

@Kubuxu ,

Hm. I was wondering if it is possible to introduce some HTTP-RPC function (to IPFS) to obtain a PeerId by feeding it a public key, so in this case I will not have any of the code in my app that is a subject to change. Should I open a pull request perhaps?

[magik6k]

cc @Stebalien

[Stebalien]

Commented in #6152. We're trying to find a resolution to this issue that makes everybody happy but it's going to cause problems for someone regardless of what we do.

[Stebalien]

(closing to avoid duplicating with #138).