Paul HittandClaude Opus 5
2c22ffed75
describeFailure had one sentence for everything it could not name: 'Something
went wrong reaching that server.' That is a claim about the network, and most
of what lands in the catch-all never touched the network.
Seen while testing the released 0.29 build on an emulator. Sign-up against a
relay that answered 200 to signup, token, device registration and identity put
that sentence on the screen. The account had been created. The person is told
to check a connection that is working, and the one action the sentence implies,
tapping again, is the one least likely to help. It is also what produced the
duplicate token request in the relay's access log.
Same shape as the relay-pin bug fixed in 80bb4c4: a specific failure arriving
as a shrug about the network, and the fix is the same. Say what is known.
RelayException.Transport now has its own branch and is the only place allowed
to blame the connection, because it is the only one that knows. The catch-all
says the failure was on this phone, and carries the cause's own sentence when
there is a readable one, refusing anything that looks like a class name.
Seven tests, falsified: restoring the old sentence turns three of them red.
App unit suite 633 green.
Not fixed here: WHY that sign-up failed locally after a 200. The message was
hiding it, and now it will say.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Flamenet Messenger. Android
The Android app, and the two libraries under it. The product's site is at https://flamenetmessenger.com.
engine/ the protocol: X3DH, Double Ratchet, sealed sender, safety numbers,
key transparency. Plain Kotlin/JVM, no Android in it at all.
client/ the relay transport: HTTP, auth, the §8 routes.
app/ the Compose app.
interop/ the cross-engine driver; not shipped.
engine and client are deliberately plain JVM libraries. The protocol has
nothing to do with Android, and keeping it off the platform means their tests
run anywhere a JVM does, no SDK, no emulator, no device, which is also what
lets them gate in CI on Linux:
./gradlew :engine:test :client:test
The app's own unit tests need the Android SDK but still no emulator (Robolectric):
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest
Where it stands
PARITY.md is the definition of done for this app, read that, not this. Every row there names the iOS file it came from so it can be re-checked rather than trusted. Headlines: messaging, groups, attachments, voice notes, stories, calls, sealed sender, key transparency and the encrypted vault are built and tested, and a cross-platform round trip against iOS is verified.
If a claim here ever disagrees with PARITY.md or with the tree, believe those, and fix this.
Why the engine came first, and is held to the vectors
An Android client needs the protocol implemented a third time, and the third
implementation is the one that finds the places where the specification says
less than the two existing engines quietly agreed on, but only if it is
written against the spec and the published vectors rather than against a
reading of our own Swift and JavaScript. So the engine is held to
test/vectors/protocol-v1.json in
flamenet-e2e, the same file the
other two engines are checked against, read from that repository rather than
copied here, because a copied vector file drifts and a drifting vector file
stops being a check. PublishedVectorsTest looks for it beside this checkout
and fails loudly if it cannot find it; FLAMENET_VECTORS overrides the search.
Two implementations that agree may both be wrong in the same way, especially when one was written while reading the other. The audit-path ordering in §19 is the worked example: a top-down reading of a bottom-up path produces the correct root for every left-spine index, so it passes any test that only checks index 0. The vector file pins a right-descending index for that reason, and the Kotlin tests assert both that the published path verifies and that the same path reversed does not.
If this engine ever disagrees with the file, the interesting question is which of the three is wrong, not this one by default.
Contributing and security
- CONTRIBUTING.md, building (JDK 21,
JAVA_HOMEis not optional on a Mac), the test gate, and the platform traps that cost an hour each. - PARITY.md, what iOS does, what this does, and what is left. It is the definition of done for this app.
- SECURITY.md, threat model and where to send a vulnerability report. Not an issue tracker matter: security@flamenetmessenger.com.