Merge branch 'design_revision'

doc/HACKING/design/00-overview.md

@@ -5,18 +5,20 @@ This document describes the general structure of the Tor codebase, how
 it fits together, what functionality is available for extending Tor,
 and gives some notes on how Tor got that way.
 
-Tor remains a work in progress: We've been working on it for more than a
+Tor remains a work in progress: We've been working on it for nearly two
-decade, and we've learned a lot about good coding since we first
+decades, and we've learned a lot about good coding since we first
 started.  This means, however, that some of the older pieces of Tor will
-have some "code smell" in them that could sure stand a brisk
+have some "code smell" in them that could stand a brisk
 refactoring.  So when I describe a piece of code, I'll sometimes give a
 note on how it got that way, and whether I still think that's a good
 idea.
 
 The first drafts of this document were written in the Summer and Fall of
 2015, when Tor 0.2.6 was the most recent stable version, and Tor 0.2.7
-was under development.  If you're reading this far in the future, some
+was under development.  There is a revision in progress (as of late
-things may have changed.  Caveat haxxor!
+2019), to bring it up to pace with Tor as of version 0.4.2.  If you're
+reading this far in the future, some things may have changed.  Caveat
+haxxor!
 
 This document is not an overview of the Tor protocol.  For that, see the
 design paper and the specifications at https://spec.torproject.org/ .
@@ -24,8 +26,6 @@ design paper and the specifications at https://spec.torproject.org/ .
 For more information about Tor's coding standards and some helpful
 development tools, see doc/HACKING in the Tor repository.
 
-For more information about writing tests, see doc/HACKING/WritingTests.txt
-in the Tor repository.
 
 ### The very high level ###
 
@@ -36,35 +36,59 @@ same codebase: the Tor process will run as a client, relay, or authority
 depending on its configuration.
 
 Tor has a few major dependencies, including Libevent (used to tell which
-sockets are readable and writable), OpenSSL (used for many encryption
+sockets are readable and writable), OpenSSL or NSS (used for many encryption
 functions, and to implement the TLS protocol), and zlib (used to
 compress and uncompress directory information).
 
 Most of Tor's work today is done in a single event-driven main thread.
 Tor also spawns one or more worker threads to handle CPU-intensive
-tasks.  (Right now, this only includes circuit encryption.)
+tasks.  (Right now, this only includes circuit encryption and the more
+expensive compression algorithms.)
 
 On startup, Tor initializes its libraries, reads and responds to its
 configuration files, and launches a main event loop.  At first, the only
 events that Tor listens for are a few signals (like TERM and HUP), and
 one or more listener sockets (for different kinds of incoming
-connections).  Tor also configures a timer function to run once per
+connections).  Tor also configures several timers to handle periodic
-second to handle periodic events.  As Tor runs over time, other events
+events.  As Tor runs over time, other events will open, and new events
-will open, and new events will be scheduled.
+will be scheduled.
 
-The codebase is divided into a few main subdirectories:
+The codebase is divided into a few top-level subdirectories, each of
+which contains several sub-modules.
 
-   src/common -- utility functions, not necessarily tor-specific.
+   * `src/ext` -- Code maintained elsewhere that we include in the Tor
+     source distribution.
 
-   src/or -- implements the Tor protocols.
+   * src/lib` -- Lower-level utility code, not necessarily tor-specific.
 
-   src/test -- unit and regression tests
+   * `src/trunnel` -- Automatically generated code (from the Trunnel
+     tool): used to parse and encode binary formats.
 
-   src/ext -- Code maintained elsewhere that we include in the Tor
+   * `src/core` -- Networking code that is implements the central parts of
-   source distribution.
+   the Tor protocol and main loop.
 
-   src/trunnel -- automatically generated code (from the Trunnel)
+   * `src/feature` -- Aspects of Tor (like directory management, running a
-   tool: used to parse and encode binary formats.
+   relay, running a directory authorities, managing a list of nodes,
+   running and using onion services) that are built on top of the
+   mainloop code.
+
+   * `src/app` -- Highest-level functionality; responsible for setting up
+   and configuring the Tor daemon, making sure all the lower-level
+   modules start up when required, and so on.
+
+   * `src/tools` -- Binaries other than Tor that we produce.  Currently this
+   is tor-resolve, tor-gencert, and the tor_runner.o helper module.
+
+   * `src/test` -- unit tests, regression tests, and a few integration
+   tests.
+
+In theory, the above parts of the codebase are sorted from highest-level to
+lowest-level, where high-level code is only allowed to invoke lower-level
+code, and lower-level code never includes or depends on code of a higher
+level.  In practice, this refactoring is incomplete: The modules in `src/lib`
+are well-factored, but there are many layer violations ("upward
+dependencies") in `src/core` and `src/feature`.  We aim to eliminate those
+over time.
 
