
Radicle Architecture - jkarni
http://radicle.xyz/blog/index.html
======
Confusion
When would I want to use this? What problem that people currently have does
this solve? The website tells me what Radicle is and what you can do with it,
but as far as I can tell it doesn’t explain why/when I would want to do that.

------
jimmoores
When a blog about a collaboration tool devolves into a formal state machine
definition and blocks of lisp syntax, I have my doubts about the project's
ability to communicate with potential users.

~~~
cloudhead
If you’re not interested in how things work under the hood, there are nice
high level docs for you here
[http://radicle.xyz/docs/index.html](http://radicle.xyz/docs/index.html) :)

------
cseelus
Following the introduction tutorial, in which you add to the Radicle Garden[2]
(which is a nice idea btw.), I get a 'The machine owner appears to be offline'
when I try to propose my changes.

I think the very idea of Radicle is nice, but having a rock solid VCS is
crucial to a developers workflow, so they really need to iron things like that
out.

1) [http://www.radicle.xyz/docs/index.html#installation-
setup](http://www.radicle.xyz/docs/index.html#installation-setup)

2)
[http://www.radicle.xyz/garden/index.html](http://www.radicle.xyz/garden/index.html)

~~~
StavrosK
After being optimistic enough about IPFS to create a whole service around it
([https://www.eternum.io](https://www.eternum.io)), and mostly because of the
service, I now have my doubts. Nodes can routinely not discover each other.
I'll add a file to my node then request it from a gateway and it will take
multiple minutes before the file is resolved. There's no information on how
far along a pin is. The API for pinning things is atrocious (you need to keep
the http request alive for the multiple days it might take to pin something).
I have to resort to just retrying the pins over and over until they succeed.

I'm sure there's some information hidden somewhere if I shell out to the
binary and parse the response well enough, but if a paid service required me
to do this, I'd laugh and never touch them again. These days, whenever I see
that something is "based on IPFS", I mentally translate it to "not working".

~~~
feanaro
> I'll add a file to my node then request it from a gateway and it will take
> multiple minutes before the file is resolved.

Sadly, I've noticed this myself. Have you reported these things to the IPFS
developers?

> you need to keep the http request alive for the multiple days it might take
> to pin something

I didn't understand this part. You make the HTTP request towards your local
IPFS daemon? Why does it take several days to pin something?

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, I've reported everything, and they were extremely helpful (to the point
where they debugged things with me), but nothing changed.

> Why does it take several days to pin something?

The daemon doesn't act like a torrent client, where you can add a pin and then
come back later to check progress. You need to do an HTTP POST (or whatever
verb) and then wait until it's done, which due to availability issues and size
might take days to complete.

~~~
feanaro
> Yes, I've reported everything, and they were extremely helpful (to the point
> where they debugged things with me), but nothing changed.

Do you remember how long ago this was? I'm still hoping this is a solvable
problem since I really want IPFS to work.

> The daemon doesn't act like a torrent client, where you can add a pin and
> then come back later to check progress. You need to do an HTTP POST (or
> whatever verb) and then wait until it's done, which due to availability
> issues and size might take days to complete.

Oh. That does sound awful. I wonder why they designed it like that.

~~~
StavrosK
> Do you remember how long ago this was? I'm still hoping this is a solvable
> problem since I really want IPFS to work.

This was around two years ago. I hope it'll get solved too, but it doesn't
seem to have been solved yet.

> I wonder why they designed it like that.

I guess it was just easier, but they haven't done anything in years. The
ticket has been open since 2016: [https://github.com/ipfs/go-
ipfs/issues/3054](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3054)

------
616c
How does this compare to scuttlebutt and ssb-git? I know IPFS and ssb are
different but conceptually in how data is segmented and distributed?

~~~
hxrts
git-ssb was one of the inspirations for Radicle, we're big fans of the project
and we've spoken to cel, the author of that project a few times. one of the
most meaningful distinctions is visibility in the network, git-ssb repos are
distributed through the Scuttlebutt social graph, while Radicle projects are
seesed to the whole network. We've written a little on this in the FAQ, 4th
question: [http://radicle.xyz/docs/#faq](http://radicle.xyz/docs/#faq)

~~~
616c
RTFM is an underrated comment, thanks for reminding me so politely. Will
definitely review now!

------
rmorey
Love the style on this website, in particular the use of Vulf Mono!

------
gbrown_
Is it just me or does this blog not have links for each entry? There seem to
be two entries at present but no way to link directly to either of them?

------
mieses
Does it have a viniculum?

