Dear all,
For your convenience, and triggered by several questions about status messages, as well as several private conversations with some of you, we decided to clarify the contents of a status message. We want to thank all of you who reported the inconsistencies.
A node should include all node ids in its status from which it has seen messages having those ids as origins. Additionally, If the node itself sent messages (with itself as origin), then it also includes its own id in the status. Otherwise, it does not include its own id.
The handouts contained incomplete statements, and I myself got confused.
As noted in another Moodle thread, whether to include the node itself in the status packet does not affect the correctness. And, in fact, all unit tests except for TestGossiper_Topo1_2Nodes_AckRumor would pass. However, the integration tests require the same design choice for yours' and our gossipers.
We hope this clarifies all questions regarding the matter.
Best regards,
The CS-438 team
(Edited by Kirill Nikitin - original submission Monday, 19 October 2020, 20:28)
