hosting sparkleshare on own server

[llorban]

Do you have a bit more info on configuring a server to work with sparkleshare? I see the option is there in the mac beta, but it doesn't seem to take the same ssh:// form the Git and other options do.
Thx!
=edit=
sorry, I just saw a related post, so I should rephrase: any updates on hosting a sparkleshare server?

[hbons]

"but it doesn't seem to take the same ssh:// form the Git and other options do."

that sounds like a bug. will look into it.
The server side is just git, I can write something up on how to do it but there are already a lot of howto's for that on the web. Writing a user friendly interface to do that will take a while.

[edrex]

I think the SparkleShare marketing materials should be more clear on this point. I found this issue while looking for a clarification of what constitutes a "SparkleServer" [1]

[1] http://sparkleshare.org/documentation.php#2.1

Alot of anarchisty open source people are thinking about open file sync solutions (myself included). Those people tend to be highly distrustful of "black boxes", and although SparkleShare source is open, any undocumented or ad-hoc protocol extensions (eg, metadata formats) on top of Git could make SparkleShare less attractive to this group of early adopters.

I'm designing a similar git syncing service which I would like to make interoperable with SparkleShare.

How does the SparkleShare client detect new commits on the server? Is this done via polling? It seems like some sort of persistent messaging channel would be needed for efficient instantaneous sync.

One novel feature which I am working on is autodiscovery via mDNS of local sync peers and a GPG certificate format for establishing trust relationships between clients (if two mutually-trusting clients on a LAN have a copy of the same repo, they will sync automatically). Dropbox has a similar feature [2]

[2] http://www.dropbox.com/help/137

I would be interested in contributing to a protocol specification for implementers to target. The first version could cover what SparkleShare does currently, with subsequent versions detailing extensions like p2p discovery and realtime notifications as they are implemented.

Anyway, great work on SparkleShare. It seems to have legs to run with.

[hbons]

@edrex No doubt, I just haven't had the time to write something yet.

About instant notifications: SparkleShare uses IRC to get notifications about when something changed (it's hacky, I know, but I'm not got enough a programmer to write my own daemon/protocol. It works well though), but that's currently disabled in the beta's.

[hbons]

@edrex I would like to collaborate. I too intent to always support 'vanilla' git repositories.

[edrex]

I've heard of folks using IRC for push notifications. I was thinking of using ZeroMQ, which has alot of language bindings and is in the Linux repos, since it's a nice fit for peer-to-peer sync (exchanging certificates etc)

[hbons]

llorban: The form works just fine here entering ssh:// addresses.

[hbons]

Closing. If someone wants to write up some docs before i find the time to do it, please do it in the wiki: https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare/wiki

Thanks.