2023-03-23 Aries-vcx community call

Meeting time: 09:00 am UTC
Zoom link:  https://zoom.us/j/97759680284?pwd=VytRRlJSd3c5NXJ1V25XbUxNU0Jndz09#success

Open

Note:

• If you are planning on attending aries-vcx call, feel free login to wiki and update the agenda below to include your discussion topic / question

• Alternatively you can simply join the call and we can discuss your questions and concerns  

Agenda:

• Start meeting discussion 

  • Mentorship program status update

    • Pending for TOC approval

  • Github "Good first issue" catching on! 

    • 2 new contributors

  • Work parallelization

    • Discussion about parallelizing work on messages2 integration and building state pattern based protocol state machines

    • Release 0.54.0 is expected to be based on the new message2  crate - the current messages  implementation will be deleted.

      • Minor changes to aries-vcx  rust API is expected

      • The upgrade completely opaque to libvcx , vcx-napi-rs  users

• Overview of recent work done

  • Proof Verifier API changes: https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/769, https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/769

  • Release 0.53.0 https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/releases/tag/0.53.0
    
    

• Check on work in progress

  • New contributor: styvane - encode_attributes refactor https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/778

  • New contributor: andy-waine - post_message migration https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/777

  • Messages2 crate - approaching completion https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/754
    
    

• Upcoming work

  • Finish messages2 crate

  • Integrate messages2 crate into aries-vcx 

  • Typestate pattern 

    • credential holder (started by George)

    • credential issuer

    • presentation verifier

    • presentation prover

  •  [ vdr-tools, DID parser, did-resolver ]

•  End meeting discussion (anything else that comes up to be discussed)

  • Dependency flags

    • WIP: Feature flags to opt out of vdr-tools  or modular dependencies - https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/763

  • Guidelines for re-implementing state machines

    1.  No "Sent" states: Do not use <something>Sent  states which serve as "marker" that some message has been sent to a counterparty.

    2. Various final states: Different variants of final state should be expressed by different rust state types - eg. Success  / Fail  /  Declined  

    3. Received aries messages change state:Message from a counterparty always changes state - even if it's just ack . Finished state and "AlmostFinishedButWaitingForAck" in some protocol should be 2 different states.

    4. Intermediate states: Use intermediate states to enable separation of response processing and reply construction - for example PresentationPrepared  in ProofProver SM, PresentationRequestSet in ProofVerifier SM

       • The fact that the our "to be sent" message has been built/prepared/set (we should maybe unify the terminology there as well) means that we are expecting response (as per point 1. we do not track on state machine level whether that message has been sent, it's aries-vcx user's resposibility to deliver the message)

    5. Linearization of transitions: - each state machine transition method should either fail, or succeed and switch state deterministically.

       • https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-vcx/pull/768#issuecomment-1461576585

Task backlog: 

Recording:

https://youtu.be/msyBT0_nhI8

GMT20230323-085927_RecordingnewChat.txt