12 ms·

Open-source Dropbox alternative powered by Git

142 points by ibrahimcesar 15y ago

pors 15y ago
Not really an alternative till it supports clients for all sorts of platforms and mobile devices IMHO
- vegardx 15y ago
  So, Windows support then? And most mobile devices will be able to access the files through the browser, no need for a client to do that, like with Dropbox. I love the idea and the hackyness over it all. Love it!
- Karunamon 15y ago
  Git clients exist for iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. There's 98% of the computing world right there.
jakubw 15y ago
It's neat because it can be used on top of git without any additional effort but it'd be more interesting to see something that leverages git's server-side post-push hook to notify the other clients about changes. gitdocs, depending on the polling interval, either has an increased probability of causing merge conflicts or does a crazy amount of git pulls.
- joshbuddy 15y ago
  Actually, it uses file system events so the pushes occur instantly. However, the pulls are done with polling.
- rcthompson 15y ago
  I don't see any reason they can't add this later. Get something that works first, then make it better.
umrashrf 15y ago
I had a same idea right after dropbox but I lost the thought about the clients for all popular OS.
hemancuso 15y ago
Ever try committing a 100meg file into git? 100% CPU for 10s of seconds. Game over. Git is a great idea for this, but in practice it performs terribly.
- emillon 15y ago
  git-annex is a nice extension for this kind of use case. Metadata are stored in git, and file contents are stored separately. http://git-annex.branchable.com/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/
- Animus7 15y ago
  Sure, if you do this the naive way (map files onto the git repo 1:1). I don't know how this project is doing it, but adding a buffering/sharding layer for large files would alleviate this problem at the cost of worse delta compression (among other things). That said, I still don't think git is necessarily the best platform to base a Dropbox alternative upon, but the commit resource hogging is very fixable.
  - hemancuso 15y ago
    It's unclear to me how buffering/sharding could fix this? The bytes still need to get into the repo. That's still expensive and time consuming even if it is chunked or asynchronous.
    - nickik 15y ago
      Look at bup a backup system based on git. They face simular problems. I was at a talk by one of the developers. Very intressting and very technical about how they solve some of the problems, spezally about large files. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rOi2OVvwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rOi2OVvwU https://github.com/apenwarr/bup https://github.com/apenwarr/bup
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  I have this same problem with mercurial. Is there a better alternative for source control of large files?
spullara 15y ago
The real problem with this is that Git is awful at versioning binary / large files.
miles_matthias 15y ago
Just curious - why are there so many Dropbox alternative posting lately? Is re-doing an already elegant solution really a top priority for people? I haven't looked at this post at all (so I'm not trying to make any judgement on it), I'm just curious as to why so many people are interested in making Dropbox alternatives lately.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  I'd assume the short version is that Dropbox: 1) Isn't free 2) Is accessible to $stateAuthority if they come knocking 3) Makes your data access reliant on a third party who may or may not be up in an emergency or: 4) Could disappear at any time and take your data with them So basically, the same problems that affect every cloud solution provider ever.
  - FigBug 15y ago
    I've been looking for an alternative mostly because of #1. It's actually quite expensive for a small team. I have yet to find anything that works as well as DropBox. I don't agree with #4. All your data is stored locally, it DropBox goes away the data just stops syncing. (You would lose version history, but it's only 30 days so not useful)
    - sleet 15y ago
      Unless you have pack-rat, in which case you have unlimited history: http://www.dropbox.com/help/113 http://www.dropbox.com/help/113
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    I'd be interested in which `free` you are talking about. Beer or speech (or both)? Because for me, the prime reason I refuse to use Dropbox[1] is that it's unfree software as per the speech definition. I am not running software on my computer that needs internet access and transmits files when I can not verify what this program does, in addition to my personal policy of reducing my usage of unfree software to an absolute, unavoidable minimum. [1] I'm studying CS and it's really annoying how ubiquitous Dropbox has become among the student crowds. I stopped counting after about the first three dozen attempts of people trying to get me to use Dropbox.
callahad 15y ago
Related: http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/
rcthompson 15y ago
This was posted here a few weeks ago, but at the time it was Mac-only. Now it works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. I assume this is the reason for the re-post.
nillort 15y ago
Dropbox wins on UX, which is where FOSS fails almost every time. A quick way to know whether such projects will fail: if they mention anything about the technologies used. Making it obvious to use and "just work" is what is needed. Too bad that is actually the hard part.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  For what definition of "fail"? I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't intended, at least in it's current incarnation, to be a dropbox-killer. It doesn't need to pander to the same audience. "dares to mention technologies used" is only a killer for a subset of all possible audiences. For example, knowing that Git is hacked together with C and bash doesn't make it any less useful to me (ie, someone who isn't afraid of computers)
- iFire 15y ago
  Look at Sparkleshare's website and see what you think?
  - icebraining 15y ago
    The problem is setting up the Git server. Even if you use Github - and then you have to pay if you don't want your files open to the public - creating the repo, adding the keys, understanding what they have to put in the Address field, etc is still extremely difficult with the knowledge (and patience) of the average person.
teichman 15y ago
For synchronization of your personal files, check out Unison. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
- flarg 15y ago
  Seconded - I've used Unison to sync across PCs and between different OSs for many many years; it just works
nesquena 15y ago
Just want to add a quick comment about our goals for gitdocs. Obviously this was never intended to be a 'dropbox-killer', in fact at Miso we actually use both. Dropbox for videos, large binary files, business and legal files. Instead we use gitdocs for storing our "docs": Task lists, wiki, planning, collaborative design, note taking, code snippets et al. And the gitdocs web front-end (http://imgur.com/eaTTY http://imgur.com/eaTTY) is optimized for that since it renders wiki pages (formatted markdown/textile), has full code syntax highlighting, file search, revision history and a rich text editor.
listening 15y ago
A comparable alternative is never going to free for everyone. Someone has to pay the Amazon fees for S3 use. Isn't it true that the few Dropbox users who do pay for it support all the ones who do not?
dahlia 15y ago
It reminds me again that Dropbox is hard to beat.
twunt 15y ago
The readme suggests to use bitbucket.org which I didn't realise had unlimited storage, even on the free plan for up to 5 users? So if the CPU issue can be resolved for committing large files, could it be used as a backup for your warez etc?
mmahemoff 15y ago
Some mention of hosting this on GitHub and BitBucket here. I can't imagine Git-As-A-Service providers would be thrilled with this kind of application, it will completely hammer their services compared to the occasional commits and pulls that occur with a code base. It will probably update their conditions if they don't already preclude it. Or maybe they will embrace it with a premium pricing plan. I certainly wouldn't count on hosting this against BitBucket's free plan.
nubela 15y ago
Hah, I've done something similar to this, except it uses SVN. Cross platform too! But you know what sucked? Performance. SVN is slooowwwww when it came to binary files. You can check it out here.
peterhajas 15y ago
I think Lipsync - https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync - might be better, Git isn't great for lots of large binary files.