 ### Some key high-level abstractions ###
 
@@ -94,31 +118,26 @@ If we switch to other strategies in the future, we'll have more
 connection types.
 
 A 'Node' is a view of a Tor instance's current knowledge and opinions
-about a Tor relay orbridge.
+about a Tor relay or bridge.
 
 ### The rest of this document. ###
 
 > **Note**: This section describes the eventual organization of this
 > document, which is not yet complete.
 
-We'll begin with an overview of the various utility functions available
+We'll begin with an overview of the facilities provided by the modules
-in Tor's 'common' directory.  Knowing about these is key to writing
+in src/lib.  Knowing about these is key to writing portable, simple code
-portable, simple code in Tor.
+in Tor.
+
+Then we'll move on to a discussion of how parts of the Tor codebase are
+initialized, finalized, configured, and managed.
 
 Then we'll go on and talk about the main data-flow of the Tor network:
 how Tor generates and responds to network traffic.  This will occupy a
 chapter for the main overview, with other chapters for special topics.
 
-After that, we'll mention the main modules in Tor, and describe the
+After that, we'll mention the main modules in src/features and describe the
-function of each.
+functions of each.
-
-We'll cover the directory subsystem next: how Tor learns about other
-relays, and how relays advertise themselves.
-
-Then we'll cover a few specialized modules, such as hidden services,
-sandboxing, hibernation, accounting, statistics, guards, path
-generation, pluggable transports, and how they integrate with the rest of Tor.
 
 We'll close with a meandering overview of important pending issues in
 the Tor codebase, and how they affect the future of the Tor software.
-

