node.key.gen('name', { type: 'ed25519', size: 256 }) does not work

[Bluebie]

• Version: { version: '0.38.0', repo: 7, commit: '' }
• Platform: macOS Catalina (nodejs v12.12.0 via Homebrew)
• Subsystem: libp2p-keychain?

Type:

Bug

Severity:

Medium

Description:

despite documentation, js-ipfs does not support generating ed25519 keys. libp2p-keychain throws an error that ed25519 keys do not have an export function when ipfs.key.gen is called

Steps to reproduce the error:

> const IPFS = require('ipfs'); let ipfs = (new IPFS({ pass: "01234567890123456789" }))
> ipfs.key.gen('ed', { type: 'ed25519', size: 32 })
Promise { <pending> }
> Thrown:
TypeError: keypair.export is not a function
    at ./node_modules/libp2p-keychain/src/keychain.js:215:25
    at ./node_modules/libp2p-crypto/src/keys/ed25519-class.js:97:7

[achingbrain]

I think this is because the underlying libp2p-crypto module can't export ed25519 keys in the pem format, because the underlying node-forge module doesn't support it, though they are accepting pull requests.

[achingbrain]

More discussion here: libp2p/js-libp2p-crypto#145

[alanshaw]

I've updated the JS core interface documentation to clarify the situation ipfs-inactive/interface-js-ipfs-core#549

[jacobheun]

Fixed in #3212