LiteFS

What is LiteFS?

LiteFS is a command line application that cryptographically verifies and serves text content in your web browser. You use it by adding a directory to your local database and then selecting the hash of the content you want LiteFS to serve.

For example, I can add the sample directory in this repository with lfs add ./sample. LiteFS will then recursively parse the text files in the directory and construct a SHA256 hashed merkle tree with the contents. The output of this command will look like the following:

processing files...

root hash: 5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831
tree size: 4
file: <path to repository>/sample/contact.txt
      4611E497F75197329529C008CD24870537EF4D25CFD4C7A00FE6EE7509564209
      valid: yes

file: <path to repository>/sample/dir/example.txt
      F5425CC8E871BC92F8AC98C75F0D476E616F39D7F06C524C0977B7668E65C7C7
      valid: yes

file: <path to repository>/sample/thankyou.txt
      59D18234574B211D25FC5D224F85CC8687525CEC19190F7864C2081712A17A9E
      valid: yes

Finished in 12ms

Once I've added this directory, I can run lfs status to show the contents of my local database, which will print a message like this:

{
    "5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831": {
        "contents": [
            {
                "content_hash": "4611E497F75197329529C008CD24870537EF4D25CFD4C7A00FE6EE7509564209",
                "content_path": "<path to repository>/sample/contact.txt"
            },
            {
                "content_hash": "F5425CC8E871BC92F8AC98C75F0D476E616F39D7F06C524C0977B7668E65C7C7",
                "content_path": "<path to repository>/sample/dir/example.txt"
            },
            {
                "content_hash": "59D18234574B211D25FC5D224F85CC8687525CEC19190F7864C2081712A17A9E",
                "content_path": "<path to repository>/sample/thankyou.txt"
            }
        ],
        "root_path": "<path to repository>/sample"
    }
}

Then I can serve the content for this root hash with the command lfs serve 5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831 which will verify that the contents of the directory being served have not changed. If they haven't changed, it will print this message:

verifying contents of hash 5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831
serving root at http://localhost:3000/5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831
serving contents at localhost:3000/

localhost:3000/4611E497F75197329529C008CD24870537EF4D25CFD4C7A00FE6EE7509564209
localhost:3000/F5425CC8E871BC92F8AC98C75F0D476E616F39D7F06C524C0977B7668E65C7C7
localhost:3000/59D18234574B211D25FC5D224F85CC8687525CEC19190F7864C2081712A17A9E
localhost:3000/5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831

If I open my browser to the root location, which here is http://localhost:3000/5A826CAAE5EC0B00715C2AA531A609B9A723331C6D1582607D3B5D00D1578831, I will see a web page with links to the rest of the content being served.

Dependencies

• cmake >= 3.9.3
• make >= 4.1 (Linux, Mac), 3.81 (Windows)
• gcc/g++ >= 8.3

Building

$ git clone https://git.sr.ht/~danieljamespost/litefs --recursive
$ make build
$ make install

Usage

lfs <command> <args>

These are the common lfs commands:

    add    <directories> Add directories to the local database of verified hashed contents.

    status               List the hashed content that is currently stored.

    rm     <hash>        Remove the content with selected hash from database.

    serve  <hash>        Serve the content with specified hash for network access

    help                 Show usage message.