Weekly update

Week of 2026-02-02

Mostly spent on the config editor, a new capability, and a round of decode/RIB bug fixes.

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🔌 Link-local next-hop capability

A new plugin adds the link-local-nexthop capability (code 77, draft-ietf-idr-linklocal-capability), a zero-payload flag signalling willingness to receive IPv6 link-local addresses as BGP next-hops per RFC 2545 §3.

🧰 Config editor

The set command now actually modifies config (it was a stub before), and the load command was redesigned with explicit syntax: load <file|terminal> <absolute|relative> <replace|merge>, including a paste-from-terminal mode. Peer names containing spaces, quotes, or backslashes are now handled correctly in edit/set, and tab completion for peer selectors shows actual configured peers instead of schema field names.

🐛 Fixes

  • A plugin RPC routing bug sent commands like bgp watchdog announce and bgp cache list to the wrong handler; both now dispatch correctly
  • Decoded IPv6 NLRI now returns plain prefix strings, matching IPv4 output instead of wrapping them in an extra object
  • RIB event parsing now correctly reads sent UPDATE events in Ze's JSON format, fixing route replay for reconnect and graceful-restart scenarios
  • A capability decoder bug that rejected flag-only capabilities with no payload (breaking the new link-local-nexthop plugin) is fixed
  • Early ExaBGP migration work: automatic Extended Message capability (RFC 8654) and hostname/domain-name migration to the hostname capability block