This is to allow one host to quicky download the contents of a folder on the serving host. A connection is opened for each file to be downloaded. Beware folders with lots of files, lots of connections will be made.
The main use case is transferring a folder of 1-30 videos from one server to another.
Because I couldn't find anything that was automatic and simple enough to just download the contents of a directory.
Only one file at a time. Plus I don't care about delta-changes, I'm always downloading fresh, the files don't ever exist on the pulling host.
I was using aria2, it is awesome. However, I coulnd't find a way to download a whole directory without manual work of creating a file with a list of URLS for each file in the directory.
Probably not, but feel free. There is no authentication at all. So if you keep the serving process up, anyone who knows the port can download everything.
I personally use this on an ad-hoc basis. I find a folder with some data I want on another machine, I start the server, ssh to the puller and start the get.
$ ft serve $ ft get serving-host