Update non-web related dependencies to their latest version were
possible. It appears yargs has changed its parsing of command line
options to no longer remove a layer of quotes.
The LTS releases for v12 and v14 are already end of life and the v16 is
end of life in under two months from now on. Bump supported version up
to v18 as it does not make sense to continue to support EOL releases.
Even if we wanted to keep supporting them, our dependencies will not.
Note that Node.js v18 is currently not avaliable via the NodeSource PPA
on Ubuntu 19.10 and below or Debian 9 and below.
It makes more sense to put the address first then have the large
structure to send as the second argument to sendTo. The opposite order
was originally chosen to be similar to that of sendto in BSD sockets.
Validate messages received on the controller from hosts and control
nodes before handling or forwarding them. This should prevent
performing actions that are not allowed by the role system and block
simple attacks such as spoofing the source address of a message.
Split up the action of registring an event or request data class to be
decoded by the Link class and the action of registring a handler for
those requests and events. This moves the validation work from Link
instantiation time to startup initialisation which makes logic errors
fail on startup instead of failing instantiation of the link when a
connection attempt is made.
Additionally implement a partial validation logic for messages received
using the newly refactored message registration. This unfortunately
ended up merged with the registration refactor.
Reverse the direction of the API for sending messages from
messageDefinition.send(link, { content });
to
link.send(new MessageClass(content));
and convert all message definitions to use the JSON serialisable class
pattern and explicit registration of message handlers, along with a
end-to-end based routing of messages instead of link to link.
The experience I gained from the existing way messages were defined and
sent over links was that it was difficult to understand for people
unfamiliar with the system. The automatic registration of message
handlers ment that code was being called as if by magic from nowhere
with no easy way to discover it. The manual forwarding and rules for
what can be sent where and how obscured its working.
The use of pure JSON as both input and output from message handlers made
it tedious to work with. Data had to be manually converted between the
program representation and the over the wire format, which made handler
code unplesant to write. Particularly because the over the wire format
used snake_case while the program code uses camelCase for variables.
The idea behind the decision to do it this way was to make it more clear
which data came from the wire and which from the program, and while this
worked it didn't make message handlers any nicer to write.
The direction of the API and magic registration of message handlers also
meant that a future migration to TypeScript would be troublesome. While
it may be possible to implement, the degree of TypeScript magic required
would go starkly against the principle of keep it simple stupid.
By refactoring to using the JSON serialisable class pattern most of
these issues go away. There is no longer a need to distinguish the on
wire format of messages with the program representation because the only
place that deals with the wire format of messages are the toJSON and
fromJSON methods on the classes themselves. Message handlers will work
with proper instances of classes instead of raw data, something that
makes them easier to write, and trivial to type with TypeScript.
End-to-end routing also simplifies sending messages that need to do
mulitple hops to reach the destination. And removes the need for having
all messages be specified in plugin's info module, as they can be routed
without having to be parsed completely.
The explicit registration of message handlers is something that I
thought would be tedious boilerplate code that could be automated away.
But experience now shows it to be the opposite. Allthough dull
repetition, the purpose it serves is to link together the code in a way
that humans can easily find. With explicit registration searching the
name of the message handler in the editor will show the registration that
ties it together with the type of message it handles and the kind of
registration. With implicit registration searching the name of the
message handler turns up only the handler with no clue as to what calls
it.
The role of a slave as a host for Factorio servers is not well reflected
in its name and has caused confusion among users. Rename slave to host
to better reflect its role as a host of Factorio servers.
The role of the master server as the party controlling every part of the
cluster is not well reflected in its name and has caused confusion among
users on several occasions. Rename master to controller to better
reflects its role.
Put all web assets including plugin assets under a shared static/ route
in the web interface that's declared as immutable and cacheable for 1
year. This allows all JavaScript bundles to be loaded from disk instead
of having to check with the web server each time and significantly
speeds up the web interface load time. It also fixes the public path
issue when using the --dev-plugin option behind a proxy.
To prevent collisions and stale data all assets now include a hash in
the filename. This means the entrypoint is now dynamic and specified in
a manifest.json file created from the web build. For plugins this means
the filename attribute needs to be removed from webpack.config.js.
