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At the dawn of browser sync technologies, it was possible to self host a Firefox sync server. I think I remember there was a component for authentication and on

At the dawn of browser sync technologies, it was possible to self host a Firefox sync server. I think I remember there was a component for authentication and one for storage proper. You could use each one of them, or both. Is this still a thing? How would today's firefox handle a custom sync server?

zerocrates 3y ago
As far as I know you can still self-host Firefox sync.
depereo 3y ago
It'd handle it fine, considering that's still an option. The account hosting side of things is a little trickier but it's doable. https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...
ano-ther 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34674569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34674569
drdaeman 3y ago
Theoretically - yes. Practically, it's poorly documented clusterfuck of very confused technologies (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125). I hope they've possibly sorted that out over the years, but I don't have much hopes. Although they seem to went monorepo for FxA stuff (IIRC, it used to be that Accounts and Content services were separate). Still, no end-user docs - best you can get is assorted bunch of articles aimed at developers: https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/development-setup https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/devel... - summing it up, it's a project that no one seem to have ever meant to be able to use outside of Mozilla, an ability to self-host it is an accident. It used that one could've host a single simple program and have everything working. After switch to Firefox Accounts, trying to deploy all those services and their dependencies (and keeping up as it grew) quickly became complicated. I used to maintain my own half-assed almost-all-in-one re-implementation (https://gitlab.com/drdaeman/firesync https://gitlab.com/drdaeman/firesync, still required Kinto as a dependency), but I gave up.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Why don't they just use Nextcloud or SyncThing or similar for syncing? Too much wheel reinvention everywhere!

zerocrates 3y ago

As far as I know you can still self-host Firefox sync.

depereo 3y ago

It'd handle it fine, considering that's still an option. The account hosting side of things is a little trickier but it's doable. https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-sync-1.5.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...

ano-ther 3y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34674569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34674569

drdaeman 3y ago

Theoretically - yes. Practically, it's poorly documented clusterfuck of very confused technologies (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125). I hope they've possibly sorted that out over the years, but I don't have much hopes. Although they seem to went monorepo for FxA stuff (IIRC, it used to be that Accounts and Content services were separate). Still, no end-user docs - best you can get is assorted bunch of articles aimed at developers: https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/development-setup https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/devel... - summing it up, it's a project that no one seem to have ever meant to be able to use outside of Mozilla, an ability to self-host it is an accident. It used that one could've host a single simple program and have everything working. After switch to Firefox Accounts, trying to deploy all those services and their dependencies (and keeping up as it grew) quickly became complicated. I used to maintain my own half-assed almost-all-in-one re-implementation (https://gitlab.com/drdaeman/firesync https://gitlab.com/drdaeman/firesync, still required Kinto as a dependency), but I gave up.

eternityforest 3y ago
Why don't they just use Nextcloud or SyncThing or similar for syncing? Too much wheel reinvention everywhere!