4 ms·

This does not appear to be IPFS, it's just some crude method of rewriting ipfs:// URLs into HTTP requests to gateways that then do the actual IPFS. Which much l

This does not appear to be IPFS, it's just some crude method of rewriting ipfs:// URLs into HTTP requests to gateways that then do the actual IPFS. Which much like bitcoin, nobody seems to want to run locally despite that mostly defeating the purpose. On the bright side none of this ended up polluting libcurl.

evbogue 3y ago
This answers the first question that popped into my mind. Why not just curl the gateway then? You already could!
- gcr 3y ago
  Honestly, I agree. This is not IPFS support, this is “we ship with a default URL rewriting rule and then make an HTTP call” It’s a first step, though At least the rule is invoked safely. Curl doesn’t do localhost pings by default; instead it checks for the use of an IPFS_GATEWAY environment variable or a ~/.ipfs/gateway file, and will fail with instructions, if neither are present
gcr 3y ago
I’d love to see IPFS native protocol support in curl, to be honest. After all, curl already supports dozens of other obscure protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS… One challenge of doing this correctly is that curl is intended to be a “one-off” call that downloads and exits without participating in the swarm the way a good BitTorrent client should. Granted, presumably this IPFS gateway solution also has this problem.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Well, that seems like exactly the difference: It's not about obscurity, it's about curl not being a daemon and therefore a poor fit for p2p protocols.
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    People use ipfs to download hosted (by someone) things, so it is a fit. Have a look at https://winworldpc.com https://winworldpc.com Also, the Internet Archive uses web seeded torrents to accomplish the problem of insufficient seeds rather than throwing them into the ether (non-crypto variant) and hoping for mirroring by wishful thinking. Conclusion: Centralized, unicast-like support for p2p is possible and useful for download-oriented clients. IPFS Desktop in particular: One shitty thing they did was auto re-opt-in to telemetry without asking the user. With that kind of sneaky bullshit, I refuse to run it. IPFS lost trust and is unable to communicate how their "solution" is useful or make it usable by humans who aren't IPFS Desktop developers.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      I feel like you're missing the point here. P2P protocols like IPFS are built with the expectation that clients are persistent. They take a nontrivial amount of time to start up (e.g. to discover peers), and require continuous maintenance from the application to keep running (e.g. to chat with those peers and keep them happy). These characteristics are incompatible with clients like curl. They're written with the expectation that connection setup is cheap and that connections don't require maintenance while they aren't being used. These expectations are all true of existing protocols like HTTP(S) or FTP; they fail with IPFS. And there isn't really any way to solve that without introducing another process to act as an intermediary -- which is exactly what an IPFS gateway does.
      - mburns 3y ago
        Not really, a transient ipfs node works just fine. There are stable nodes to bootstrap a new node into the network. More initialization that if you were using http, sure, but it isn’t as against the grain as you suggest. https://github.com/ipfs/ipget https://github.com/ipfs/ipget
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Your mischaracterization of HTTPS as obscure is baffling. I guess you aren't in tech or anything older than you is "old".
  - gcr 3y ago
    My obscure protocols list even includes HTTP! I must be such an idiot! It’s almost as if I copy+pasted from the curl man page or something!
dartos 3y ago
People don’t want to run IPFS nodes bc there’s no incentive to. Imo that’s better than it being married to crypto. IPFS has its uses.
- wmf 3y ago
  There should be a lean and mean libipfs that just downloads from IPFS without "running a node".
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  That's part of what filecoin has been trying to solve.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Yeah filecoin is a cool project. I like that they’re picky about who to let in their network… at least they were last I checked.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    filecoin has been trying to solve the problem of not wanting to be married to crypto?
    - davidmurdoch 3y ago
      Sorry, I don't understand your question.
    - pests 3y ago
      > don’t want to run IPFS nodes
    - j_maffe 3y ago
      It solves the lack of incentive issue.
- humanizersequel 3y ago
  Are there actual perverse incentives that come with "it being married to crypto" — keep in mind that there are demonstrable positive incentives — or is it just aesthetic distaste?

