BBS Signatures Support¶
ACA-Py has supported BBS Signatures for some time. However, the dependency that is used (bbs) does not support the ARM architecture, and its inclusion in the default ACA-Py artifacts mean that developers using ARM-based hardware (such as Apple M1 Macs or later) cannot run ACA-Py "out-of-the-box". We feel that providing a better developer experience by supporting the ARM architecture is more important than BBS Signature support at this time. As such, we have removed the BBS dependency from the base ACA-Py artifacts and made it an add-on that those using ACA-Py with BBS must take extra steps to build their own artifacts. This file describes how to do those extra steps.
Regarding future support for BBS Signatures in ACA-Py. There is currently a lot of work going on in developing implementations and BBS-based Verifiable Credential standards. However, at the time of this release, there is not an obvious approach to an implementation to use in ACA-Py that includes ARM support. As a result, we will hold off on updating the BBS Signatures support in ACA-Py until the standards and path forward clarify. In the meantime, maintainers of ACA-Py plan to continue to do all we can to push for newer and better ZKP-based Verifiable Credential standards.
If you require BBS for your deployment an optional "extended" ACA-Py image has been released (aries-cloudagent-bbs) that includes BBS, with the caveat that it will very likely not install on ARM architecture.
Development and Testing¶
Developer setup¶
If you are a contributor or are developing using a local build of ACA-Py and need BBS, the easiest way to include it is to install the optional dependency bbs with poetry (again with the caveat that it will very likely not install on ARM architecture). The --all-extras flag will install the bbs optional dependency in ACA-Py:
Testing¶
WARNNG: if you do NOT have bbs installed you should exclude the BBS specific integration tests from running with the tag ~@BBS otherwise they will fail:
See the Unit and Integration testing docs for more information on how to run tests.