Enabling experimental features

[daviddias]

Following up #735 (comment)

We need a way to enable/disable experimental features throughout js-ipfs (that includes all the js-libp2p) in a way that is non-intrusive, easy to add and easy to remove, both in Node.js and the Browser.

A typical way to achieve this, is through env variables, but that might not be the ideal case for Browser bundles.

Thoughts, ideas?

[dignifiedquire]

I think these options should be exposed as config options on a library level. We can then pass cli flags in js-ipfs as values for those (node.js) and simply set them directly when starting up the node in the browser. I would really like to stay away from global injections as much as possible for such things.

We could also reuse the existing config file, and add a section experimental, in which such things could be configured. This might be even nice for go-ipfs.

[daviddias]

We are now supporting experimental features by passing flags to the options object on new IPFS.

Does everyone feel like this is resolved? If so, I'll close the issue :)

[haadcode]

I feel the way it's done atm is good, ie. passing options to IPFS in the constructor.

That said, I agree with @dignifiedquire's comment that it'd be nice to have the experimental field in the config file as well (this may or may not have been implemented in the past couple of months, ignore if that's already the case).

I'm ok closing this as it is (we have a way to do it), and perhaps if we want to, add the experimental to the config, we can rename this issue or open a new one to track it's status.

[daviddias]

Last steps to complete this task:

• Document how to enable experimental features
• Support EXPERIMENTAL flags to be passed through config and not options. (so that daemons can also use them easily if needed)

[0x-r4bbit]

@diasdavid happy to help out with those last tasks (if they still need to be done).

Any pointers where things should be documented?

[daviddias]

This got done meanwhile. Thanks @PascalPrecht :)