describeServer field for reporting software version(s)?

[DavidBuchanan314]

A free-form text field would be enough I suppose (like with the HTTP Server header). It would be an informational field for developers to see, useful for diagnosing federation issues in the wild, and also generally nice for collecting stats (e.g. https://atscan.net/)

[snarfed]

Yes! Also relevant: https://nodeinfo.diaspora.software/

[DavidBuchanan314]

I notice you serve a nodeinfo at https://atproto.brid.gy/.well-known/nodeinfo - I might do something similar for millipds

[DavidBuchanan314]

also @ngerakines just showed me jhass/nodeinfo#100

[snarfed]

Hah, yes! Would help set a precedent for nodeinfo to expand beyond AP/fediverse-centric.

[DavidBuchanan314]

A related question: #1139

[bnewbold]

Better structured metadata would be good! Could be describeServer, could be a new com.atproto.* endpoint (eg, to be more generic to multiple network roles; describeServer is a bit PDS-centric); HTTP Server and HTML metadata would be good regardless of more granular solutions.

FWIW, the current typescript PDS implementation does stuff a git commit in the healthcheck endpoint (eg, https://bsky.social/xrpc/_health). But we shouldn't lean on that too much, don't want it to become a de-facto standard.