A decision to make

[makew0rld]

It seems to me that there are two ways I can go with this fork of Forban: shared LAN directory, or separated file-sharing. The problem is that Forban seems to straddle both, with a separated mindset internally and on the web ui, but a shared directory mindset within ./var/share. I'd like to "pick one and do it well" instead.

Shared LAN Directory

All nodes contribute to one folder that gets replicated across the LAN (or direct cjdns peers). It doesn't matter where the files come from, and everyone can edit and delete everything. It's versioned on a per file basis though.

Separated File-Sharing

In every possible space, the files that are shared are separated into folders based on device (uuid). They cannot be changed or edited except by the original sharer, but they can propagate through the network through other nodes. Versioned as well.

[makew0rld]

Shared LAN Directory doesn't really seem to be compatible with the "shared" mode, it only works when there's some degree of separation.

[makew0rld]

I have to consider my use case as well. A lot of decentralized file sharing use cases are handled by IPFS in the @tomeshnet stack, and so I don't want to overlap. The best use case to me seems to be the Shared LAN Directory, as it allows for speedy file transfer for debugging or other purposes in a trust everyone network, like at our meetings.

[makew0rld]

Roadmap for switching to Shared LAN Directory

• Stop recording which file came from which node
• Don't keep indexes for every node
  • Just keep one local index
  • Go through remote indexes and download files that aren't listed in the local index
  • Then add them to the local index
• Add folder structure as mentioned in Only files are listed -- and only they are shared #5
• Remake web ui to just display the global folder, and open files when clicked
  • It could also display some statistics, about known nodes, etc
• Versioning
  • If I'm going to do this, I might as well also do File comparison when forbans are updated #1

Smaller things to do

• Reformat all adulau code according to PEP8
• Figure out if hmacs are still needed
• Change forban; part of protocol so as not to interfere with the original version
• Change port from 12555 to 12777 for the same reason
• Change repo name, description, README, docs
• Change user-agent header as described in lib/fetch.py and possibly other places.
• Remove the stupid headers on every single file

[makew0rld]

In an effort to clean up the codebase, and as fun exercise, I would like to entirely rewrite this application for my own purposes as listed above, using this repo / the original Forban repo as a reference. One day, I'll learn go and rewrite it in that, too...

• New repo
• New name (LAN-Folder)
• Python 3 instead of Python 2
• Following PEP8 styleguide
• Hopefully it will be organized better file-wise