evbogue 3y ago

This answers the first question that popped into my mind. Why not just curl the gateway then? You already could!

gcr 3y ago
Honestly, I agree. This is not IPFS support, this is “we ship with a default URL rewriting rule and then make an HTTP call” It’s a first step, though At least the rule is invoked safely. Curl doesn’t do localhost pings by default; instead it checks for the use of an IPFS_GATEWAY environment variable or a ~/.ipfs/gateway file, and will fail with instructions, if neither are present

gcr 3y ago

I’d love to see IPFS native protocol support in curl, to be honest. After all, curl already supports dozens of other obscure protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS… One challenge of doing this correctly is that curl is intended to be a “one-off” call that downloads and exits without participating in the swarm the way a good BitTorrent client should. Granted, presumably this IPFS gateway solution also has this problem.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Well, that seems like exactly the difference: It's not about obscurity, it's about curl not being a daemon and therefore a poor fit for p2p protocols.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  People use ipfs to download hosted (by someone) things, so it is a fit. Have a look at https://winworldpc.com https://winworldpc.com Also, the Internet Archive uses web seeded torrents to accomplish the problem of insufficient seeds rather than throwing them into the ether (non-crypto variant) and hoping for mirroring by wishful thinking. Conclusion: Centralized, unicast-like support for p2p is possible and useful for download-oriented clients. IPFS Desktop in particular: One shitty thing they did was auto re-opt-in to telemetry without asking the user. With that kind of sneaky bullshit, I refuse to run it. IPFS lost trust and is unable to communicate how their "solution" is useful or make it usable by humans who aren't IPFS Desktop developers.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    I feel like you're missing the point here. P2P protocols like IPFS are built with the expectation that clients are persistent. They take a nontrivial amount of time to start up (e.g. to discover peers), and require continuous maintenance from the application to keep running (e.g. to chat with those peers and keep them happy). These characteristics are incompatible with clients like curl. They're written with the expectation that connection setup is cheap and that connections don't require maintenance while they aren't being used. These expectations are all true of existing protocols like HTTP(S) or FTP; they fail with IPFS. And there isn't really any way to solve that without introducing another process to act as an intermediary -- which is exactly what an IPFS gateway does.
    - mburns 3y ago
      Not really, a transient ipfs node works just fine. There are stable nodes to bootstrap a new node into the network. More initialization that if you were using http, sure, but it isn’t as against the grain as you suggest. https://github.com/ipfs/ipget https://github.com/ipfs/ipget
1letterunixname 3y ago
Your mischaracterization of HTTPS as obscure is baffling. I guess you aren't in tech or anything older than you is "old".
- gcr 3y ago
  My obscure protocols list even includes HTTP! I must be such an idiot! It’s almost as if I copy+pasted from the curl man page or something!

dartos 3y ago

People don’t want to run IPFS nodes bc there’s no incentive to. Imo that’s better than it being married to crypto. IPFS has its uses.

wmf 3y ago
There should be a lean and mean libipfs that just downloads from IPFS without "running a node".
davidmurdoch 3y ago
That's part of what filecoin has been trying to solve.
- dartos 3y ago
  Yeah filecoin is a cool project. I like that they’re picky about who to let in their network… at least they were last I checked.
- notatoad 3y ago
  filecoin has been trying to solve the problem of not wanting to be married to crypto?
  - davidmurdoch 3y ago
    Sorry, I don't understand your question.
  - pests 3y ago
    > don’t want to run IPFS nodes
  - j_maffe 3y ago
    It solves the lack of incentive issue.
humanizersequel 3y ago
Are there actual perverse incentives that come with "it being married to crypto" — keep in mind that there are demonstrable positive incentives — or is it just aesthetic distaste?