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ForgeFed in git-shark: architecture and implementation notes

Maintainer-facing documentation for the federation subsystem: how it is built, why it is built that way, what works today, and what is still missing. For operating it see the deployment guide; for the user view see the user guide; for where the subsystem is headed see the federated collaboration roadmap.

git-shark speaks ForgeFed, the forge-federation vocabulary on top of ActivityPub. The implementation is hand-rolled on Jackson + JAX-RS — there is no maintained Java ForgeFed/ActivityPub library, and the subset we need (a handful of activity types, HTTP Signatures, WebFinger) is small enough that a dependency would cost more than it saves.

Component map

Everything lives in src/main/java/de/workaround/federation/:

Component Role
FederationConfig Central switch + validated config. operational() is the guard every code path checks
ActorUris / LocalActors Build and parse actor IDs from the base URL
ActorDocuments JSON builders for actor documents and activities (Follow, Accept, Undo, Push)
ActorKeyService Lazy per-actor RSA keypair creation, stored in federation_keys
HttpSignatures draft-cavage signing and verification (SHA256withRSA)
RemoteUrlGuard SSRF guard for every outbound URL
ActivityPubClient Signed fetches: remote actors (cached), public keys, WebFinger resolution
WebFingerResource GET /.well-known/webfinger — actor discovery
ActivityPubResource GET /ap/** — actor documents, outbox and followers collections
InboxResource / InboxService POST /ap/**/inbox — verify signature, dedup, dispatch
ActivityDispatcher Routes verified inbound activities by type to a handler
FollowHandler / UndoHandler Inbound: remote actor (un)follows a local repository
AcceptHandler Inbound: remote accepts a Follow we sent — flips our follow to ACCEPTED
PushHandler Inbound: stores Push from repositories local users follow
RemoteFollowService Outbound: follow/unfollow a remote repository or user, push feed query
RemoteRepositoryDirectory Outbound: reads a remote Person's repositories collection (fan-out source for follow-a-user)
FederationResyncScheduler Periodic add-only re-scan of followed users' repositories (picks up repos created after the follow)
FederationPushService Outbound: fans out Push to followers from the git post-receive hook
DeliveryService Persisted outbound queue with retry/backoff/dead-letter

Web UI: web/FollowingResource + Qute template (/following page). Persistence in model/ (FederationKey, RemoteActor, RepositoryFollower, RemoteFollow, RemoteUserFollow, ReceivedPush, InboxActivity, OutboxActivity, DeliveryTask), schema in db/migration/V2__federation.sql, V9__federation_following.sql, and V20__federation_user_follows.sql.

Actor model

Three local actor types, all rooted at gitshark.federation.base-url:

Actor Type ID WebFinger
Public repository ForgeFed Repository /ap/repos/{owner}/{name} acct:owner/name@host
User Person /ap/users/{username} acct:username@host
Instance Application /ap/instance —

Each has its own inbox; repositories and users also expose outbox, repositories additionally a followers collection, and users a repositories collection (…/ap/users/{username}/repositories) listing that user's public repository actors for cross-instance discovery. Private repositories are invisible to every federation endpoint — visibility is checked at the resource layer, not filtered in templates.

Data flow

Outbound follow (RemoteFollowService.follow): input is a handle (owner/name@host, resolved via WebFinger) or a direct actor URL → fetch the remote actor → persist a RemoteFollow row in state PENDING → enqueue a signed Follow. The remote's Accept arrives at the user's inbox and AcceptHandler flips the row to ACCEPTED — but only when the accepting actor matches the one we followed. Unfollow enqueues Undo(Follow) and deletes the row.

Outbound follow-a-user (RemoteFollowService.followUser): input resolves to a remote Person actor id → RemoteRepositoryDirectory reads that Person's repositories collection → a RemoteUserFollow row is persisted and one repository follow is fanned out per public repo (each tagged with viaUserActorId), reusing the ordinary follow path above. The set is a snapshot at follow time. unfollowUser undoes every tagged repository follow, then removes the RemoteUserFollow. The /following page groups repositories under their followed user; directly-followed repositories are listed separately. FederationResyncScheduler re-runs RemoteRepositoryDirectory for every followed user on a configurable interval (gitshark.federation.user-resync-interval, default 5m) and follows any new public repository — add-only, so repos that disappear remotely are left in place.

