Status Update

Weekly Development Report

DAEDALUS

Wallet

Last week the team extended the status messages shown on the "Loading" screen. Along with the existing "Connecting" and "Syncing" messages, users will now also see "Starting Cardano Node", "Stopping Cardano Node", and "Updating Cardano Node" messages which was made possible by the introduction of IPC driven Cardano node / Daedalus communication.

As a part of the regular maintenance tasks, the team is working on the optimization of the application environment setup and disabling of the Node JS integration in the rendering process.

App Platform

The team performed R&D on a suitable base Docker image for front-end only applications. Volume provisioning was upgraded to use data streams, avoiding temporary filesystem access, and container limit resource control measures investigated. A specification was produced to work with the backend team for developing a configurable Cardano-SL Docker image to improve developer experience in addition to running any type of node in a container-based environment. The Swagger to GraphQL adaptor was also improved to read the spec file dynamically from the docs endpoint, and additional filters added to align with the strict GraphQL character specification.

WALLET BACKEND

Last week the team concentrated on code optimization as well as addressing tickets related to improving the user experience and the behavior of the transaction history.

NETWORKING

There is no update this week.

DEVOPS

DevOps deployed updates last week, including the Cardano 1.3.1 RC2 proposal to staging for testing, updates to the K-EVM and IELE testnets, and supporting a developer deploy log-classifier to a server.

To facilitate Daedalus front-end testing and development, a DevOps engineer started adding failure injection features to Cardano-SL. Another engineer helped diagnose and fix a bug in Cardano-SL which caused it to hang during shutdown in certain scenarios.

The DevOps team continued to improve build and CI tooling. An engineer has been improving their nix-tools repository to facilitate Cardano-SL cross-compilation in a way that is compatible with existing nix-based workflows. Build and check (aka "test") phases in large nix dependency graphs such as Cardano-SL are interleaved inefficiently, so two engineers have been working on separating the build and check phases more. Another engineer improved nix usage documentation in Cardano-SL and implemented cardano.project.freeze file generation to improve the caching experience during development. Initial build, CI, and infrastructure discussions have started for a new Cardano repository. The team has also started working with a developer who is using macOS Mojave to get nix builds working.

CARDANO DECENTRALIZATION

The team is already translating the specification into an executable specification/prototype. There are also some modifications to the design document, both to clarify some aspects with feedback from the prototyping team, and to hone some last rough edges. The Daedalus team is reviewing updated Delegation spec to implement wallet requirements.

A senior engineer is continuing work on the Technical Implementation Plan. This implementation plan will provide the tasks, milestones, dependencies, success criteria and estimates. This will be reviewed by the developers to ensure alignment.

GOGUEN

There is no update this week.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

IOHK is currently looking for talented people to work with us as a Performance Management Specialist, Web Tester, Director of Product Management, Rust Software Engineer, Haskell Trainer, Technical Writer as well as several others. Please see the IOHK Careers page for more details.