Adding friend using 'no-request' may not work when it is its very first friend

[readyblue]

When 2 TOX clients with empty friend list adds each other as 'no-request',

the friendship will not be established.

While when after that any of said client adds some other friend with request, the previous friendship is established right away.

Is this know bug or some limit of TOX protocol?

I know, that this is a corner-case, usual clients does not add any Friends without request, but it should be possible, right?

[Green-Sky]

This sounds like an edge case. However this should be covered by ci.

Autotox supports a LINEAR friend graph, where only adjacent toxes are friended, via no request.
But I guess it means always adding 2 friends that way hmm...

edit: This testcase specifically covers your case https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/blob/master/auto_tests/friend_connection_test.c

[readyblue]

If this is an edge case, it is not bound to 1st-ly added Friend without request.

I have tried to add yet another Friend in the same way (without request) and same as before the friendship was not established. (no need to mention that Friend I was adding had only added me without request AND without other friends in the friend-list as well)

But immediately I have add other Friend (now) with request, and other side accepted the request, both previously waiting friendships (now 2 of them) were established right away.

It looks to me like for establishing friendship without request, some other party (friend in the friend-list) has to be there at least on 1 end in order it to work.

[zoff99]

could it be a tox client issue? what tox client do you and your friend use?

[readyblue]

@zoff99 there are no known TOX clients that support adding friend without request. If you know about 1, let me know please! If there were, this issue will be discovered sooner I think. Presuming this is an issue and not how TOX operate for some reason in its insides.

[Green-Sky]

This is especially odd, since adding a friend norequest is the same as loading the friend from a .tox file.
If you ignore the fact that it also sets name and last seen etc.

c-toxcore/toxcore/Messenger.c

Lines 2979 to 2988 in 34ec822

	const int fnum = m_addfriend_norequest(m, temp.real_pk);
	if (fnum < 0) {
	continue;
	}
	setfriendname(m, fnum, temp.name, net_ntohs(temp.name_length));
	set_friend_statusmessage(m, fnum, temp.statusmessage, net_ntohs(temp.statusmessage_length));
	set_friend_userstatus(m, fnum, temp.userstatus);
	net_unpack_u64(temp.last_seen_time, &m->friendlist[fnum].last_seen_time);

[readyblue]

@Green-Sky I appreciate that you look inside the code for this, however I think you are looking at the wrong place. as issue is that friendship is not being established and not that added friends with norequest are loaded. they are loaded alright, the friendship is not being established (in situation described earlier), that is what is not alright.

so the issue may be somewhere in the network part of exchanging data in regard of establishing friendship with friends added without request and not in place where they are loaded.