Orbit

Warning: Orbit is currently going through a big refactoring, things might be broken and instructions might be out of date. If something is not working, please open an issue and I'll make sure to fix it.

Previously known as: Anonymous Networks

Introduction

Orbit is a distributed, peer-to-peer chat application built on IPFS.

All content (messages, files, metadata) are saved in IPFS as files or objects.

There's currently a server (https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-server) that tracks the head (IPFS hash) of a linked list that enables traversing the history of a channel's messages. In future this will be replaced by IPNS.

Please note that Orbit is not secure at the moment!

Requirements

Node.js v4.2.x
npm

For development

Following npm modules installed globally: grunt-cli, mocha, electron-prebuilt
g++, gcc, make (for building native modules)
python 2 (for building, some native modules need it, node-fibers perhaps?)

Run

Browser

npm install
node index.js

Open http://localhost:3001 in your browser

App

Build the native app:

grunt

The builds are in dist/. Eg. on OSX, open the application from dist/AnonymousNetworks-darwin-x64.

Orbit uses Electron to wrap the application in native executable.

Run Options

(Not supported in native builds atm)

Autologin

Create a file called user.json and add your wanted credentials:

{
  "username": "bot",
  "password": "password"
}

Start the program:

node index.js [--bots]

Build

Build all:

grunt

Build for individual platforms:

grunt build_nodejs_osx
grunt build_nodejs_linux
grunt build_native_osx
grunt build_native_linux

The builds are in dist/

UI

Build:

cd client/
npm install
grunt build

Dev:

cd client/
(npm install)
grunt serve

Development in Electron

For UI development (webpack-dev-server in the Electron app).

Start the webpack dev server:

cd client/
grunt serve

Start Electron:

npm install electron-prebuilt
export ENV=dev
./node_modules/.bin/electron .

Make sure you don't have the node.js version running and no client open the browser.

Run your own network

Get https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-server and start the server, edit ./network.json and point to appropriate url (eg. localhost:3006)

Contributing

Would be happy to accept PRs! If you want to work on something, it'd be good to talk beforehand to make sure nobody else is working on it. You can reach me on Twitter @haadcode or on IRC #ipfs on Freenode.

See TODO for ideas and tasks up for grabs.

myleshorton/orbit