Create js-kubo-rpc-client library

[lidel]

ETA: 2022-12-16

Part of #8959 – based on discussions from IPFS Thing 2022
GO counterpart: #9124

Current state

Kubo shares RPC client with JS-IPFS:

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/ipfs-http-client

After renaming GO-IPFS to Kubo, this state of things is arguably a bad user experience:

• js-ipfs and Kubo are joined at the RPC hip – unable to improve their respective RPC interfaces, and pretending to be interoperable:
  • js-ipfs provides gRPC endpoint while Kubo does not
  • we don't test all RPC command because implementations diverged already
  • making change to RPC in Kubo forces us to do the same change in js-ipfs, and makes it extremely hard to coordinate releases to minimize breaking changes to rpc client library users (example: fix: multibase in pubsub http rpc #8183 & fix(pubsub): multibase in pubsub http rpc js-ipfs#3922)

Desired state

Ideally, we should have one Kubo client at https://github.com/ipfs/js-kubo-rpc-client and kubo-rpc-client on NPM.

Keeping go- prefix is important because we want consistency across languages,
and Kubo team will maintain go-kubo-rpc-client too.

TODO

Below is a broad strokes plan, feel free to adjust if something else makes more sense:

• fork https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/tree/master/packages/ipfs-http-client and name it https://github.com/ipfs/js-kubo-rpc-client
• generate API docs for js-kubo-rpc-client and publish them to GitHub pages
  (this way developers are not forced to use https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/tree/master/docs/core-api which is maintained manually and often contains bugs or parameters that are not supported by Kubo)
  • tracked in Create useful documentation for end users js-kubo-rpc-client#113
• publish js-kubo-rpc-client to npm automatically with github action via aegir
• update https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfsd-ctl to support both ipfsHttpModule and kuboRpcModule
  (we will also rename binary package, but that is tracked separately in Rename NPM package to kubo npm-kubo#51)
• switch https://github.com/ipfs/interop to talk to Kubo daemon over js-kubo-rpc-client and run it in the CI of js-kubo-rpc-client repo
  (we already run ipfs/interop tests in Kubo CI, but it is too late, we should do it in the library repo CI too)
• decide if js-kubo-rpc-client CI should reuse tests against Core APIs interface-ipfs-core Kubo RPC Client should have it's own tests, stripped out from interface-ipfs-core. And we should only bring over the tests that are applicable for kubo's supported RPC calls. Pull out relevant tests from interface-ipfs-core js-kubo-rpc-client#5
• update docs to mention only the new client
  • add mention of js-kubo-rpc-client to Kubo README
  • docs.ipfs.io - find mentions of ipfs-http-client and switch to kubo-rpc-client where Kubo daemon is used
    • https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/js/api/ - add note when to use ipfs-http-client (js-ipfs rpc client), and when the kubo one

Followups

Below are good improvements, but since we didn't have them with ipfs-http-client, we're not requiring them here.

• CI test that fails when a new command is added to Kubo and is not supported by kubo-rpc-client yet
  • trackled separately in Automation to detect new Kubo commands js-kubo-rpc-client#47

cc @2color @BigLep @achingbrain @SgtPooki

[SgtPooki]

• Created https://github.com/ipfs/js-kubo-rpc-client.
• Used https://support.github.com/contact?tags=rr-forks&subject=Detach%20Fork&flow=detach_fork to detach the forked repo from ipfs/js-ipfs

[SgtPooki]

Trying to generate documentation, but I can't seem to do so and can't find instructions at https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs

---

It seems like aegir doesn't support generating docs anymore (aegir docs command no longer exists), and they used to use typedoc, so I'm going to use https://github.com/TypeStrong/typedoc directly

Action is running right now: https://github.com/ipfs/js-kubo-rpc-client/actions/runs/2886171949

Updated the action, ipfs/js-kubo-rpc-client@cc2823b, and the site is now visible at https://ipfs.github.io/js-kubo-rpc-client/

[SgtPooki]

Created PR to add js-kubo-rpc-client to ipfs/github-mgmt#43

[SgtPooki]

Using personal NPM_TOKEN for publish js-kubo-rpc-client to npm automatically with github action via aegir until I get access to npm service account to create more permanent NPM_TOKEN

[SgtPooki]

Unified CI should be enabled for js-kubo-rpc-client once protocol/.github#371 and ipfs/github-mgmt#43 are merged

[SgtPooki]

Updated NPM_TOKEN to use automated token from service account

[SgtPooki]

update https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfsd-ctl to support both ipfsHttpModule and kuboRpcModule
(we will also rename binary package, but that is tracked separately in ipfs/npm-kubo#51)

Starting work on this now.