71 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
71 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
Porting git-annex to Android will use the Android native SDK.
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A hopefully small Java app will be developed, which runs the webapp
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daemon, and a web browser to display it.
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[[!toc]]
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### programs to port
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These will probably need to be bundled into the Android app, unless already
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available in the App Store.
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* ssh (native ssh needed for scp, not a client like ConnectBot)
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* rsync
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* gpg
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* git (not all git commands are needed,
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but core plumbing and a few like `git-add` are.)
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### FAT sucks
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The main media partition will use some awful FAT filesystem format from
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1982 that cannot support git-annex's symlinks. (Hopefully it can at least
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handle all of git's filenames.) Possible approaches to this follow.
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(May want to consider which of these would make a Windows port easier too.)
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#### bare git repo with file browser
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Keep only a bare git repo on Android. The app would then need to include
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a file browser to access the files in there, and adding a file would move
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it into the repo.
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Not ideal.
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#### implement git smudge filters
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See [[smudge]].
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Difficult. Would make git-annex generally better.
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#### keep files outside bare git repo
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Use a bare git repo but don't keep files in `annex/objects`, instead
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leave them outside the repo, and add some local mapping to find them.
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Problem: Would leave files unlocked to modification, which might lose a
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version git-annex dependend upon existing on the phone. (Maybe the phone
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would have to be always considered an untrusted repo, which probably
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makes sense anyway.)
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Problem:
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#### crazy `LD_PRELOAD` wrapper
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Need I say more? (Also, Android's linker may not even support it.)
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### partial content
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On a regular system, a reasonable simplifying assumption is that all the
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files in the folder will be synced to the system. A user might want to
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disable syncing of some subdirectories, for eg, archived files. But in
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general, things are simpler to understand and implement if all files sync.
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But, a phone probably cannot hold all a user's files. Indeed, it's likely
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that old files will be aggressively dropped from the phone after syncing to
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elsewhere, in order to keep enough free space on it for new files.
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There needs to be a way for the user to browse files not on the phone and
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request they be transferred to it. This could be done as a browser in the
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web app, or using a subdirectory full of placeholder files (not symlinks;
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see above) that start transfer of the real file when accessed.
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