matrix-org / matrix-org/matrix-spec

Accessing published room directories on other servers (SPEC-320)

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A-Client-Server feature p2
Dominant language
HTML
Stars
330
Forks
150
Avg merge
2h 21m
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

We need a way to solve the global directory problem in Matrix of discovering what published rooms exist out there.

Options include:
1. Let users manually specify the server they're querying when browsing the room directory in their client. (This was the conclusion when this was last discussed IRL, iirc)
2. Let servers delegate /publicRooms through to other servers too - either cascading based on ones they know about, or based on a whitelist, or just a static list
3. Expose /publicRooms via an SEO-friendly web interface and hope Google handle it for us (ugh, depends on Google)
4. Shove it all into some kind of global data structure (DHT, etc), which we may need anyway in future for discovering distributed accounts.

(Imported from https://matrix.org/jira/browse/SPEC-320)

(Reported by @ara4n)

Contributor guide

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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 imported SPEC-320 discussion and comparing the four approaches listed in the issue. No files, tests, or implementation entry point are named; done would require an agreed protocol or design for discovering published rooms across servers.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
distributed-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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