Notes: Contributing to Orbit

[daviddias]

I'm looking forward to be able to contribute to orbit more and also be more proactive at testing new js-ipfs stuff in orbit. I created this issue to ask questions of how the project is structured and also to collect my notes as I learn.

Will break notes in different comments to make them easy to link to and be actionable.

[daviddias]

Currently there are no tests, is this expected?

» npm test

> orbit@3.2.0 test /Users/imp/code/orbit
> $(npm bin)/mocha

  Orbit
    ✓ TODO

  1 passing (10ms)

[daviddias]

I see that you have raised your fd limit when running in electron -- https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/package.json#L27-L28 -- the fd issue has been fixed since June 2016, do you still hit it sometimes? Would be good to inform @whyrusleeping and @kubuxu about it

[daviddias]

What is the main different between 'orbit' and 'OrbitClient'? Is that OrbitClient is the actual application, while Orbit is just a thing to spawn in electron?

If that so, would it make more sense to just have one package.json that has npm scripts to spawn both?

I also believe that calling something a Client is confusion, unless it is just a Client UI to the Orbit core, but I don't believe that is the case right now as OrbitClient has the full thing on it. Clarify please.

I've also noted that there are deps repeated in both package.jsons with different versions, is this desired?

[daviddias]

The instructions to run orbit in Electron and in the Browser in the README are the same

https://github.com/haadcode/orbit#desktop

[daviddias]

The getting started link in the README.md leads to nowhere, but opening the API.md file I could find it, but found -- https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/API.md#getting-started -- this:

Which signals me that it might be out of date. What does the _ mean? Why does this version -- https://www.npmjs.com/package/orbit_ -- exist?

[daviddias]

Humble request: can we make the code be StandardJS compliant? pretty please 🙏🏽

[daviddias]

Important: I don't see where the ipfs-api is used from the Node.js process of electron, I only see it being used inside the browser process, both in the Electron and Browser versions, could you clarify?

[haadcode]

Thank you @diasdavid! These are fantastic notes to understand where we need to improve :)

I'll come back to you with details to all of these in the following days.

Quickly though: ipfs is spawned in Electron at https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/index.js#L147 which then gets passed via IPC to the UI https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/client/src/stores/IpfsDaemonStore.js#L42. ipfs-daemon uses js-ipfs-api.

The directory client/ is the web app, which needs to be moved to its own repo: https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/issues/112. Orbit itself was recently finally moved to its own module, https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/issues/111, and is now used from orbit_ package (_ due to to orbit not being available on npm). The entry point is here: https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/client/src/stores/OrbitStore.js#L3.

Hope this gets you a bit further.

[theobat]

Hey @diasdavid wouldn't it be better to group the questions into one ordered post for beginners to find more easily the mapping between questions and answers ? (these questions are a good entry point for new developers to come)

[daviddias]

aaaah 💡 So, in fact you spawn ipfs-api in the Node.js process, but you call it from the browser process in https://github.com/haadcode/orbit/blob/master/client/src/stores/IpfsDaemonStore.js#L44, because electron gives you for free an RPC for the functions avaialble in the other object, that is why you never got issues with the http requests in the browser.

Woa, finding out this one was a ride. This means I really don't have to do anything with regards to our plan of running ipfs-api in the Main process. It would be good if all of these was more obvious though.

@theobat true, I do hope that all of these questions get an answer that is part of the documentation, rather than in a group of issues. Let's see how it develops :)

[daviddias]

@haadcode so the goal is to have:

repos:

• orbit-ui
• orbit-electron
• orbit-browser

Giving that orbit-electron and orbit-browser will use orbit-ui and inject their ipfs instance? If that is the best option and plan, let's do it :D

[haadcode]

so the goal is to have ...

The goal is to have:

• orbit-app (which is the UI, ie. browser version, uses js-ipfs via ipfs-daemon)
• orbit-electron (uses orbit-app and js-ipfs-api/go-ipfs via ipfs-daemon)

Note that the UI, ie. the browser version, is smart in that it checks if it's running in Electron and if not, it uses everything as you would in a browser with js-ipfs and orbit.

As a side note, also note that orbit_ package is in repo https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-core.

So: orbit-app (currently in client/) --> js-ipfs (via ipfs-daemon) + orbit_ orbit-electron (currently this repo) --> js-ipfs-api (via ipfs-daemon) + orbit-app

Does that make sense?

[haadcode]

This means I really don't have to do anything with regards to our plan of running ipfs-api in the Main process.

I believe so, yes.

It would be good if all of these was more obvious though.

I hope I will be able to (finally) split all these this week or next week.

Since this is the first time we really discuss this plan, @theobat any thoughts?

[theobat]

orbit-app (which is the UI, ie. browser version, uses js-ipfs via ipfs-daemon) orbit-electron (uses orbit-app and js-ipfs-api/go-ipfs via ipfs-daemon)

yeah sounds good ! So the current orbit repo disappears plain and simple ? Where should we put explanations for the structure though ? it needs to be somewhere visible ..

[haadcode]

So the current orbit repo disappears plain and simple ?

Not sure if we should kill this repo. I feel we might lose plenty of inbound traffic if we kill it since it's been here for a long time and linked in a lot of places.

How about we keep this repo as the landing page for all those repos, and in the future collect everything Orbit related here? Eg. there's orbit-textui (terminal client), orbit-bot, and hopefully in the future we have other language implementations too, etc. We could link to every Orbit project from here. Or we could have this repo to be the orbit-core module and link to the clients (UIs) and other related projects from here. Thoughts?

[haadcode]

Humble request: can we make the code be StandardJS compliant? pretty please 🙏🏽

(with the "fiiiine" voice) Fiiiine. Let's do it step by step as we move the orbit repos to use aegir.

Mark the date @diasdavid :)

[theobat]

How about we keep this repo as the landing page for all those repos, and in the future collect everything Orbit related here? Eg. there's orbit-textui (terminal client), orbit-bot, and hopefully in the future we have other language implementations too, etc. We could link to every Orbit project from here. Or we could have this repo to be the orbit-core module and link to the clients (UIs) and other related projects from here.

Yes sounds like other ipfs repos. It's probably a good idea (although I did not look at the ipfs/ipfs repo until very recently I do believe it's a good idea to keep an "entry point" repo without much code)

[daviddias]

All right :D

So, quick list of tasks to tackle first:

• [x] Create an org for Orbit
• [ ] Move things to StandardJS (this is a quick one, all it requires is standard --fix and tiny adjustments)
• [ ] Create the orbit-electron repo and move things there
• [ ] Rename this repo to orbit-app
• [ ] Create the orbit repo as a main entry point for the community

[haadcode]

I'm gonna start reorganizing this repo. Having thought about it, I think instead of orbit-app we should name it orbit-web because eventually we'll have many "apps" for different platforms, eg. orbit-android-app. orbit-web would make it clear that it's a web (browser) app imo.

Are you ok with that name?

[dignifiedquire]

I like orbit-web makes it much clearer

[daviddias]

👍 orbit-web

[RichardLitt]

I can help! @diasdavid your suggestions look good to me.

[RichardLitt]

I think this can probably be closed now. Thanks, @daviddias. Hope you're doing well. :)