Software Repository Mirrors may be a good start for IPFS

Ecosystem
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Hi, I think hosting public software repository mirrors such as pip-mirror or apt-mirror is a good start for IPFS.
How can we make this possiable?

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Check this discussion here!

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I am very interested in a RPM mirror, for distributions that use RPM repositories for software management. Please consider making both a rpm and deb repository for Linux users who want to maintain the up-to-date daemon system-wide.

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Both pip, rpm and deb is bad for deduplication.
Git/pijul and IPFS should get objects inside compressed files and other binaries. Similar thing were proposed by @jbnet here: Ubuntu archive on top of IPFS

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@kehao95
There is a project for implementing pip packages on IPFS: Dpip - Python Package Index (pypi.org) on IPFS

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There’s also NPM-on-IPFS and GX package manager. But package managers will not work feasibly without deduplication. That’s why I propose Common Bytes: (draft) Common Bytes - standard for data deduplication

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Hello everybody.

I think any Linux package management system could use IPFS.

RPM and DEB will cover most of distributions out there.
With ArchLinux and Alpine being popular as well - there is lot of potential.

Also Docker or Vagrant images could be shared this way.

But obviously we have language packaging systems (Gems, Pip, NPM, Maven repos, …) and MSI and DMG files as well if we go there.

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Question is to have dedicated software for each, write brand new general one as “one meets all demands” (but there is no such thing as silver bullet, is it ?) - or to try extend existing binary repository software and implement everything “one by one” (sounds painful).

So how do we get there? How attract maintainers to pickup any of possible solutions so we can start using benefits if digitally signed p2p distribution - even if it’s still alpha?

If I am not mistaken, most of binary repositories support HTTP protocol and it is only question of putting a gateway in front of specific mirror (directory and file) format. That might work for backward compability - which is important - but might not use full benefit of digitally signing and versioning of everything.

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Also we want IPFS to gain big traction, we can’t forget that most binary repositories supports authentication which is used for paying customers - ie. Oracle Linux and RedHat Enterprise.

I am new to IPFS so I am not sure how to use benefits of this new p2p software which makes by nature everything public? (I hope there might be some specification/concept in work I haven’t seen yet that can address this)

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One slightly different note - one of features I would love to see would be a client - as companion to IPFS binary repository - that could do file checkout only for requested files on build as in for CI/CD usage. NPM is great example. I guess using symlinks and DNS aliases for IPFS links might be one solution - but it would be better if that could be rolling transition supported directly by mainstream instead of huge rewrite depending on all individual package maintainers.

Anyway … thanks for reading.

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@RubenKelevra runs a cluster for pacman packages: https://github.com/RubenKelevra/pacman.store/blob/master/README.md#pacmanstore

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And there work being done to put Nix on IPFS too.

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I wonder if ipfs-pack could be used as (temporary ?) repository solution.

It has ‘serve’ command so it could be used for backward compatibility when used as web server.

And maybe the ‘bag’ or ‘car’ command could be used for rsync?

If I understand correctly, bag format could be split to smaller chunks - ie. repositories or maybe even packages? No idea about CAR archive though - need to look up it’s specification.

I wonder if there is ipfs import for bag/car archives from ipfs-pack … and if that support private IPFS clusters too :thinking:

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I think that this is a good and important idea.

Several people at ArchLinux are interested and have implemented this idea.

I guess that an implementation of IPFS in C or C++ would insentivise the team members to incorporate pacman package manager with IPFS for sooner than later.