Let's say you want to distribute some big files to the whole world.
You can of course, just drop them onto a website. But perhaps you'd like to
use git-annex to manage those files. And as an added bonus, why not let
anyone in the world clone your site and use git-annex get
!
My site like this is downloads.kitenet.net. Here's how I set it up. --Joey
- Set up a web site. I used Apache, and configured it to follow symlinks.
Options FollowSymLinks
- Put some files on the website. Make sure it works.
git init; git annex init
git config core.sharedrepository world
(Makes sure files are always added with permissions that allow everyone to read them.)git config receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead
(Makes the working tree update when changes are pushed to it.)- We want users to be able to clone the git repository over http, because
git-annex can download files from it over http as well. For this to
work,
git update-server-info
needs to get run on the server after commits or pushes to it. The gitpost-update
hook will take care of this, you just need to enable the hook on the server.chmod +x .git/hooks/post-update
git annex add; git commit -m added
- Make sure users can still download files from the site directly.
- Instruct advanced users to clone a http url that ends with the "/.git/"
directory. For example, for downloads.kitenet.net, the clone url
is
https://downloads.kitenet.net/.git/
When users clone over http, and run git-annex, it will automatically learn all about your repository and be able to download files right out of it, also using http.
Hi,
would it be possible to do this whith the contents of a public repository-group (a non-bare public repository)?
You can choose which files get stored in the public repository, and are thus accessible to the public. However, note that since the git repository is published, anyone could clone it and see all the names and hashes of your files, even if you've not pushed the file contents to the public repository.
Currently the way the "public" repository group works only makes it be usable with special remotes. This is because it uses a
preferreddir
setting in the special remote configuration.Is there a low cost web hosting solution that would support a public git-annex repo relatively simply with simple access to download the public files.
I figure I could set up an Amazon EC2 micro instance and mount an s3 share, hosting the git-annex remote, but this is a lot of overhead for something that dropbox does with 1 click "share dropbox link"?
Any suggestions would be great!
For those not wanting to run their own web server, using Amazon S3 with git-annex can work well; it can be configured to let the public download files over http. See public Amazon S3 remote.