The prepare script runs before publishing a package, after installation
of a package from source, and when running npm install without
arguments in the repository. These are the times where a build of the
web interface files are required to make the web interface work and
removes a manual step from using the package(s). The "build" script on
the other hand is never automatically invoked by npm.
The ajv module was made shared to reduce package size, but it turned out
the package size was large because of a missunderstanding in how imports
to sub-paths works with module federation. Since that was fixed the ajv
module was no longer shared, but plugins incorrectly still specified it.
In order to import a path inside packages/lib/ in the webpack shared
module environment it has to be declared as shared in both the web_ui
webpack config and the plugin's webpack config. This is rather error
prone and easy to miss. Move the burden of specifying which entrypoints
are valid in lib to lib itself by changing all imports in the web
interface code to import from @clusterio/lib instead sub paths.
For web code this means imports is done like this from now on:
import { libConfig, libLink } from "@clusterio/lib";
For info.js which has to be loadable by both Node.js and web code the
imports are done as follows:
const { libConfig, libLink } = require("@clusterio/lib");
While the Node.js only code can either continue to import sub paths
directly or use the info.js style.
The Node.js specific rules for Eslint were deprecated in favour of the
node plugin for Eslint. Add node plugin for eslint and switch over to
using its rules, fixing any issues detected.
Move the depenedncies needed to run the tests into test/package.json and
manage it using lerna. This should make it easier to selectively
install only what's needed to run the software.
Simplify the the way markdown files are formatted to make them easier to
author without editors that do auto line breaking, and make the diffs
from them simpler to read.
Change to "auto" as the publicPath to have webpack deduce the correct
path at runtime. This fixes an issue with plugins being unable to be
loaded due to trying to load bundles from the wrong path when the web
interface is hosted under a proxied sub-path.
The web files for plugins were hosted at /plugin/plugin_name/ while the
view page for a plugin is hosted at /plugins/plugin_name/view. Reduce
confusion by making both urls use the plural version.
Add hidden development option to run the webpack compiller for the given
plugin(s) similar to the --dev option for the built-in web interface.
This requires publicPath to be set in the webpack config and an updated
version of webpack-dev-middleware to function correctly.
The module sharing in Webpack works on a per import basis and therefore
doesn't trigger when the value in the config is @clusterio/lib while the
module imported is @clusterio/lib/config. This in turn caused a copy of
lib to be bundled with each plugin. Fix by making sure each lib import
is shared and specified in the configs.
Add page listing the plugins installed on the master along with a
detailed page for each plugin with fields from their package.json.
Failure to load the module and version missmatch is also reported.
This adds ./packages.json as required part of the webpack module.
Remove the need for installing babel and the webpack loaders used in the
webpack.common.js file separately by resolving them from the web_ui
package. This allows future changes to done to the modules used without
having to update them in each plugin that uses the web_ui common config.
Move the target folder for the built web interface to dist/web/ instead
of static/. This better follows the norm for npm packages to include
built files in the dist/ folder and also allows putting other built
files into that folder in the future.
Add a sendRcon method to BaseInstancePlugin and the slave's Instance
class. This servers two purposes, one is to reduce the repetition when
send RCON commands particularly from plugins, and the other is to
instrument the RCON commands sent with metrics about duration and size.
Fix the issue with paths resolving incorrectly for the webpack config
when running the master server with the --dev option from the project
root folder through either npx clusteriomaster or node packages/master
Use lib* prefix for the modules impored from the lib package to help
distinguish them more from ordinary variables. Fix up the naming
convention for files to be consistently lowercase_underscore for
JavaScript files.
Avoid any potential for accidentally installing multiple copies of
clusterio/lib by specifiying it as a peer dependency instead of a
regular dependency.
Split up codebase into the packages @clsterio/lib, @clusterio/master,
@clusterio/slave, and @clusterio/ctl using lerna to manage them. This
will allow deployment to use only the parts needed reducing install
size, and better separate the code into shared library, master, slave
and control.
Hornwitser