Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package: hyperdrive (repast)

[Joseph Turner <joseph@ushin.org>]

> My main difficulty is understanding what Hyperdrive is...

Hyperdrive is a p2p file-sharing tool (like Dropbox, but FLOSS and with
no third-party intermediary; like Bittorrent, but mutable and versioned;
like IPFS, but without CIDs and faster for mutable data).

User story: Alice creates a new hyperdrive and adds some files. Her
computer returns a public key URL that uniquely identies the hyperdrive.
Alice shares that URL with Bob, who can then download Alice's files
directly from Alice's computer (no third-party servers are required to
route the connection - they find each other using a DHT or using mDNS if
they're on the same LAN). Bob can download some of Alice's without
having to load her whole drive.

Data is distributed on the network; once Bob has loaded Alice's files,
Carol can get them from Bob even when Alice is offline. Drives are
mutable; When Alice adds/removes/changes files in the drive, Bob can
refresh her drive on his machine to get the latest changes. Drives are
versioned; anyone with the URL can "check out" prior versions of Alice's
drive to see what her files used to look like.

There's more info in the manual, especially in the Concepts section:

https://ushin.org/hyperdrive/hyperdrive-manual.html#Concepts

There's also this talk at LibrePlanet 2023. Comparison of peer-to-peer
protocols starts @36:49:

https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/emacs-for-p2p-deliberation/

> The second issue I have is that there is quite a lot of code, and
> I'd like to take a look at everything before I add anything.

Take your time. I'm happy to get on a videocall to go through the code
together with you.

Thank you!

Joseph