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safegit: Decentralised Git on Safe Network

by happybeing, 21 February 2019


safegit image by @nigel
safegit

This article explains how to create a decentralised git repository on Safe Network, push to it, clone from it, and submit pull requests back to it. So all the normal git functionality is working, right now.

Overview

safegit is a script for creating and updating headless git repositories on Safe Network using the Safe Command Line Interface (CLI).

This is an interim solution but achieves the aim of a truly decentralised alternative to github and other centralised solutions, based on the Safe Network. Once published, a project will be available to everyone forever as a secure immutable repository, without censorship, server downtime, or vulnerability to DDoS and other attacks.

It works by pushing to a local headless repository (repo) that is then published to Safe Network using the Safe CLI.

Setup and Workflow

Set Up (Linux)

  • Install the Safe Command Line Interface (CLI).
  • Get a copy of the safegit script. On Linux for example, clone the repo with:
    cd ~/
    git clone https://github.com/happybeing/safenetwork-git
  • Set up an alias and make the script executable so you can run it by typing safegit. For example if you use bash on Linux:
    alias safegit='~/safenetwork-git/scripts/linux/safegit.sh'
      chmod +x ~/safenetwork-git/scripts/linux/safegit.sh
  • You can see safegit usage, including how to override the default location of your local headless repos by typing safegit without any parameters. Do this now to check it is set up correctly.

Using safegit

You can now try out the following actions described in the sections below.

Before you begin

Before you begin, log into your Safe Network account, or if you want to follow along without affecting your real Safe Network account you can use a local test network by typing safe vault -t run-baby-fleming and then follow along exactly as below.

In the following examples we'll assume you have a local project git repository in ~/src/dweb-blog. If you want to follow along, start out with:

mkdir -p ~/src
cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/happybeing/dweb-blog

Create a local safegit repository

Note: to follow along you'll need to use a different Safe NRS name from the one used in this example ('dgit'), because it is already taken. So choose your own and remember to use that wherever 'dgit' appears below.

1). Create a Safe NRS name and sub-name for your repository (repo) on Safe Network using the Safe CLI. For example, for a local git based project in ~/src/dweb-blog you might create dweb-blog.dgit as follows:

IMPORTANT: make sure to enclose the Safe XOR URI in double quotes and include ?v=0 at the end:

mkdir empty-directory
safe files put -r empty-directory
safe nrs create dweb-blog.dgit --link "<safe-xor-uri-from-files-put-command>?v=0"
rm -r empty-directory

IMPORTANT: you must choose a Safe NRS name that you already own, or which is free and not in use by somebody else. If you want to add a sub-name to a safe NRS name which you already own, use safe nrs add instead of safe nrs create.

Alternatively, use the following short script which does the same as the above commands, but without you needing to copy and paste the URI and or '?v-0'.

mkdir -p empty-directory
safe files put -r empty-directory | sed 's/^FilesContainer.*\"\(.*\)\"/\1/'| head -n 1 | sed 's/$/\?v=0/' | safe nrs create dweb-blog.dgit
rm -r empty-directory

Note: In the above script, the sed pipeline extracts the Safe XOR URI of the FilesContainer from the output of safe files put and formats it for use by the safe nrs create command.

Whatever Safe NRS name you choose becomes the <repo-name> in the following examples (e.g. dweb-blog.dgit). For multiple projects you can create multiple sub-names on the same NRS name, such as safenetworkjs.dgit or safenetwork-farming.dgit etc.

2). Create a safegit mirror for your local repository

We'll create a headless git repository to mirror your working repository (~/src/dweb-blog) and link it to the Safe FilesContainer via the NRS URI safe://dweb-blog.dgit that was set up in step 1.

Create a local mirror for ~/src/dweb-blog with the command.

cd ~/src/dweb-blog
safegit create dweb-blog.dgit

The above creates a headless repo dweb-blog.dgit and sets it up a remote in your project for it, called 'safegit'. You can see this with git remote -v

Example:

$ cd ~/src/dweb-blog
$ `safegit` create dweb-blog.dgit
$ git remote -v
origin    https://github.com/happybeing/dweb-blog (fetch)
origin    https://github.com/happybeing/dweb-blog (push)
safegit    /home/mrh/src/safegit/dweb-blog.dgit (fetch)
safegit    /home/mrh/src/safegit/dweb-blog.dgit (push)

After making changes to your code you can push these to 'safegit' using normal git commands, in the same way you would push to 'upstream' or 'origin' etc.

Publish/Update a git repo to Safe Network

Change to your working repository and push changes to the 'safegit' mirror:

cd ~/src/dweb-blog
safegit push dweb-blog.dgit

This will upload or update the headless copy of ~/src/dweb-blog on Safe Network to match your local safegit headless mirror. Headless means that the source files are not present, only the '.git' subdirectory.

You can review what has been uploaded using the safe cat:

$ safe cat safe://dweb-blog.dgit

You can now publicise the existance of safe://dweb-blog.dgit on Safe Network, a headless git mirror of your working repository ~/src/safegit/, but which is accessible to everyone.

Note: safe://dweb-blog.dgit is not a website like github. It is a copy of the contents of your local safegit repo.

