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ad69f7d884
The 0.35 pin's rationale ("the post-0.35 rewrite is not yet production
quality") expired when iroh hit 1.0 in June 2026: the rewrite line
(0.103) is now the production line and the only one receiving fixes.
The rewrite replaced wrappable store traits with an irpc-based API, so
the seams moved:
- shaped.rs: the 440-line ShapedStore trait wrapper becomes a provider
event handler. Trust gating (untrusted peers see only openly-served
hashes) now intercepts requests before any bytes move; upload rate
limiting rides the provider's Throttle hook; upload progress events
come from per-request update streams. The TokenBucket is unchanged.
- store.rs: FsStore's API handle replaces the store traits, and the
LocalPool machinery for non-Send futures is gone. GC is now the
store's built-in periodic mark-and-sweep, fed by a pin-roots snapshot
via the protect callback (new config knob gc_interval_secs, default
300); the on-demand Gc request answers Unimplemented, and the gc
conformance test polls the sweep instead.
- transfer.rs: BlobsProtocol + Router replace handle_connection, the
new multi-provider Downloader replaces the old queue, and mdns
discovery moved to the iroh-mdns-address-lookup crate (it left iroh
core in 1.0). Ticket-embedded provider addresses feed a MemoryLookup
address book. Endpoint presets: Minimal (LAN-only default) or N0
(wan_upload), preserving the old relay posture.
- Node* became Endpoint* throughout; announcement signatures use iroh's
own Signature type (ed25519-dalek dep dropped); iroh-io dropped.
Known regression: max_download_bytes_per_sec is currently not enforced
— download shaping rode the old store's batch writer and 0.103's
downloader has no equivalent seam yet.
Announcement wire format note: EndpointAddr serializes differently than
NodeAddr, so pre- and post-migration daemons won't parse each other's
LAN announcements. Announcements are live-only, nothing stored breaks.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
varde
A small, boring, distro-packageable Linux daemon that owns a content-addressed blob store and mirrors content between consenting peers, built on iroh (iroh 1.0, iroh-blobs 0.103). Applications talk to it over a unix socket: "add this path", "pin this hash", "materialize hash X at path Y". Think: what Windows Delivery Optimization is for updates — generalized, open, legible.
varde (Norwegian): a stone cairn used as a waypoint.
Design ethos
- Infrastructure, not product. No GUI, no self-updater. A daemon, a CLI, a JSON-lines socket protocol, man pages, systemd units.
- Legible to the network. Identifiable mDNS advertisement, DSCP CS1 marking, conservative rate limits (10 MiB/s up default), LAN-only with zero WAN upload by default, all transfers stop on metered connections.
- Consent-tiered. Discovery is open; replication is explicit.
Content is served only to allowlisted peers, except what you
deliberately publish (
--open-lanpins, exported tickets). All fetched data is BLAKE3-verified regardless — trust gates participation, not integrity.
Layout
| crate | role |
|---|---|
varde-proto |
wire types for the socket API (serde, no I/O) |
varde-daemon |
the service: store, endpoint, policy, socket server |
varde-ctl |
CLI client and protocol reference implementation |
dist/ holds systemd units (system + user, socket activation),
scdoc man pages, an example config, and an untested Arch PKGBUILD.
docs/ has per-milestone decision notes and the redoal integration
sketch.
Quick start
$ varde-daemon --user &
$ varde-ctl add ~/dataset -r
added 5b1c…e0 (1234567 bytes)
$ varde-ctl pin 5b1c…e0
$ varde-ctl ticket export 5b1c…e0 # hand this to another machine
$ varde-ctl ticket import <ticket> # ...which runs this
$ varde-ctl materialize 5b1c…e0 /srv/dataset # reflinks when possible
Trusted peers on the same LAN sync overlapping pins automatically:
$ varde-ctl status # shows this daemon's node id
$ varde-ctl peer trust <node-id-of-the-other-machine> # on both ends
Building and testing
$ cargo build --release
$ cargo test --workspace # spawns real daemons; no mocked iroh
$ cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
The metered feature (default on) needs D-Bus at runtime only; build
with --no-default-features for systems without it.