Install Section on IPFS Homepage

[pkafei]

In an effort to make it easier for users to quickly get started with IPFS, I added an Install section above Implementations. The Install section shows users where they can download IPFS and a list of basic CLI commands. This PR addresses #293, #227 #242

Debating if I should add an ipfs-companion link next to ipfs-desktop.

[mikeal]

There seems to be some indentation inconsistency here as the final element is out of alignment with the opening

element.

[mikeal]

Looked through he code and it seems fine except for a few comments I’ve made, but I’m not sure what the information architecture plan is for this page so someone else will need to review for final signoff.

[olizilla]

I like it. Let's fix the awkward gradient clash where the install section meets the implementations section.

In the current version, it's not clear that "install ipfs" is a link...

...in fact, i'd expect an install link to take me to the instructions to install it, rather than what to do after installing it.

The big problem here is that the actuall install instuctions are too long / awkward. Ideally we'd detect your OS and say something simpler like:

---

# Install the go-ipfs command line tool from homebrew
brew install ipfs

# Initialise your repo in ~./ipfs and create your unique Peer ID
ipfs init

# Fetch the README, peer-to-peer style!
ipfs cat /ipfs/QmYwAPJzv5CZsnA625s3Xf2nemtYgPpHdWEz79ojWnPbdG/readme

Prefer to install it manually? Check out the install docs

The command line not your jam? Download IPFS Desktop

---

i've been using brew to install ipfs on new machines, and it's been up to date, and no hassle.

The alternatives are:

• https://github.com/alanshaw/iim - great ux, but requires a recent version of node
• https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-update - also good, but you need go to install it
• a "run this shell script" - which is normally frowned upon, but we could fetch it from the gateway by CID and make the point that you can be sure you're going to get the script we vouch for. Some examples of systems that do this are homebrew and meteor

[pkafei]

@olizilla The problem with brew install is that we're playing favorites in terms of operating systems. I would like to give agnostic instructions install instructions- but that would be pretty verbose on a command line.

[olizilla]

oh no, i don't want to do that, I was suggesting

ideally we'd detect your OS and say something simpler like:

so, only suggest homebrew if your on mac or linux. we could suggest chcolatey on windows (have you tried out installing go-ipfs via choccy @hacdias ?)

[olizilla]

The most important point that I'm looking for agreement on is... We need a blessed, 1 command install process for the ipfs command line tools, so we can show it off right on the homepage. I suspect there will be some debate on what that looks like, but we should pick one.

Explaining that they should download the download the tar and add it to their PATH is way too technical for folks that don't know what their PATH is, and at the same time totally redundant for folks that do know.

Another idea is that we could flip the install section to recommend the desktop app first, for casual users, so that we get folks to install the auto-updating, home user optimised app, rather than the command line tool which, out of the box will open many hundreds of connections.

[pkafei]

That being said, one could argue if they don't want to download the tarball and add it to their PATH, they could use ipfs-deskstop. It would encourage more people to try ipfs-desktop. Alternatively, we could include install instructions for Mac OS X, Microsoft, and Linux on the homepage- the major three operating systems.

[olizilla]

wireframe proposal for how we can frame the install step on the homepage... basically recommend package managers for most platforms, and link out the manual install process for experts and the curious. The link to "go install desktop" should also be offered there too, as it is in the current PR

We can make an educated guess to what platform the user is on from js and flip the active tab accordingly

[jessicaschilling]

Closing this since we're addressing this via various other means, particularly including https://github.com/ipfs/docs/issues/188 .