sshpeer: document the handshake mechanism
The mechanism by which SSH peers establish connections with remotes
is wonky and requires a bit of code archeology to understand. While
it is already documented in `hg help internals.wireproto`, it helps
to have documentation in the code as well.
Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D2035
--- a/mercurial/sshpeer.py Mon Feb 05 09:14:32 2018 -0800
+++ b/mercurial/sshpeer.py Sun Feb 04 14:44:04 2018 -0800
@@ -162,6 +162,37 @@
hint = ui.config('ui', 'ssherrorhint')
raise error.RepoError(msg, hint=hint)
+ # The handshake consists of sending 2 wire protocol commands:
+ # ``hello`` and ``between``.
+ #
+ # The ``hello`` command (which was introduced in Mercurial 0.9.1)
+ # instructs the server to advertise its capabilities.
+ #
+ # The ``between`` command (which has existed in all Mercurial servers
+ # for as long as SSH support has existed), asks for the set of revisions
+ # between a pair of revisions.
+ #
+ # The ``between`` command is issued with a request for the null
+ # range. If the remote is a Mercurial server, this request will
+ # generate a specific response: ``1\n\n``. This represents the
+ # wire protocol encoded value for ``\n``. We look for ``1\n\n``
+ # in the output stream and know this is the response to ``between``
+ # and we're at the end of our handshake reply.
+ #
+ # The response to the ``hello`` command will be a line with the
+ # length of the value returned by that command followed by that
+ # value. If the server doesn't support ``hello`` (which should be
+ # rare), that line will be ``0\n``. Otherwise, the value will contain
+ # RFC 822 like lines. Of these, the ``capabilities:`` line contains
+ # the capabilities of the server.
+ #
+ # In addition to the responses to our command requests, the server
+ # may emit "banner" output on stdout. SSH servers are allowed to
+ # print messages to stdout on login. Issuing commands on connection
+ # allows us to flush this banner output from the server by scanning
+ # for output to our well-known ``between`` command. Of course, if
+ # the banner contains ``1\n\n``, this will throw off our detection.
+
requestlog = ui.configbool('devel', 'debug.peer-request')
try:
@@ -205,6 +236,8 @@
caps = set()
for l in reversed(lines):
+ # Look for response to ``hello`` command. Scan from the back so
+ # we don't misinterpret banner output as the command reply.
if l.startswith('capabilities:'):
caps.update(l[:-1].split(':')[1].split())
break