Johnathan Corgan
487fa86f65
One commit, so the tree that gets built and checked is the tree that gets tagged. Splitting the date from the version bump would leave the deb sanity checks running against a tree that later changes, and open a delta in the tagged-versus-validated assertion that step exists to close. The date is confirmed at 2026-08-25 in all three files that carry it: CHANGELOG.md's [0.4.2] heading and the Released line in both RELEASE-NOTES.md and docs/releases/release-notes-v0.4.2.md. v0.4.0 shipped a wrong date in two of those three because the step was scoped to one file, so the assertion here greps the whole of docs/releases/ rather than only this release's files, and it returns nothing. The two release-notes files are byte-identical again after the edit, checked with cmp. Version goes to 0.4.2, with Cargo.lock following via cargo update -w. build.rs and src/version.rs are untouched. The notes' "144 commits since v0.4.1" is deliberately left alone. It counts substantive change and excludes the two release-preparation commits, so git rev-list returns 146 and disagrees with it. That definition is recorded in the release's surprises file so it is not later corrected by measurement.
FIPS Documentation
FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System) is a self-organizing encrypted mesh network built on Nostr identities, capable of operating over arbitrary transports — local networks, the public internet, Tor, Bluetooth, or point-to-point links — without central infrastructure.
With FIPS, your machine becomes a node in the mesh with a self-generated cryptographic identity. There are two ways to deploy it.
As an overlay on top of existing IP networks, FIPS lets your node reach any other FIPS node wherever it sits — behind a NAT, on a different ISP, on a phone over cellular, on a laptop with only Bluetooth in range, or behind a Tor onion. The mesh forwards IPv6 traffic transparently and end-to-end encrypted, with no central VPN concentrator or coordinating server.
From the ground up over raw Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth, FIPS provides a complete permissionless network without any pre-existing IP infrastructure, ISP, or DNS. Any node that joins the link gets routable IPv6 addresses, peer discovery, and a path to every other node automatically.
Either way, existing networking software runs over it unchanged: SSH, HTTP servers, file transfer, anything IPv6-native works the same way it would on a local network.
New to FIPS? Start with the Getting Started guide.
Documentation Sections
Tutorials
If you are starting from scratch and want a guided path to a working mesh, go here.
How-To Guides
If you have a specific task in mind — enabling a feature, deploying a component, diagnosing a problem — go here.
Reference
If you need to look up wire formats, configuration keys, command flags, or counter inventories, go here.
Design
If you want to understand how the mesh self-organizes, why FIPS makes the choices it does, or how the pieces fit together, go here.