Spec docs seem broken

[cmazakas]

https://spec.polkadot.network/ seems like it's no longer active. I relied on this URL quite a bit to link to implementor notes in source code. It'd mean a great deal to get these re-hosted.

[cmazakas]

@bkchr I need these spec docs back up as I'm doing a ground-up native implementation of a Polkadot client in C++ and Rust. The spec docs may've been intended for node developers but as a wallet developer not using polkadot-js or the ParityTech polkadot-sdk, I need these documents available for reference from the source code for my teammates and I.

[bkchr]

@cmazakas could you give some more details on what exactly you need for brave? Because the spec is also outdated and will not help you that much either. But if you tell me what you want to achieve, I will help you.

[cmazakas]

@cmazakas could you give some more details on what exactly you need for brave? Because the spec is also outdated and will not help you that much either. But if you tell me what you want to achieve, I will help you.

We need docs on the payloads used to sign extrinsics along with the description of the runtime metadata format that we need to pluck pallet and call indices from. Just documentation on the extrinsic signing procedure and how to parse metadata is sufficient.

[bkchr]

https://paritytech.github.io/polkadot-sdk/master/polkadot_sdk_docs/reference_docs/extrinsic_encoding/index.html this provides information on the extrinsic format. Just ask if there is anything confusing and not well enough explained.

For the metadata we only have the code docs available: https://docs.rs/frame-metadata/latest/frame_metadata/struct.RuntimeMetadataPrefixed.html
The metadata is SCALE encoded.

[cmazakas]

Specifically, we are looking at how extrinsics with a format version of 5 are encoded. This version is itself a part of the payload, and if it changes, it indicates that something about the encoding may have changed.

Currently we're using v4 extrinsics, is this going to be a problem for us?

[bkchr]

No. V5 is build in a way to stay compatible with V4. So, you will be able to send V4 and the runtime will accept them.