doc/HACKING/design/01-common-utils.md

@@ -1,121 +0,0 @@
-
-## Utility code in Tor
-
-Most of Tor's utility code is in modules in the src/common subdirectory.
-
-These are divided, broadly, into _compatibility_ functions, _utility_
-functions, _containers_, and _cryptography_.  (Someday in the future, it
-would be great to split these modules into separate directories.  Also, some
-functions are probably put in the wrong modules)
-
-### Compatibility code
-
-These functions live in src/common/compat\*.c; some corresponding macros live
-in src/common/compat\*.h.  They serve as wrappers around platform-specific or
-compiler-specific logic functionality.
-
-In general, the rest of the Tor code *should not* be calling platform-specific
-or otherwise non-portable functions.  Instead, they should call wrappers from
-compat.c, which implement a common cross-platform API.  (If you don't know
-whether a function is portable, it's usually good enough to see whether it
-exists on OSX, Linux, and Windows.)
-
-Other compatibility modules include backtrace.c, which generates stack traces
-for crash reporting; sandbox.c, which implements the Linux seccomp2 sandbox;
-and procmon.c, which handles monitoring a child process.
-
-Parts of address.c are compatibility code for handling network addressing
-issues; other parts are in util.c.
-
-Notable compatibility areas are:
-
-   * mmap support for mapping files into the address space (read-only)
-
-   * Code to work around the intricacies
-
-   * Workaround code for Windows's horrible winsock incompatibilities and
-     Linux's intricate socket extensions.
-
-   * Helpful string functions like memmem, memstr, asprintf, strlcpy, and
-     strlcat that not all platforms have.
-
-   * Locale-ignoring variants of the ctypes functions.
-
-   * Time-manipulation functions
-
-   * File locking function
-
-   * IPv6 functions for platforms that don't have enough IPv6 support
-
-   * Endianness functions
-
-   * OS functions
-
-   * Threading and locking functions.
-
-=== Utility functions
-
-General-purpose utilities are in util.c; they include higher-level wrappers
-around many of the compatibility functions to provide things like
-file-at-once access, memory management functions, math, string manipulation,
-time manipulation, filesystem manipulation, etc.
-
-(Some functionality, like daemon-launching, would be better off in a
-compatibility module.)
-
-In util_format.c, we have code to implement stuff like base-32 and base-64
-encoding.
-
-The address.c module interfaces with the system resolver and implements
-address parsing and formatting functions.  It converts sockaddrs to and from
-a more compact tor_addr_t type.
-
-The di_ops.c module provides constant-time comparison and associative-array
-operations, for side-channel avoidance.
-
-The logging subsystem in log.c supports logging to files, to controllers, to
-stdout/stderr, or to the system log.
-
-The abstraction in memarea.c is used in cases when a large amount of
-temporary objects need to be allocated, and they can all be freed at the same
-time.
-
-The torgzip.c module wraps the zlib library to implement compression.
-
-Workqueue.c provides a simple multithreaded work-queue implementation.
-
-### Containers
-
-The container.c module defines these container types, used throughout the Tor
-codebase.
-
-There is a dynamic array called **smartlist**, used as our general resizeable
-array type.  It supports sorting, searching, common set operations, and so
-on.  It has specialized functions for smartlists of strings, and for
-heap-based priority queues.
-
-There's a bit-array type.
-
-A set of mapping types to map strings, 160-bit digests, and 256-bit digests
-to void \*.  These are what we generally use when we want O(1) lookup.
-
-Additionally, for containers, we use the ht.h and tor_queue.h headers, in
-src/ext.  These provide intrusive hashtable and linked-list macros.
-
-###  Cryptography
-
-Once, we tried to keep our cryptography code in a single "crypto.c" file,
-with an "aes.c" module containing an AES implementation for use with older
-OpenSSLs.
-
-Now, our practice has become to introduce crypto_\*.c modules when adding new
-cryptography backend code.  We have modules for Ed25519, Curve25519,
-secret-to-key algorithms, and password-based boxed encryption.
-
-Our various TLS compatibility code, wrappers, and hacks are kept in
-tortls.c, which is probably too full of Tor-specific kludges.  I'm
-hoping we can eliminate most of those kludges when we finally remove
-support for older versions of our TLS handshake.
-
-
-

