In this project, you will be working to implement some additional features in a P2P chat system.
The repository you have been given implements the basics, including the network architecture, as well as two sample user interfaces, one simple, one fancy.
There are a few runnable programs in this repository.
You can start up a tracker by running cargo run -p bing2bing-core --bin tracker.
You can pass command line arguments in when using cargo: cargo run -p bing2bing-core --bin tracker -- --host 0.0.0.0 --port 3001 (note the -- after --bin tracker).
The tracker takes an ip address and port to listen on. If you set the ip address to 0.0.0.0 it will listen on whatever ip addresses the machine responds to.
You can start up a simple client by running cargo run -p bing2bing.
The tui takes several command line arguments, and they are not entirely intuitive.
-
--hostthis is the ip address that "your" peer will listen on. Note that you cannot set this to be 0.0.0.0 because this value is directly used when sending out protocol messages. However, this could be automated (e.g., as points that you could earn). -
--portthe port that your peer will listen on. Note that this must be unique for whatever machine you are running it on! -
--tracker-hostthe ip address of a tracker to connect to and boostrap yourself into the network. -
--tracker-portthe port of the tracker to connect to. -
--namethe name that this peer will go by. -
--simpleif set, you will start up a simple client that only responds to/sayand/quitinput. If you don't set it, then a fancier UI will be used. For the fancy TUI, pressingewill put you into edit mode, pressingescwill bring you out of edit mode, typingqwill quit, and pressinglorhwill move between the two tabs.
If you are able to demo, with a UI, a program that manages to propagate messages through the system, you will earn 70 points.
If you are able to demo a peer that propagates messages through the system and displays Whisper messages destined for the peer, you will earn 10 points.
Implementing the Whisper and Deliver commands (see the docs), will earn 30 points.
Implementing an Extension command will earn 30 points.
There are several places in the code noted with "points available." If you would like to try addressing one of those, let me know and we'll determine how many points it will be worth.
There are also points available for doing something cool in general (there are a lot of opportunities here with the TUI in particular.)
I made an effort with documentation, but it is not as good as it could be. Thus, there are points available for improving the documentation (talk to me about it before hand).
There are also many places where the code is messier than it should be, or where there might improvements possible via refactoring, etc.
The fancy_tui code in particular is nasty.
Again, points available but please talk to me first.