Inbound follow (FollowHandler): a remote actor follows one of our public repositories → persist RepositoryFollower → enqueue a signed Accept back. UndoHandler removes the follower again.

Push fan-out (FederationPushService): both git transports (smart HTTP and SSH) call onPush from the JGit post-receive hook. For each updated branch on a PUBLIC repository it builds a ForgeFed Push (old/new ref ids plus up to 50 commit ids), records it in the outbox, and enqueues one delivery per follower. Runs on a git worker thread, so it activates its own CDI request context and never lets an exception escape into the git path.

Inbound push (PushHandler): stored into received_pushes only when at least one local user follows the sending actor; everything else is dropped. Deduplicated by activity id (application check + DB unique constraint). The /following page renders the newest 50 across a user's follows.

Inbound pipeline (InboxService.receive) — fails closed, any failure is a 401 with no processing:

  1. Parse the Signature header; extract the signer host from its keyId.
  2. Reject unless that host is on the peer allowlist.
  3. Fetch the signer's public key (via the cached remote-actor fetch, itself SSRF-guarded and allowlist-bound).
  4. Verify the signature over method, raw path, headers, and body digest, with date-skew checking.
  5. Dedup by activity id in federation_inbox, then dispatch inside the same transaction. Unknown activity types are recorded and ignored.

Outbound delivery (DeliveryService): activities are never sent inline. They are persisted to federation_delivery and drained by a scheduler every 10 s; failures retry with exponential backoff (1 m doubling to a 1 h cap) and dead-letter as FAILED after max-attempts (default 8), preserving the last error for operators.

Implementation decisions

Decisions that shaped the subsystem, with the reasoning — so future changes don't accidentally undo them:

  • Fail-closed operational gate. Actor IDs are absolute URLs derived from base-url and are permanent once another server has stored them. So federation refuses to emit anything until enabled=true AND a valid, non-loopback base URL is set (FederationConfig.operational()). The alternative — defaulting to whatever host the request came in on — would publish throwaway IDs that break every follow relationship on rename.
  • Mutual peer allowlist, both directions. Inbound activities must be signed by a key on an allowlisted host; outbound fetches/deliveries only go to allowlisted hosts. Empty list denies everything. This bounds the first git-shark↔git-shark rollout to explicitly trusted peers instead of open federation; open federation is a policy decision to make later, not a default.
  • SSRF guard on every outbound URL (RemoteUrlGuard): HTTPS only, host allowlisted, resolved address must not be loopback/link-local/private/ multicast. Federation fetches URLs supplied by remote servers (inbox URLs, key ids, WebFinger targets), which is a textbook SSRF vector into the deployment network. dev-allow-insecure relaxes scheme and address classes for single-machine trials but never the allowlist.
  • Persisted delivery queue instead of fire-and-forget. Remote instances go down; a synchronous send from a request (or worse, a git hook) thread would lose activities and add latency to pushes. Queue + backoff + dead-letter makes delivery observable (federation_delivery is the operator's debugging surface) and keeps the git path fast.
  • Per-actor RSA-2048 keys, generated lazily, stored in the DB (federation_keys, keyId <actor-id>#main-key). Lazy generation means no key ceremony at repo/user creation; DB storage means no filesystem key management in a container deployment. Cost: the DB now holds private keys — documented in the deployment guide.
  • Signing identity: Follow is signed by the user's Person actor, since following is a user action; Accept and Push are signed by the repository actor that owns the relationship. (Decision recorded in issue #3.)
  • draft-cavage HTTP Signatures, not RFC 9421 — it is what the existing ForgeFed/Fediverse ecosystem (Forgejo, Mastodon et al.) actually verifies. The signature covers the Host header and raw path, which is why the reverse proxy must preserve Host.
  • WebFinger interop: send bare-host, accept both. The client builds the acct: resource with the bare hostname (the WebFinger standard form) while addressing the endpoint at host[:port]; the server accepts both bare-host and host:port acct forms. This keeps us compatible with implementations that compare the bare host strictly and with port-based multi-instance dev setups.
  • Inbound processing is idempotent by activity id at two layers: the federation_inbox dedup log short-circuits redelivery, and consumers with their own tables (e.g. received_pushes) additionally carry a unique constraint. Remote queues retry; every handler must tolerate replays.
  • Store-and-ignore unknown activity types. Dispatch is a switch on type with a debug-logged default. Unknown activities still land in the dedup log, so adding a handler later never double-processes history.
  • Server-rendered UI only. The /following page is a Qute template with plain form POSTs, like the rest of git-shark — no client-side JS, state changes visible on refresh.
  • Remote actor cache (remote_actors, 6 h TTL) so signature verification and fan-out don't re-fetch actor documents per activity.

