eddieh / webpackage

Web packaging format

Packaging Websites

Not to be confused with webpack, this repository holds a collection of specifications aimed at packaging websites. These specifications replace the W3C TAG's Web Packaging Draft and will allow people to bundle together the resources that make up a website, so they can be shared offline, either with or without a proof that they came from the original website. A full list of use cases and resulting requirements is available in draft-yasskin-webpackage-use-cases (IETF draft). The explainer walks through how to use these specs to achieve the use cases.

The specifications come in several layers:

1. Signed HTTP exchanges (IETF draft): These allow a browser to trust that a single HTTP request/response pair was generated by the origin it claims.
   • As we implement and test signed exchanges, we're publishing periodic snapshots so that browsers, publishers, and intermediates can synchronize on the same format. The current implementation snapshot is an Internet Draft, and a draft of the next snapshot is in this repository.
2. Bundled HTTP exchanges (IETF draft): A collection of exchanges, each of which could be signed or unsigned, with some metadata describing how to interpret the bundle as a whole. This specification has an initial draft in a PR, but isn't finished yet. This work may proceed through either the IETF or the W3C/WHATWG.
3. Loading: A description of how browsers load signed and bundled exchanges. This is initially specified here, and will eventually merge into the appropriate specs, e.g. Fetch, that live in either the W3C or WHATWG. Currently this only covers signed exchanges.

A previous draft of the format combined layers 1 and 2 into a single format for signed packages: draft-yasskin-dispatch-web-packaging (IETF draft). The DISPATCH WG at IETF99 recommended the current split.

Building this repository

Building the Draft

Formatted text and HTML versions of the draft can be built using make.

$ make

This requires that you have software installed as described in https://github.com/martinthomson/i-d-template/blob/master/doc/SETUP.md.

Packaging tool.

Install this with go install github.com/WICG/webpackage/go/signedexchange/cmd/gen-signedexchange.

See go/signedexchange for the usage of the tool.