doc/HACKING/design/01.00-lib-overview.md

@@ -0,0 +1,171 @@
+
+## Library code in Tor.
+
+Most of Tor's utility code is in modules in the `src/lib` subdirectory.  In
+general, this code is not necessarily Tor-specific, but is instead possibly
+useful for other applications.
+
+This code includes:
+
+  * Compatibility wrappers, to provide a uniform API across different
+    platforms.
+
+  * Library wrappers, to provide a tor-like API over different libraries
+    that Tor uses for things like compression and cryptography.
+
+  * Containers, to implement some general-purpose data container types.
+
+The modules in `src/lib` are currently well-factored: each one depends
+only on lower-level modules.  You can see an up-to-date list of the
+modules sorted from lowest to highest level by running
+`./scripts/maint/practracker/includes.py --toposort`.
+
+As of this writing, the library modules are (from lowest to highest
+level):
+
+   * `lib/cc` -- Macros for managing the C compiler and
+     language. Includes macros for improving compatibility and clarity
+     across different C compilers.
+
+   * `lib/version` -- Holds the current version of Tor.
+
+   * `lib/testsupport` -- Helpers for making test-only code and test
+     mocking support.
+
+   * `lib/defs` -- Lowest-level constants used in many places across the
+     code.
+
+   * `lib/subsys` -- Types used for declaring a "subsystem". A subsystem
+     is a module with support for initialization, shutdown,
+     configuration, and so on.
+
+   * `lib/conf` -- Types and macros used for declaring configuration
+     options.
+
+   * `lib/arch` -- Compatibility functions and macros for handling
+     differences in CPU architecture.
+
+   * `lib/err` -- Lowest-level error handling code: responsible for
+     generating stack traces, handling raw assertion failures, and
+     otherwise reporting problems that might not be safe to report
+     via the regular logging module.
+
+   * `lib/malloc` -- Wrappers and utilities for memory management.
+
+   * `lib/intmath` -- Utilities for integer mathematics.
+
+   * `lib/fdio` -- Utilities and compatibility code for reading and
+      writing data on file descriptors (and on sockets, for platforms
+      where a socket is not a kind of fd).
+
+   * `lib/lock` -- Compatibility code for declaring and using locks.
+      Lower-level than the rest of the threading code.
+
+   * `lib/ctime` -- Constant-time implementations for data comparison
+     and table lookup, used to avoid timing side-channels from standard
+     implementations of memcmp() and so on.
+
+   * `lib/string` -- Low-level compatibility wrappers and utility
+     functions for string manipulation.
+
+   * `lib/wallclock` -- Compatibility and utility functions for
+     inspecting and manipulating the current (UTC) time.
+
+   * `lib/osinfo` -- Functions for inspecting the version and
+     capabilities of the operating system.
+
+   * `lib/smartlist_core` -- The bare-bones pieces of our dynamic array
+     ("smartlist") implementation. There are higher-level pieces, but
+     these ones are used by (and therefore cannot use) the logging code.
+
+   * `lib/log` -- Implements the logging system used by all higher-level
+     Tor code.  You can think of this as the logical "midpoint" of the
+     library code: much of the higher-level code is higher-level
+     _because_ it uses the logging module, and much of the lower-level
+     code is specifically written to avoid having to log, because the
+     logging module depends on it.
+
+   * `lib/container` -- General purpose containers, including dynamic arrays
+     ("smartlists"), hashtables, bit arrays, weak-reference-like "handles",
+     bloom filters, and a bit more.
+
+   * `lib/trace` -- A general-purpose API for introducing
+     function-tracing functionality into Tor.  Currently not much used.
+
+   * `lib/thread` -- Threading compatibility and utility functionality,
+     other than low-level locks (which are in `lib/lock`) and
+     workqueue/threadpool code (which belongs in `lib/evloop`).
+
+   * `lib/term` -- Code for terminal manipulation functions (like
+     reading a password from the user).
+
+   * `lib/memarea` -- A data structure for a fast "arena" style allocator,
+     where the data is freed all at once.  Used for parsing.
+
+   * `lib/encoding` -- Implementations for encoding data in various
+     formats, datatypes, and transformations.
+
+   * `lib/dispatch` -- A general-purpose in-process message delivery
+     system.  Used by `lib/pubsub` to implement our inter-module
+     publish/subscribe system.
+
+   * `lib/sandbox` -- Our Linux seccomp2 sandbox implementation.
+
+   * `lib/pubsub` -- Code and macros to implement our publish/subscribe
+     message passing system.
+
+   * `lib/fs` -- Utility and compatibility code for manipulating files,
+     filenames, directories, and so on.
+
+   * `lib/confmgt` -- Code to parse, encode, and manipulate our
+     configuration files, state files, and so forth.
+
+   * `lib/crypt_ops` -- Cryptographic operations. This module contains
+     wrappers around the cryptographic libraries that we support,
+     and implementations for some higher-level cryptographic
+     constructions that we use.
+
+   * `lib/meminfo` -- Functions for inspecting our memory usage, if the
+     malloc implementation exposes that to us.
+
+   * `lib/time` -- Higher level time functions, including fine-gained and
+      monotonic timers.
+
+   * `lib/math` -- Floating-point mathematical utilities, including
+     compatibility code, and probability distributions.
+
+   * `lib/buf` -- A general purpose queued buffer implementation,
+     similar to the BSD kernel's "mbuf" structure.
+
+   * `lib/net` -- Networking code, including address manipulation,
+     compatibility wrappers,
+
+   * `lib/compress` -- A compatibility wrapper around several
+     compression libraries, currently including zlib, zstd, and lzma.
+
+   * `lib/geoip` -- Utilities to manage geoip (IP to country) lookups
+      and formats.
+
+   * `lib/tls` -- Compatibility wrappers around the library (NSS or
+     OpenSSL, depending on configuration) that Tor uses to implement the
+     TLS link security protocol.
+
+   * `lib/evloop` -- Tools to manage the event loop and related
+     functionality, in order to implement asynchronous networking,
+     timers, periodic events, and other scheduling tasks.
+
+   * `lib/process` -- Utilities and compatibility code to launch and
+     manage subprocesses.
+
+### What belongs in lib?
+
+In general, if you can imagine some program wanting the functionality
+you're writing, even if that program had nothing to do with Tor, your
+functionality belongs in lib.
+
+If it falls into one of the existing "lib" categories, your
+functionality belongs in lib.
+
+If you are using platform-specific `#ifdef`s to manage compatibility
+issues among platforms, you should probably consider whether you can
+put your code into lib.