What works today

  • Actor documents and WebFinger discovery for repositories, users, and the instance; outbox and followers collections. The Person actor advertises and serves a repositories collection of its public repository actors.
  • Inbound Follow/Undo(Follow) on public repositories, answered with a signed Accept (remote users can follow local repos).
  • Push fan-out to remote followers from both git transports.
  • Outbound follow/unfollow of remote repositories by handle or actor URL, including Accept confirmation tracking (PENDING → ACCEPTED) and the received-pushes feed — the /following UI covers all of it.
  • Outbound follow/unfollow of a remote user: reads the Person's repositories collection and fans out to a repository follow per public repo, shown grouped in the /following UI (federated-collaboration roadmap Story 1). A periodic FederationResyncScheduler re-scans followed users (add-only), so repositories created after the follow are picked up automatically.
  • HTTP Signature signing/verification, per-actor keys, inbound dedup, peer allowlist, SSRF guard, delivery queue with retry and dead-letter.
  • Tested git-shark↔git-shark, including a scripted local two-host trial (see the deployment guide). Interop with Forgejo/Vervis is expected via WebFinger bare-host handling but untested.

What still needs to be implemented

Protocol gaps:

  • Reject(Follow) handling — dispatcher ignores it, so a rejected outbound follow stays PENDING forever. Related: pending follows never expire and are not retried if the original Follow delivery dead-letters.
  • Actor lifecycle activities — no handling of Delete (remote account/repo removal), Move, or Update (key rotation of a peer actor; the 6 h cache masks it briefly, then verification fails until re-fetch).
  • Shared inbox — deliveries go per-follower inbox; N followers on one host mean N deliveries.
  • Visibility flips are silent — switching a public repository to private (owner Settings page) stops actor exposure and push fan-out immediately (FederationPushService re-checks visibility per push), but existing remote followers are kept in repository_followers and receive no Reject/Delete; the remote side still lists the follow as accepted. Switching back to public resumes fan-out to those retained followers.
  • ForgeFed beyond Push: Ticket (federated issues), patches/merge-request offers, Fork, stars/watch semantics. Issues, MRs, and comments are local-only today.
  • NodeInfo endpoint and instance-level metadata for discovery.
  • Organisation actors — organisations (shared repo namespaces, see docs/users/organisations.md) have no ActivityPub actor or WebFinger entry. Their names are already reserved in the shared user/org handle namespace (cross-table collision check on user onboarding and org creation), so a later Group-style actor cannot collide with a Person actor. Repositories owned by an org federate like any other repo actor; only the owning actor itself is missing.
  • RFC 9421 signatures as the ecosystem migrates (double-knocking).

Operational gaps:

  • Key rotation for local actors — none; a leaked key means manual DB surgery.
  • Rate limiting / abuse controls on the inbox — the allowlist is currently the only throttle, fine for the closed rollout, insufficient for open federation.
  • Follower/feed UI depth — repository pages don't show remote followers; the push feed is a flat newest-50 with no pagination or per-repo filtering.
  • Follow-a-user reconcile is add-only — FederationResyncScheduler picks up repositories added after the follow, but does not unfollow repositories that the remote user made private or deleted; those stale follows linger. Also, RemoteRepositoryDirectory reads only the first collection page — it does not follow next pagination, fine for the git-shark↔git-shark scope but a gap for users with large repository lists or broader ForgeFed peers.
  • Delivery observability — dead-letters are only visible via SQL; no admin UI or metrics.

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