Update your safegit remote repo

Every time you commit changes to 'master' and want to publish them you use safegit push <repo-name>. For example:

safegit push dweb-blog.dgit

Any commits in master will be pushed to the headless mirror, and then to Safe network and appear at safe://dweb-blog.dgit.

If you want to share other branches on your Safe repo (e.g. to submit a pull request back to a safegit repo you cloned), you must first push them to the local safegit repo. To push a branch to your local safegit repo:

git push safegit <branch>

You can now push everything to your Safe remote with safegit push <repo-name> as we did for 'master'.

Clone a git repo from Safe Network

Anyone can make a copy of safe://dweb-blog.dgit using:

safe files get -e overwrite safe://dweb-blog.dgit ~/headless-dweb-blog

To create a working repository, clone the headless copy using git:

git clone ~/headless-dweb-blog ~/working-dweb-blog

Changes to the new ~/working-dweb-blog can be published by creating a headless mirror using safegit as explained above. Any changes to this 'fork' can be pulled to other projects, including the original as described later.

The 'fork' will have remote 'origin' set to the local headless mirror. To pull updates from the original (safe:/dweb-blog.dgit), update the local headless copy and pulling them to the working repository. For example:

safe files get -e overwrite safe://dweb-blog.dgit ~/headless-dweb-blog
cd ~/working-dweb-blog
git pull

And finally, it's always worth checking the integrity of a cloned repository as follows (and you can add --verbose to see more about what's going on):

$ git fsck --strict --unreachable
Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.

Issue a Pull Request after making changes

A pull request works differently with safegit than you are used to with github or similar git management websites. What follows is not the only way, but one suggested way that you can start with.

Make changes to a branch you create specifically for the pull request, having chosen a suitable name for the branch. For example, prefix the branch name with <yourname>-pr-. So what we'll do it create a branch, push it locally, and publish to Safe Network.

The following example assumes we've already cloned safe://dweb-blog.dgit and are working in our cloned project (e.g. ~/working-dweb-blog. It also assumes that we've already published our cloned repo to a remote at safe://dweb-blog.tgit1, where 'tgit1' is a public name we created for our repos, and 'dweb-blog' the sub name for this particular project.

Changes we make can be shared using a pull request, as follows.

# Make sure you are up-to-date with the upstream repo
safe files get -e overwrite safe://dweb-blog.dgit ~/headless-dweb-blog
cd ~/working-dweb-blog
git pull

git checkout development # Your local working branch

Working on your local branch you commit some changes to the project README.md and decide you want to submit these changes as a pull request.

Having checked your changes and when you're ready to create the pull request, make a branch for the pull request and check it out:

git branch pr-readme-changes
git checkout pr-readme-changes

# Push to your Safe Network remote
safegit push dweb-blog.tgit1

Note: If you get a message like the one below, execute the suggested git push command and then repeat the safegit push (above):

fatal: The current branch pr-readme-changes has no upstream branch.

To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use

git push --set-upstream safegit pr-readme-changes

Generate a pull request message using the commit at which your changes begin using a tag, or you can identify the hash using git log which is what is being done here:

$ git request-pull 7b498aa5d9c8c81a36ada16603ac4a7c7c2bd8a8 safe://dweb-blog.tgit1 pr-readme-changes
The following changes since commit 7b498aa5d9c8c81a36ada16603ac4a7c7c2bd8a8:

  Prevent wasteful renaming when deploying to safe (rsync -u -> cp -u) (2019-02-06 17:16:46 +0000)

are available in the Git repository at:

  safe://dweb-blog.tgit1 pr-readme-changes

for you to fetch changes up to 0c15476185831f51bfa0bdd8a973fee91992962b:

  Make improvements to README (2019-02-13 12:31:30 +0000)

----------------------------------------------------------------
theWebalyst (1):
      Make improvements to README

 README.md | 25 ++++++++++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

We can now send the above in a message to the owner of safe://dweb-blog.dgit

Accept a Pull Request from someone else

To accept a pull request means pulling a branch from a repo that has been published to Safe Network using safegit.

First you will make (or update) your headless copy of the 'foreign' repo which contains the pull request. Then you can pull it into a new branch on in the original working repo ~/src/dweb-blog.

Example: if we receive a pull request from 'theWebalyst' (as in the output from git request-pull shown above) we can pull those changes as follows.

# create or update our headless mirror of the 'foreign' repo
safe files get -e overwrite safe://dweb-blog.tgit1 ~/headless-foreign-dweb-blog

# create a branch to receive the changes (so they aren't merged immediately)
cd ~/src/dweb-blog
git branch pr-readme-changes
git checkout pr-readme-changes

# pull the changes into the new branch, in original author's working repo
git pull ~/headless-foreign-dweb-blog pr-readme-changes

We now have the changes on branch 'pr-readme-changes' which we can review and decide whether to merge into master.


Update 1st July 2020

This article was updated to use the Safe CLI in place of Safe Drive which no longer works due to changes to the Safe Network APIs.


DWeb Blog is live on the web at dweb.happybeing.com and on Safe Network (Fleming and alpha2) at `safe://dweb` (to view it first Join the DWeb).

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