142 points by ibrahimcesar 15y ago

pors 15y ago

Not really an alternative till it supports clients for all sorts of platforms and mobile devices IMHO

vegardx 15y ago
So, Windows support then? And most mobile devices will be able to access the files through the browser, no need for a client to do that, like with Dropbox. I love the idea and the hackyness over it all. Love it!
Karunamon 15y ago
Git clients exist for iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. There's 98% of the computing world right there.

jakubw 15y ago

It's neat because it can be used on top of git without any additional effort but it'd be more interesting to see something that leverages git's server-side post-push hook to notify the other clients about changes. gitdocs, depending on the polling interval, either has an increased probability of causing merge conflicts or does a crazy amount of git pulls.

joshbuddy 15y ago
Actually, it uses file system events so the pushes occur instantly. However, the pulls are done with polling.
rcthompson 15y ago
I don't see any reason they can't add this later. Get something that works first, then make it better.

umrashrf 15y ago

I had a same idea right after dropbox but I lost the thought about the clients for all popular OS.

hemancuso 15y ago

Ever try committing a 100meg file into git? 100% CPU for 10s of seconds. Game over. Git is a great idea for this, but in practice it performs terribly.

emillon 15y ago
git-annex is a nice extension for this kind of use case. Metadata are stored in git, and file contents are stored separately. http://git-annex.branchable.com/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/
Animus7 15y ago
Sure, if you do this the naive way (map files onto the git repo 1:1). I don't know how this project is doing it, but adding a buffering/sharding layer for large files would alleviate this problem at the cost of worse delta compression (among other things). That said, I still don't think git is necessarily the best platform to base a Dropbox alternative upon, but the commit resource hogging is very fixable.
- hemancuso 15y ago
  It's unclear to me how buffering/sharding could fix this? The bytes still need to get into the repo. That's still expensive and time consuming even if it is chunked or asynchronous.
  - nickik 15y ago
    Look at bup a backup system based on git. They face simular problems. I was at a talk by one of the developers. Very intressting and very technical about how they solve some of the problems, spezally about large files. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rOi2OVvwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_rOi2OVvwU https://github.com/apenwarr/bup https://github.com/apenwarr/bup
paulhauggis 15y ago
I have this same problem with mercurial. Is there a better alternative for source control of large files?

spullara 15y ago

The real problem with this is that Git is awful at versioning binary / large files.

miles_matthias 15y ago

Just curious - why are there so many Dropbox alternative posting lately? Is re-doing an already elegant solution really a top priority for people? I haven't looked at this post at all (so I'm not trying to make any judgement on it), I'm just curious as to why so many people are interested in making Dropbox alternatives lately.

