Implement Proposal 275: Stop including meaningful "published" time in microdescriptor consensus
This proposal is designed to make our compressed microdescriptor consensus diffs much, much smaller -- by something like 50%. It does so by replacing the published time in microdescriptor consensuses by some date far in the future.
This will require something like the following steps:
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Make sure that this approach is actually safe works, and we don't actually look at the published_on dates in microdescriptor consensuses. -
Double-check that making these "published" times constant will actually reduce our compressed diff size. -
Allocate a new consensus method. When this method is chosen, the published time is some arbitrarily chosen date far in the future. I'd recommend 1 Jan 2038, but other choices may be valid. -
Test the new consensus type with all supported tor versions and make sure nothing breaks -
Document the new behavior in dir-spec.txt
Edited by Nick Mathewson