Because it is possible!
I think web 3.0 future is promising. I like the idea of a distributed web. As a consequence, I like IPFS. It is such a cool concept. However, in my opinion, most people do not use it because it is hard to do so. Go? Running a Docker container in my machine? What? Can't I just use it as a simple tool or service?
Yes, you can.
This is why I created this, extremely simple and limited, web application. It is just an endpoint. A git remote, for the tech savy. You can configure with one bash command and just use it. See the (small) example below:
$ git remote add ipfs http://ipgit.herokuapp.com/
$ git push ipfs
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: IPFS hash:
remote: QmU8wwg65D2MpbumSKPTWUhydmAin5jmXbwNhxUWzyeXs1It works the other way around as well. If you want, you can use it to clone git repositories that are stored in IPFS.
$ git clone https://ipgit.herokuapp.com/QmZUnAU4Vn7DvDHEnJ1dz2uV2dimf79HNXdffgY9MbQGWP
Cloning into 'QmZUnAU4Vn7DvDHEnJ1dz2uV2dimf79HNXdffgY9MbQGWP'...
$ ls QmZUnAU4Vn7DvDHEnJ1dz2uV2dimf79HNXdffgY9MbQGWP/
Dockerfile Makefile app.py git.py heroku.yml post-update requirements.txt sender.pyThat is it! No installation, no requirements. Just plain old git.
Your files will be pinned by default. However, because heroku shuts down the after some inactivity time, it is not guarantee that your files will be there when you need them. You should try pinning them into some file pinning service to avoid loosing it.
This project uses fastapi and uvicorn for server interactions. IPFS needs to be running on the local machine for the server to start. And, obviously, you will need git installed.
$ pip install -r requirements.txtTo run a local version of this project, just execute:
$ ipfs daemon --init
$ uvicor app:app --reload
$ make local # optionalmake local adds a local remote on http://localhost:8000 for development.
When developing, you can simply test your modification by calling
git push local.
This project would not have been possible without the code in the following repositories. They helped me understand a lot about git http backend.