doc/HACKING/design/01a-memory.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 
 ## Memory management
 
-### Heap-allocation functions
+### Heap-allocation functions: lib/malloc/malloc.h
 
 Tor imposes a few light wrappers over C's native malloc and free
 functions, to improve convenience, and to allow wholescale replacement
@@ -12,63 +12,71 @@ own; always use the variants prefixed with 'tor_'.
 They are the same as the standard C functions, with the following
 exceptions:
 
-   * tor_free(NULL) is a no-op.
+   * `tor_free(NULL)` is a no-op.
-   * tor_free() is a macro that takes an lvalue as an argument and sets it to
+   * `tor_free()` is a macro that takes an lvalue as an argument and sets it to
-     NULL after freeing it.  To avoid this behavior, you can use tor_free_()
+     NULL after freeing it.  To avoid this behavior, you can use `tor_free_()`
      instead.
    * tor_malloc() and friends fail with an assertion if they are asked to
      allocate a value so large that it is probably an underflow.
-   * It is always safe to tor_malloc(0), regardless of whether your libc
+   * It is always safe to `tor_malloc(0)`, regardless of whether your libc
      allows it.
-   * tor_malloc(), tor_realloc(), and friends are never allowed to fail.
+   * `tor_malloc()`, `tor_realloc()`, and friends are never allowed to fail.
      Instead, Tor will die with an assertion.  This means that you never
      need to check their return values.  See the next subsection for
      information on why we think this is a good idea.
 
 We define additional general-purpose memory allocation functions as well:
 
-   * tor_malloc_zero(x) behaves as calloc(1, x), except the it makes clear
+   * `tor_malloc_zero(x)` behaves as `calloc(1, x)`, except the it makes clear
      the intent to allocate a single zeroed-out value.
-   * tor_reallocarray(x,y) behaves as the OpenBSD reallocarray function.
+   * `tor_reallocarray(x,y)` behaves as the OpenBSD reallocarray function.
      Use it for cases when you need to realloc() in a multiplication-safe
      way.
 
 And specific-purpose functions as well:
 
-   * tor_strdup() and tor_strndup() behaves as the underlying libc functions,
+   * `tor_strdup()` and `tor_strndup()` behaves as the underlying libc
-     but use tor_malloc() instead of the underlying function.
+     functions, but use `tor_malloc()` instead of the underlying function.
-   * tor_memdup() copies a chunk of memory of a given size.
+   * `tor_memdup()` copies a chunk of memory of a given size.
-   * tor_memdup_nulterm() copies a chunk of memory of a given size, then
+   * `tor_memdup_nulterm()` copies a chunk of memory of a given size, then
      NUL-terminates it just to be safe.
 
-#### Why assert on failure?
+#### Why assert on allocation failure?
 
-Why don't we allow tor_malloc() and its allies to return NULL?
+Why don't we allow `tor_malloc()` and its allies to return NULL?
 
 First, it's error-prone.  Many programmers forget to check for NULL return
-values, and testing for malloc() failures is a major pain.
+values, and testing for `malloc()` failures is a major pain.
 
 Second, it's not necessarily a great way to handle OOM conditions. It's
 probably better (we think) to have a memory target where we dynamically free
 things ahead of time in order to stay under the target.  Trying to respond to
-an OOM at the point of tor_malloc() failure, on the other hand, would involve
+an OOM at the point of `tor_malloc()` failure, on the other hand, would involve
 a rare operation invoked from deep in the call stack.  (Again, that's
 error-prone and hard to debug.)
 
 Third, thanks to the rise of Linux and other operating systems that allow
 memory to be overcommitted, you can't actually ever rely on getting a NULL
-from malloc() when you're out of memory; instead you have to use an approach
+from `malloc()` when you're out of memory; instead you have to use an approach
 closer to tracking the total memory usage.
 
 #### Conventions for your own allocation functions.
 
 Whenever you create a new type, the convention is to give it a pair of
-x_new() and x_free() functions, named after the type.
+`x_new()` and `x_free_()` functions, named after the type.
 
