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September 2010

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[ANN] git peer-to-peer bittorrent experiment: first milestone reached
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 01 Sep '10

01 Sep '10

http://gitorious.org/python-libbittorrent/pybtlib this is to let people know that a first milestone has been reached in an experiment to combine git with a file-sharing protocol, thus making it possible to use git for truly distributed software development and other file-revision-management operations (such as transparently turning git-configured ikiwiki and moinmoin wikis into peer-to-peer ones). the milestone reached is to transfer git commit "pack objects", as if they were ordinary files, over a bittorrent network, and have them "unpacked" at the far end. the significance of being able to transfer git commit pack objects is that this is the core of the "git fetch" command. the core of this experiment comprises a python-based VFS layer, providing alternatives to os.listdir, os.path.exists, open and so on - sufficient to make an interesting experiment itself by combining that VFS layer with e.g. python-fuse. the bittornado library, also available at the above URL, has been modified to take a VFS module as an argument to all operations, such that it would be conceivable to share maildir mailboxes, mailing list archives, .tar.gz archives, .deb and .rpm archives and so on, as if they were files and directories within a file-sharing network. as the core code has only existed for under three days, and is only 400 lines long, there are rough edges: * all existing commit objects are unpacked at startup time and are stored in-memory (!). this is done so as to avoid significant modification of the bittorrent library, which will be required. * all transferred commit objects are again stored in-memory before being unpacked. so, killing the client will lose all transfers received up to that point. on the roadmap: * make things efficient! requires modification of the bittornado library. * create some documentation! * explore how to make git use this code as a new URI type so that it will be possible to just do "git pull" * explore how to use PGP/GPG to sign commits(?) or perhaps just tags(?) in order to allow commits to be pulled only from trusted parties. * share all branches and tags as well as just refs/heads/* * make "git push" re-create the .torrent (make_torrent.py) and work out how to notify seeders of a new HEAD (name the torrent after the HEAD ref, and just create a new one rather than delete the old?) so there is quite a bit to do, with the priority being on making a new URI type and a new "git-remote-{URI}" command, so that this becomes actually useable rather than just an experiment, and the project can be self-hosting as a truly distributed peer-to-peer development effort. if anyone would like to assist, you only have to ask and (ironically) i will happily grant access to the gitorious-hosted repository. if anyone would like to sponsor this project, that would be very timely, as if i don't get some money soon i will be unable to pay for food and rent. l.

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Registration for S3 - A Workshop on Self-Sustaining Systems is now open.
by Carl Friedrich Bolz 01 Sep '10

01 Sep '10

Registration for S3 - A Workshop on Self-Sustaining Systems is now open. http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/s3/s3-10/ We hope you will join us on September 27-28 in Tokyo. Invited speakers: • Takashi Ikegami: Sustainable Autonomy and Designing Mind Time (The University of Tokyo) • Yukihiro Matsumoto: From Lisp to Ruby to Rubinius (Rakuten Institute of Technology) • Vishal Sikka: On Sustainable Business Solutions (SAP) You can find the workshop at: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/s3/s3-10/program/index.html Kim Rose, Hidehiko Masuhara, and Robert Hirschfeld

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