The Go implementation of the libp2p Networking Stack.

Project status

Weekly Core Dev Calls

Table of Contents

• Background
• Bundles
• Usage
  • Install
  • API
  • Examples
• Development
  • Tests
  • Packages
• Contribute
• License

Background

libp2p is a networking stack and library modularized out of The IPFS Project, and bundled separately for other tools to use.

libp2p is the product of a long, and arduous quest of understanding -- a deep dive into the internet's network stack, and plentiful peer-to-peer protocols from the past. Building large scale peer-to-peer systems has been complex and difficult in the last 15 years, and libp2p is a way to fix that. It is a "network stack" -- a protocol suite -- that cleanly separates concerns, and enables sophisticated applications to only use the protocols they absolutely need, without giving up interoperability and upgradeability. libp2p grew out of IPFS, but it is built so that lots of people can use it, for lots of different projects.

We will be writing a set of docs, posts, tutorials, and talks to explain what p2p is, why it is tremendously useful, and how it can help your existing and new projects. But in the meantime, check out

• The libp2p Specification
• go-libp2p implementation
• js-libp2p implementation
• rust-libp2p implementation

Usage

This repository (go-libp2p) serves as the entrypoint to the universe of modules that compose the Go implementation of the libp2p stack.

We mainly use Go modules for our dependency and release management (and thus require go >= 1.11). In order to get the best developer experience, we recommend you do too. Otherwise, you may ocassionally encounter a breaking build as you'll be running off master (which, by definition, is not guaranteed to be stable).

You can start using go-libp2p in your Go application simply by adding imports from our repos, e.g.:

import "github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p"

The next time you run go get or go build, the Go build tools will look for available releases, and will pick the highest available one.

As new releases of go-libp2p are made available, you can upgrade your application by manually editing your go.mod file, or using the Go tools to maintain module requirements.

API

Examples

Examples can be found in the examples repo.

Development

Dependencies

While developing, you need to use gx to install and link your dependencies, to do that, run:

> make deps

Before commiting and pushing to Github, make sure to rewind the gx'ify of dependencies. You can do that with:

> make publish

Tests

Running of individual tests is done through gx test <path to test>

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p
$ make deps
$ gx test ./p2p/<path of module you want to run tests for>

Packages

This table is generated using the module package-table with package-table --data=package-list.json.

List of packages currently in existence for libp2p:

Name	CI/Travis	CI/Jenkins	Coverage	Description
Libp2p
go-libp2p				go-libp2p entry point
go-libp2p-host		N/A		libp2p "host" interface
go-libp2p-blankhost		N/A		minimal implementation of the "host" interface
Network
go-libp2p-net		N/A		libp2p connection and "network" interfaces
go-libp2p-swarm				reference implementation
Transport
go-libp2p-transport		N/A		interfaces
go-ws-transport		N/A		WebSocket transport
go-tcp-transport		N/A		TCP transport
go-libp2p-quic-transport		N/A		QUIC transport
go-udp-transport		N/A		UDP transport
go-utp-transport		N/A		uTorrent transport (UTP)
go-libp2p-circuit				relay transport
go-libp2p-transport-upgrader		N/A		upgrades multiaddr-net connections into full libp2p transports
go-libp2p-reuseport-transport		N/A		partial transport for building transports that reuse ports
Encrypted Channels
go-conn-security		N/A		interfaces
go-libp2p-secio		N/A		SecIO crypto channel
go-conn-security-multistream		N/A		multistream multiplexed meta crypto channel
Private Network
go-libp2p-interface-pnet		N/A		interfaces
go-libp2p-pnet		N/A		reference implementation
Stream Muxers
go-stream-muxer		N/A		interfaces
go-smux-yamux		N/A		YAMUX stream multiplexer
go-smux-mplex		N/A		MPLEX stream multiplexer
NAT Traversal
go-libp2p-nat		N/A
go-libp2p-autonat		N/A		NAT autodetection (client)
go-libp2p-autonat-svc		N/A		NAT autodetection (service)
Peerstore
go-libp2p-peerstore		N/A		interfaces and reference implementation
Connection Manager
go-libp2p-interface-connmgr		N/A		interface
go-libp2p-connmgr		N/A		reference implementation
Routing
go-libp2p-routing		N/A		routing interfaces
go-libp2p-record		N/A		record type and validator logic
go-libp2p-routing-helpers				helpers for composing routers
go-libp2p-kad-dht				Kademlia-like router
go-libp2p-pubsub-router				record-store over pubsub adapter
Discovery
go-libp2p-discovery		N/A		active peer disovery interface
Consensus
go-libp2p-consensus		N/A		consensus protocols interfaces
go-libp2p-raft				consensus implementation over raft
Pubsub
go-libp2p-pubsub				multiple pubsub over libp2p implementations
RPC
go-libp2p-gorpc		N/A		a simple RPC library for libp2p
Metrics
go-libp2p-metrics		N/A		libp2p metrics interfaces/collectors
Data Types
go-libp2p-peer		N/A		libp2p peer-ID datatype
go-libp2p-crypto		N/A		libp2p key types
go-libp2p-protocol		N/A		libp2p protocol datatype
go-libp2p-kbucket		N/A		Kademlia routing table helper types
Utilities/miscellaneous
go-libp2p-loggables		N/A		logging helpers
go-maddr-filter		N/A		multiaddr filtering helpers
go-libp2p-netutil		N/A		misc utilities
go-msgio		N/A		length prefixed data channel
go-addr-util		N/A		address utilities for libp2p swarm
go-buffer-pool		N/A		a variable size buffer pool for go
go-libp2p-routing-helpers				routing helpers
go-reuseport		N/A		enables reuse of addresses
go-sockaddr		N/A		utils for sockaddr conversions
go-flow-metrics		N/A		metrics library
Testing and examples
go-testutil		N/A		a collection of testing utilities for ipfs and libp2p
go-libp2p-examples				go-libp2p examples and tutorials
go-libp2p-circuit-progs		N/A		testing programs for go-libp2p-circuit

Contribute

go-libp2p is part of The IPFS Project, and is MIT licensed open source software. We welcome contributions big and small! Take a look at the community contributing notes. Please make sure to check the issues. Search the closed ones before reporting things, and help us with the open ones.

Guidelines:

• read the libp2p spec
• please make branches + pull-request, even if working on the main repository
• ask questions or talk about things in Issues or #ipfs on freenode.
• ensure you are able to contribute (no legal issues please-- we use the DCO)
• run go fmt before pushing any code
• run golint and go vet too -- some things (like protobuf files) are expected to fail.
• get in touch with @jbenet and @diasdavid about how best to contribute
• have fun!

There's a few things you can do right now to help out:

• Go through the modules below and check out existing issues. This would be especially useful for modules in active development. Some knowledge of IPFS/libp2p may be required, as well as the infrasture behind it - for instance, you may need to read up on p2p and more complex operations like muxing to be able to help technically.
• Perform code reviews.
• Add tests. There can never be enough tests.