RFC for timestamping in SAFE

[tfa]

Following my analysis in this post:

Any time consensus within SAFEnet?

The problem is that maintaining a global time across the network adds another complex layer in the core. A much simpler solution which would need a minimal modification of the core is to add the following fields in StructuredData: min_date: i64 (default value 0) max_date: i64 (default value std::i64::MAX) The i64 type represents the sec part of a struct Timespec generated from an UTC time (a number of seconds since the beginning of the epoch). Each nodes in the data manager group handling a …

I implemented this functionality in routing crate and sent a PR because it was so simple. But then David indicated that a RFC was needed, this is the reason why things are in the wrong order (I did the PR before the RFC).

Let us hope that MaidSafe team doesn’t find anything blocking in this proposal.

@janitor

I don’t know how the manager is selected

The managers are the standard ones, either:

• The group managing the client (around client name in XOR space)
• The group managing the SD (around SD name in XOR space)

(or both)

I searched for the call sites of functions checking the signatures of a SD and didn’t find them. The function checking the date must probably called at the same places (that I didn’t find).