Karunamon 15y ago
I'd assume the short version is that Dropbox: 1) Isn't free 2) Is accessible to $stateAuthority if they come knocking 3) Makes your data access reliant on a third party who may or may not be up in an emergency or: 4) Could disappear at any time and take your data with them So basically, the same problems that affect every cloud solution provider ever.
- FigBug 15y ago
  I've been looking for an alternative mostly because of #1. It's actually quite expensive for a small team. I have yet to find anything that works as well as DropBox. I don't agree with #4. All your data is stored locally, it DropBox goes away the data just stops syncing. (You would lose version history, but it's only 30 days so not useful)
  - sleet 15y ago
    Unless you have pack-rat, in which case you have unlimited history: http://www.dropbox.com/help/113 http://www.dropbox.com/help/113
- slowpoke 15y ago
  I'd be interested in which `free` you are talking about. Beer or speech (or both)? Because for me, the prime reason I refuse to use Dropbox[1] is that it's unfree software as per the speech definition. I am not running software on my computer that needs internet access and transmits files when I can not verify what this program does, in addition to my personal policy of reducing my usage of unfree software to an absolute, unavoidable minimum. [1] I'm studying CS and it's really annoying how ubiquitous Dropbox has become among the student crowds. I stopped counting after about the first three dozen attempts of people trying to get me to use Dropbox.

callahad 15y ago

Related: http://sparkleshare.org/ http://sparkleshare.org/

rcthompson 15y ago

This was posted here a few weeks ago, but at the time it was Mac-only. Now it works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. I assume this is the reason for the re-post.

nillort 15y ago

Dropbox wins on UX, which is where FOSS fails almost every time. A quick way to know whether such projects will fail: if they mention anything about the technologies used. Making it obvious to use and "just work" is what is needed. Too bad that is actually the hard part.

burgerbrain 15y ago
For what definition of "fail"? I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't intended, at least in it's current incarnation, to be a dropbox-killer. It doesn't need to pander to the same audience. "dares to mention technologies used" is only a killer for a subset of all possible audiences. For example, knowing that Git is hacked together with C and bash doesn't make it any less useful to me (ie, someone who isn't afraid of computers)
iFire 15y ago
Look at Sparkleshare's website and see what you think?
- icebraining 15y ago
  The problem is setting up the Git server. Even if you use Github - and then you have to pay if you don't want your files open to the public - creating the repo, adding the keys, understanding what they have to put in the Address field, etc is still extremely difficult with the knowledge (and patience) of the average person.

teichman 15y ago

For synchronization of your personal files, check out Unison. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

flarg 15y ago
Seconded - I've used Unison to sync across PCs and between different OSs for many many years; it just works

nesquena 15y ago

Just want to add a quick comment about our goals for gitdocs. Obviously this was never intended to be a 'dropbox-killer', in fact at Miso we actually use both. Dropbox for videos, large binary files, business and legal files. Instead we use gitdocs for storing our "docs": Task lists, wiki, planning, collaborative design, note taking, code snippets et al. And the gitdocs web front-end (http://imgur.com/eaTTY http://imgur.com/eaTTY) is optimized for that since it renders wiki pages (formatted markdown/textile), has full code syntax highlighting, file search, revision history and a rich text editor.

listening 15y ago

A comparable alternative is never going to free for everyone. Someone has to pay the Amazon fees for S3 use. Isn't it true that the few Dropbox users who do pay for it support all the ones who do not?

dahlia 15y ago

It reminds me again that Dropbox is hard to beat.

twunt 15y ago

The readme suggests to use bitbucket.org which I didn't realise had unlimited storage, even on the free plan for up to 5 users? So if the CPU issue can be resolved for committing large files, could it be used as a backup for your warez etc?

mmahemoff 15y ago

Some mention of hosting this on GitHub and BitBucket here. I can't imagine Git-As-A-Service providers would be thrilled with this kind of application, it will completely hammer their services compared to the occasional commits and pulls that occur with a code base. It will probably update their conditions if they don't already preclude it. Or maybe they will embrace it with a premium pricing plan. I certainly wouldn't count on hosting this against BitBucket's free plan.

nubela 15y ago

Hah, I've done something similar to this, except it uses SVN. Cross platform too! But you know what sucked? Performance. SVN is slooowwwww when it came to binary files. You can check it out here.

peterhajas 15y ago

I think Lipsync - https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync - might be better, Git isn't great for lots of large binary files.