The Go implementation of the libp2p Networking Stack.

Project status

Weekly Core Dev Calls

Table of Contents

• Background
• Bundles
• Usage
  • Install
  • API
  • Examples
• Development
  • Tests
  • Packages
• Contribute
• License

Background

libp2p is a networking stack and library modularized out of The IPFS Project, and bundled separately for other tools to use.

libp2p is the product of a long, and arduous quest of understanding -- a deep dive into the internet's network stack, and plentiful peer-to-peer protocols from the past. Building large scale peer-to-peer systems has been complex and difficult in the last 15 years, and libp2p is a way to fix that. It is a "network stack" -- a protocol suite -- that cleanly separates concerns, and enables sophisticated applications to only use the protocols they absolutely need, without giving up interoperability and upgradeability. libp2p grew out of IPFS, but it is built so that lots of people can use it, for lots of different projects.

We will be writing a set of docs, posts, tutorials, and talks to explain what p2p is, why it is tremendously useful, and how it can help your existing and new projects. But in the meantime, check out

• Our developing collection of docs
• Our community discussion forums
• The libp2p Specification
• go-libp2p implementation
• js-libp2p implementation
• rust-libp2p implementation

Usage

This repository (go-libp2p) serves as the entrypoint to the universe of modules that compose the Go implementation of the libp2p stack.

We mainly use Go modules for our dependency and release management (and thus require go >= 1.11). In order to get the best developer experience, we recommend you do too. Otherwise, you may ocassionally encounter a breaking build as you'll be running off master (which, by definition, is not guaranteed to be stable).

You can start using go-libp2p in your Go application simply by adding imports from our repos, e.g.:

import "github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p"

The next time you run go get or go build, the Go build tools will look for available releases, and will pick the highest available one.

As new releases of go-libp2p are made available, you can upgrade your application by manually editing your go.mod file, or using the Go tools to maintain module requirements.

API

Examples

Examples can be found in the examples repo.

Development

Using the libp2p workspace

While developing, you may need to make changes to several modules at once, or you may want changes made locally in one module to be available for import by another.

The go libp2p workspace provides a developer-oriented view of the modules that comprise go-libp2p.

Using the tooling in the workspace repository, you can checkout all of go-libp2p's module repos and enter "local mode", which adds replace directives to the go.mod files in each local working copy. When you build locally, the libp2p depdendencies will be resolved from your local working copies.

Once you've committed your changes, you can switch back to "remote mode", which removes the replace directives and pulls imports from the main go module cache.

See the workspace repo for more information.

About gx

Before adopting gomod, libp2p used gx to manage dependencies using IPFS.

Due to the difficulties in keeping both dependency management solutions up-to-date, gx support was ended in April 2019.

Ending gx support does not mean that existing gx builds will break. Because gx references dependencies by their immutable IPFS hash, any currently working gx builds will continue to work for as long as the dependencies are resolvable in IPFS.

However, new changes to go-libp2p will not be published via gx, and users are encouraged to adopt gomod to stay up-to-date.

If you experience any issues migrating from gx to gomod, please join the discussion at the libp2p forums.

Tests

go test ./... will run all tests in the repo.

Packages

This table is generated using the module package-table with package-table --data=package-list.json.

List of packages currently in existence for libp2p:

Name	CI	Coverage	Description
Libp2p
go-libp2p			go-libp2p entry point
go-libp2p-host			libp2p "host" interface
go-libp2p-blankhost			minimal implementation of the "host" interface
Network
go-libp2p-net			libp2p connection and "network" interfaces
go-libp2p-swarm			reference implementation
Transport
go-libp2p-transport			interfaces
go-ws-transport			WebSocket transport
go-tcp-transport			TCP transport
go-libp2p-quic-transport			QUIC transport
go-udp-transport			UDP transport
go-utp-transport			uTorrent transport (UTP)
go-libp2p-circuit			relay transport
go-libp2p-transport-upgrader			upgrades multiaddr-net connections into full libp2p transports
go-libp2p-reuseport-transport			partial transport for building transports that reuse ports
Encrypted Channels
go-conn-security			interfaces
go-libp2p-secio			SecIO crypto channel
go-conn-security-multistream			multistream multiplexed meta crypto channel
Private Network
go-libp2p-interface-pnet			interfaces
go-libp2p-pnet			reference implementation
Stream Muxers
go-stream-muxer			interfaces
go-smux-yamux			YAMUX stream multiplexer
go-smux-multiplex			MPLEX stream multiplexer
NAT Traversal
go-libp2p-nat
Peerstore
go-libp2p-peerstore			interfaces and reference implementation
Connection Manager
go-libp2p-interface-connmgr			interface
go-libp2p-connmgr			reference implementation
Routing
go-libp2p-routing			routing interfaces
go-libp2p-record			record type and validator logic
go-libp2p-routing-helpers			helpers for composing routers
go-libp2p-kad-dht			Kademlia-like router
go-libp2p-pubsub-router			record-store over pubsub adapter
Consensus
go-libp2p-consensus			consensus protocols interfaces
go-libp2p-raft			consensus implementation over raft
Pubsub
go-libp2p-pubsub			multiple pubsub over libp2p implementations
RPC
go-libp2p-gorpc			a simple RPC library for libp2p
Metrics
go-libp2p-metrics			libp2p metrics interfaces/collectors
Data Types
go-libp2p-peer			libp2p peer-ID datatype
go-libp2p-crypto			libp2p key types
go-libp2p-protocol			libp2p protocol datatype
go-libp2p-kbucket			Kademlia routing table helper types
Utilities/miscellaneous
go-libp2p-loggables			logging helpers
go-maddr-filter			multiaddr filtering helpers
go-libp2p-netutil			misc utilities
go-msgio			length prefixed data channel
go-addr-util			address utilities for libp2p swarm
go-buffer-pool			a variable size buffer pool for go
go-libp2p-routing-helpers			routing helpers
go-reuseport			enables reuse of addresses
go-sockaddr			utils for sockaddr conversions
go-flow-metrics			metrics library
Testing and examples
go-testutil			a collection of testing utilities for ipfs and libp2p
go-libp2p-examples			go-libp2p examples and tutorials
go-libp2p-circuit-progs			testing programs for go-libp2p-circuit

Contribute

go-libp2p is part of The IPFS Project, and is MIT licensed open source software. We welcome contributions big and small! Take a look at the community contributing notes. Please make sure to check the issues. Search the closed ones before reporting things, and help us with the open ones.

Guidelines:

• read the libp2p spec
• please make branches + pull-request, even if working on the main repository
• ask questions or talk about things in Issues, our discussion forums, or #libp2p or #ipfs on freenode.
• ensure you are able to contribute (no legal issues please-- we use the DCO)
• run go fmt before pushing any code
• run golint and go vet too -- some things (like protobuf files) are expected to fail.
• get in touch with @jbenet and @diasdavid about how best to contribute
• have fun!

There's a few things you can do right now to help out:

• Go through the modules below and check out existing issues. This would be especially useful for modules in active development. Some knowledge of IPFS/libp2p may be required, as well as the infrasture behind it - for instance, you may need to read up on p2p and more complex operations like muxing to be able to help technically.
• Perform code reviews.
• Add tests. There can never be enough tests.