Include non standards field in the info dictionary for popular BitTorrent clients?

[josecelano]

Hi, I've been testing using BiglyBT. I wanted to add some test torrents to the demo and seed them. BiglyBT includes a non-standard field in the torrent info dict. The field is name.utf-8. For example:

{
   "announce": "udp://tracker.torrust-demo.com:6969/announce",
   "azureus_properties": {
      "dht_backup_enable": 1
   },
   "comment": "",
   "comment.utf-8": "",
   "created by": "BiglyBT/3.5.0.0",
   "creation date": 1713894490,
   "encoding": "UTF-8",
   "info": {
      "length": 195636,
      "name": "2404.12237.pdf",
      "name.utf-8": "2404.12237.pdf",
      "piece length": 32768,
      "pieces": "<hex>51 88 43 18 49 B4 61 31 52 FD 7B DB A6 A3 FF 0A 4F D6 42 4B 51 88 43 18 49 B4 61 31 52 FD 7B DB A6 A3 FF 0A 4F D6 42 4B 51 88 43 18 49 B4 61 31 52 FD 7B DB A6 A3 FF 0A 4F D6 42 4B 51 88 43 18 49 B4 61 31 52 FD 7B DB A6 A3 FF 0A 4F D6 42 4B 51 88 43 18 49 B4 61 31 52 FD 7B DB A6 A3 FF 0A 4F D6 42 4B C7 03 14 B3 46 6B B0 42 50 1F CC A1 E2 FA 5A B0 61 3A E2 FC</hex>"
   }
}

Since it's not a standard field, the Index removes it, which changes the torrent infohash (hash for the info dictionary). If you want to seed the torrent, the process would be:

1. Generate the torrent from sources with BiglyBT.
2. Upload the torrent to the Index. That would generate a torrent with a new infohash.
3. Download the new torrent from the Index.
4. Remove the previous torrent from the BiglyBT.
5. Add the new torrent.
6. BiglyBT starts downloading it, but nobody has it since you are the first seeder.
7. You'll need to tell BiglyBT you already have the sources for that torrent. However, that does not work for me. In general, that is a tricky task for most clients. I guess the option to synchronize the client with the folder storing the sources is the option Check Files Exist.

I think that process is excruciating, but maybe it's just me. I recommend adding non-standard fields in the info dict to the Index to avoid changing the infohash.

• Transmission
• KTorrent
• BiglyBT
• Deluge
• qBittorrent

I have not checked all of them yet; it seems Transmission does not include any non-standard field.

cc @torrust/maintainers

[josecelano]

@da2ce7 should we include non-standard fields like this? or only fields included in official BEPs?