+++
title = "December 2020"
weight = 40
+++

# December 2020
## Northstar

As the development on [Northstar](@/services/northstar.md) nears the completion phase,
updates on it have slowed down, and the only updates that were made during this
stage mostly comprises of configuration updates.
These updates were mostly related to bootstrapping [DynaConf](https://www.dynaconf.com/), 
and fixing issues with the rendering of the `docs` or the main website itself.

## Interface

A test suite was developed for the Gitea ecosystem, and a refactor was performed on the
various structures to leverage the functionality provided by [dataclasses](https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html).

Error handling mechanisms were set up for the client side, and an implementation of a 
forking mechanism was developed, followed by the forking mechanism for the Gitea forge.
Realising the need for validation of a request to an actor, an authentication 
mechanism was developed to implement Matrix's [signed JSON](https://github.com/matrix-org/python-signedjson)
feature, but, was later replaced in favor of [HTTP Signatures](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cavage-http-signatures).

The database and endpoints were refactored to accommodate features implemented
by the previous updates to the codebase. Subsequently, this was followed up with an 
id implementation to support the lazy loading of data.

## References
These are a list of the Pull Requests where the following updates took place for the
organization.

- Forking Implementation :: [#34](https://github.com/forgeflux-org/interface/commit/5c9f61d60ce069963da7abc761b9ba3d81c8883a)
- Authentication :: [#36](https://github.com/forgeflux-org/interface/commit/5cc206cbe5be83cedac14949a537baad4c6351e3)
- DB Refactor :: [#39](https://github.com/forgeflux-org/interface/commit/57c9a085b38f8c3bab7975e18d21e4455ad3cac9), [#40](https://github.com/forgeflux-org/interface/commit/d9d785ca116e9a2bb9a40cf3eaa16a8b275d1593)