-Calling x_free(NULL) should always be a no-op.
+Calling `x_free(NULL)` should always be a no-op.
+
+There should additionally be an `x_free()` macro, defined in terms of
+`x_free_()`.  This macro should set its lvalue to NULL.  You can define it
+using the FREE_AND_NULL macro, as follows:
+
+```
+#define x_free(ptr) FREE_AND_NULL(x_t, x_free_, (ptr))
+```
 
 
-### Grow-only memory allocation: memarea.c
+### Grow-only memory allocation: lib/memarea
 
 It's often handy to allocate a large number of tiny objects, all of which
 need to disappear at the same time.  You can do this in tor using the
@@ -82,12 +90,14 @@ objects of similar size.  But if you use tor_malloc() for the long-lived ones
 and a memarea for the temporary object, the malloc implementation is likelier
 to do better.
 
-To create a new memarea, use memarea_new().  To drop all the storage from a
+To create a new memarea, use `memarea_new()`.  To drop all the storage from a
-memarea, and invalidate its pointers, use memarea_drop_all().
+memarea, and invalidate its pointers, use `memarea_drop_all()`.
 
-The allocation functions memarea_alloc(), memarea_alloc_zero(),
+The allocation functions `memarea_alloc()`, `memarea_alloc_zero()`,
-memarea_memdup(), memarea_strdup(), and memarea_strndup() are analogous to
+`memarea_memdup()`, `memarea_strdup()`, and `memarea_strndup()` are analogous
-the similarly-named malloc() functions.  There is intentionally no
+to the similarly-named malloc() functions.  There is intentionally no
-memarea_free() or memarea_realloc().
+`memarea_free()` or `memarea_realloc()`.
 
+### Special allocation: lib/malloc/map_anon.h
 
+TODO: WRITEME.

doc/HACKING/design/01b-collections.md

@@ -4,27 +4,27 @@
 ### Smartlists: Neither lists, nor especially smart.
 
 For historical reasons, we call our dynamic-allocated array type
-"smartlist_t".  It can grow or shrink as elements are added and removed.
+`smartlist_t`.  It can grow or shrink as elements are added and removed.
 
-All smartlists hold an array of void \*.  Whenever you expose a smartlist
+All smartlists hold an array of `void *`.  Whenever you expose a smartlist
 in an API you *must* document which types its pointers actually hold.
 
 <!-- It would be neat to fix that, wouldn't it? -NM  -->
 
-Smartlists are created empty with smartlist_new() and freed with
+Smartlists are created empty with `smartlist_new()` and freed with
-smartlist_free().  See the containers.h module documentation for more
+`smartlist_free()`.  See the `containers.h` module documentation for more
 information; there are many convenience functions for commonly needed
 operations.
 
+<!-- TODO: WRITE more about what you can do with smartlists. -->
 
 ### Digest maps, string maps, and more.
 
 Tor makes frequent use of maps from 160-bit digests, 256-bit digests,
-or nul-terminated strings to void \*. These types are digestmap_t,
+or nul-terminated strings to `void *`. These types are `digestmap_t`,
-digest256map_t, and strmap_t respectively.  See the containers.h
+`digest256map_t`, and `strmap_t` respectively.  See the containers.h
 module documentation for more information.
 
-
 ### Intrusive lists and hashtables
 
 For performance-sensitive cases, we sometimes want to use "intrusive"
@@ -32,12 +32,14 @@ collections: ones where the bookkeeping pointers are stuck inside the
 structures that belong to the collection.  If you've used the
 BSD-style sys/queue.h macros, you'll be familiar with these.
 
-Unfortunately, the sys/queue.h macros vary significantly between the
+Unfortunately, the `sys/queue.h` macros vary significantly between the
 platforms that have them, so we provide our own variants in
-src/ext/tor_queue.h .
+`src/ext/tor_queue.h`.
 
-We also provide an intrusive hashtable implementation in src/ext/ht.h
+We also provide an intrusive hashtable implementation in `src/ext/ht.h`.
-. When you're using it, you'll need to define your own hash
+When you're using it, you'll need to define your own hash
 functions. If attacker-induced collisions are a worry here, use the
 cryptographic siphash24g function to extract hashes.
 
+<!-- TODO: WRITE about bloom filters, namemaps, bit-arrays, order functions.
+-->