Telodendria

Telodendria: The terminal branches of an axon.

Telodendria is a Matrix homeserver implementation written from scratch in ANSI C. It is designed to be lightweight and simple, yet functional. Telodendria differentiates itself from other Matrix homeserver implementations because it:

• Is written in C, a stable, low-level programming language with a long history, low build and runtime overhead, and wide compatibility.
• Is written with minimalism as a primary design goal. Whenever possible and practical, no third-party libraries are pulled in to the source code. Everything Telodendria needs is custom written. As a result, Telodendria depends only on a standard C compiler and POSIX C library to be built, both of which are built in to a good Unix-style operating system already, which means you shouldn't have to install anything extra.
• Uses a flat-file directory structure to store data instead of a database. This has a number of advantages:
  • It makes setup and maintenance much easier.
  • It allows Telodendria to run on systems with fewer resources.
• Is packaged as a single small, statically-linked and highly-optimized binary that can be run just about anywhere. It is designed to be extremely easy to set up and consume as few resources as possible.
• Is permissively licensed. Telodendria is licensed under a modified MIT license, which imposes few restrictions on what you can do with it.

Telodendria is on Matrix! Check out the official Matrix rooms:

Download

Telodendria is distributed as source tarballs, in true Unix fashion. If you want, you can verify the checksum of your download, and check the signature. To check the signature, you'll need signify, and the signify public key: telodendria-signify.pub.

If your operating system has an official package or port of Telodendria, you should prefer to use that instead of manually downloading the source and building it. If your operating system's package or port is too out of date for your tastes, please contact the package's maintainers to notify them, or offer to update the package yourself.

You can check out the change log here.

Documentation

Telodendria's documentation is distributed with the source code as man pages, which contain all of the information on what Telodendria is, what its goals are, how to build the source, configure it, as well as contribute to the project. The man pages are also available online for convenience:

• telodendria(7) - Introduction and project information, including licensing information
• telodendria(8) - Command line usage
• telodendria.conf(5) - Configuration file
• contributing(7) - Contributing guide
• td(8) - Build script and patch instructions

Project Status

Telodendria is a very ambitious project. There's a lot that needs to happen yet before it is usable. At the moment, there's nothing that even remotely ressembles a Matrix homeserver here; I'm still getting off the ground and building a foundation.

But just because there's nothing here yet doesn't mean you should go away! I could always use help, so you are more than welcome to help out if you want things to go quicker. Please see the contributing(7) page for details on how you can get involved.

The Telodendria roadmap is organized into phases, with each phase representing a new milestone in the project's lifetime.

Phase 1: Getting Off The Ground

A new open-source project needs a few basic things before development can begin. This phase covers the pre-development stage of Telodendria.

• Name this project
• Set up a CVS repository
• Make CVS repository public
• Write a coding style guide
• Write a build script
• Add a license
• Add support and issue reporting guide
• Add table of contents to this document

Phase 2: Building A Foundation

Matrix homeservers require a few prerequisites. In this phase, we build up all the tools required to properly implement a Matrix homeserver. This includes basic data structures, exchange format parsers, and more. We also build up a command line application, multi-threaded HTTP server, and architect a flat-file database framework.

• Implement an array
• Implement a logging facility
• Implement argument parsing (-c file -Vh)
• Implement a hash map
• Combine library code files
• Implement configuration file parsing using the hash map
• Base64 encoding/decoding with padded/unpadded support
• Write a release script
• UTF-8 encoder
• Implement a JSON library using the hash map and array
  • Basic encoding from HashMap/Array/strings, etc.
  • Basic decoding to HashMap/Array/strings, etc.
  • Proper string encoding
  • Proper string decoding
  • Canonical JSON
    • Keys are sorted lexicographically
    • Floats are not allowed (ignore any float values)
    • Encode as UTF-8 instead of using \u escapes
    • Decode encoded strings to UTF-8
• Write a function that gets the current Unix timestamp in milliseconds.
• Figure out how to wWrite unit tests for array/hashmap/etc
• Parse the Telodendria config file
• Add license/documentation comments to all source files
• Implement a simple HTTP server
  • Implement param parser
  • URL encoder/decoder
• Design the server architecture
  • Route requests
  • Handle requests
  • Data abstraction layer
  • Error generation

Phase 3: Welcome To Matrix

When the foundations are laid, we can start implementing a real Matrix homeserver. This phase tracks our current progress in implementing the Matrix specification.

• Client-Server API
  • Error responses
  • /_matrix/client/versions
  • CORS Headers
  • Well-known URIs
  • Client Authentication
  • Capabilities negotiation
• Server-Server API
• Application Service API
• Identity Service API
• Push Gateway API
• Room Versions

Phase 4: A Real Homeserver

The Matrix specification is only a part of what it takes to be a production-ready Matrix homeserver. While the spec details how clients and homeservers interact with each other, we still need a way to administer our homeserver. This phase tracks our progress on getting Telodendria packaged, as well as writing some useful administrative tools. Only when these things are completed can we call Telodendria "production-ready."

• Create an OpenBSD package and get it submitted to ports
• Create a command line tool to manage Telodendria
  • Configuration file generation
  • User management
  • Room management
• Migrate from Synapse. I run a Synapse homeserver right now, so somehow I have to get all my data into the Telodendria format.

Documentation Status

This documentation needs just a little work. Here's the things on my list for that:

• Update Rationale section
• Update Project description (no longer a CGI binary)
• Update project code requirements (ANSI C, POSIX.1c)
• Clean up dark mode colors (tables, background, code snippets)
• Add logo (possibly center title?)
• Update Code Style to not include indent or line rules, but to use indent(1) instead.
• Fix typo "Subitting Patches" in Table of Contents
• Make a note in Getting The Code that the password for the anoncvs account is just anoncvs.
• Add Contributors list
• Add list of make.sh recipes, and what they do
• Improve Google Lighthouse score
  • Image elements do not have explicit width and height
  • Background and foreground colors do not have a sufficient contrast ratio. (msg-error div)
  • Lists do not contain only li elements.
• Add other message divs for notes and warnings.

Getting Support

Telodendria is designed to be fairly straightforward, but that doesn't mean there won't be hiccups along the way. If you are struggling to get Telodendria up and running, you're more than welcome to reach out for support. Just join the #telodendria-general:bancino.net Matrix channel. Before you do though, make sure you're running the latest version of Telodendria and you've thoroughly read through all the relevant documentation.

Resources

• Old Telodendria Versions
• Matrix Spec Mirror (Download matrix-spec-v1.3.tar.gz)
• Public Patch Directory