SAFE Drive - access SAFE storage on your local drive

Apps
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I made a big breakthrough this week with SAFE Drive and want want to give an update and a request for more help testing now it can do useful stuff.

So what’s the big deal?

  • file stuff: Well, we can do lots of normal stuff with files and folders, although with some limitations. So you can make directories save files and, wait for it, get them back!

  • decentralised github: You can create a git repo on SAFE, clone it, make local changes and push them back. At least in theory, I’ve tested all the parts of this but not actually used the live network to publish a git repo to somebody else, and have them submit their changes back. So who wants to be the first to try a decentralised SAFE github replacement?

  • decentralised dropbox: you can copy whole directory trees to and from SAFE using rsync (or cp etc) and use it to keep a backup on SAFE, or to keep local directories and files in sync with a copy on SAFE. You can also share those files with others, see next.

  • share public files: if you have uploaded files to a public folder that is accessible using one of your public names, anybody can use SAFE Drive to access those files. To see and browse files at a public name that you know exists, SAFE Drive shows them when you access ~/SAFE/_webMounts/publicName where ‘publicName’ is a public name belonging to anyone) or if you have a subName (service) as well, at ~/SAFE/_webMounts/subName.publicName

    So, in Linux for example, you can see the files for the website safe://cat.ashi with the command:

    ls ~/SAFE/_webMounts/cat.ashi

I have not yet created a packaged build, but anyone can try all this - and it would help a lot if you would :wink: - if you are willing to install node and run it from the command line, with hand holding from myself and others if needed.

The reason is that the above works, fairly well, in the ways that @JPL and I have been able to test. But if SAFE Drive is to be any use at all it has to be rock solid, and not just work 99.9% of the time. So we need more people trying more things, to find what does not work when you do x followed by y followed by z on a wet Tuesday morning. Even one more person saving a few files from a different machine helps, so don’t think you aren’t helping if you can only spend a small amount of time. This is one of those things where more people doing even simple things can help a lot because we all have different setups, and will do things a bit differently than others.

We’ve all seen the value of this with testing the alpha network and it is exactly the same with SAFE Drive.

@JPL has been doing this to help me test things recently, and it is a great help, as well as encouraging and supportive, believe me. Not to leave out all the others who have had a go as well. I’m very grateful to everyone who has had a hand in testing so far. Thank you all very much.

So if you fancy helping, please sign up to the Dev forum, reply to the following post and we’ll get you started. And if any devs want to help others get going, rather than do testing yourself then that would also be a great help because if you read the post below, you can see I’m running out of steam here. At least for a bit.

Basically, we need to find out what doesn’t work yet, and so need as many people as possible to try different apps, different ways of messing with files and folders, and to make a big list of what doesn’t work. Or maybe it will be a small list! I wish :grinning:

NEW - a post to get you started

If you want to dive in and help with testing, or just want to try SAFE Drive out privately I’ve written a short post to get you started (also see how you can try it out on MacOS and Windows): SAFE Drive - help with testing - #141 by happybeing - Apps - Safe Dev Forum

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