libretro / libretro/RetroArch

Improving the network library in RetroArch

Open
#10,147 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

netplay networking
Dominant language
C
Stars
14.1k
Forks
2.2k
Avg merge
7h 35m
Merged PRs (30d)
51

Description

Improving the network library in RetroArch

Description
Currently RetroArch uses the network stack provided by libretro-common to implement simple network interactions. It’s currently mainly IPv4 aware and supports only HTTP / HTTPS version 1. For TLS support we currently use the mbedtls library.

The current HTTP implementation is also not feature complete and has a lot of compatibility issues. The tasks for thus projects could involve:

Proper support for IPv6
General compatibility of the current HTTP/1 stack
HTTP/2 or even HTTP/3 support
Hardening the current TLS support

Either by extending the current implementation or by using an external, portable and small library. Not all of our targets need to be supported with these changes. Exotic build targets often don’t have network support anyway.

Further readings:

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/tree/master/libretro-common/net

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/tree/master/network

Needed knowledge:

C, Network protocols (IPv4 / IPv6 / TCP / HTTP / HTTP/2 / HTTP/3)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the existing implementations in libretro-common/net and network, then compare their current IPv4, HTTP/1, and mbedtls behavior with the stated compatibility goals. The scope is complete only when a defined subset of IPv6, HTTP compatibility, newer HTTP versions, or TLS hardening works across the supported targets, with unsupported exotic targets identified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
c
Domain
networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.