BeShare revisited

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The demise of BeBits and Haikuware was something of a shock, and started me thinking of possible alternatives. I’m not sure the Repositary – when it gets into full gear – will be a complete replacement. Seems to me it will be a lot more “formal” that the websites were.

Anyway, BeShare is an alternative that’s been around forever – if people would only make use of it. I admit that I never used it much myself – the websites were much more convenient for finding stuff – but now could it become a useful community? An advantage is that there’s no “single-point-of-failure”, as there are usually several muscle servers around that one can connect to. [And my thesis is of course being tested because TyCom has been down since yesterday!]

One thing that inhibited my use a bit was that I’d log in, do a query, and be faced with a long list of files, many of which I’d have no idea what they were. It struck me that if there was some way to add informational tags to files, it would help a lot. So I’ve updated the code a bit to provide that facility. It also seemed a bit of a limitation that custom icons were not shown in the query list – only those supplied by the mimetype – so I’ve added that, too.

The updated version – or versions… there’s one for Haiku and one for BeOS – are available at:

http://www.goodeveca.net/BeShare

and I’ll also try to keep them available a lot of the time on BeShare itself – TyCom if it’s running, one of the others if not.

I’ve bumped the version to “3.00”, not because I think it’s a startling advance, but because there are already others’ Haiku-only versions 2.30 et seq…

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This version are fully working… also it’s automaticly built for PM

So shanges should go in to this or branch from this for easier update it.

These days Haiku also support that 3:party apps using Haiku locale system.
I did work on that but got tired of it not working. I also used ColumnListView.

Perhaps time to do som more development (I’m also the reason for downlod/upload didn’t work. Moving from MUSCLE 2.3 was not that easy)

I have also sendt haiku fixes for MUSCLE upstreams so going on a old MUSCLE are perhaps not the best solution.

//Fredrik

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After using BeShare a lot more than I ever did before, I’ve found a few things that can block one’s way, and that are not mentioned in the app’s own docs! So I’ve put together “The BeShare Handbook”, now available at your local BerShare Server, and also on my website Http://goodeveca.net/BeShare

Hope it may be useful.

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Hi,

I don't know if using BeShare for this is the best idea. There used to be a lot of things distributed there, then people left the network and now the files are nowhere to be found. What are your plans for archiving the software?

As for the repository being "formal", the haikuports one requires packages to be built using haikuporter (if you need help with that for your software, the haikuports team is ready and willing to provide support). For anything turned into a package by other means (hpkg creator, directly using the package tool, etc), you can create your own repository, or someone could setup a public repository for these.

And for software not in package files, all you need is an FTP server. If anyone does this, please do allow mirroring of your repository.

That being said, using BeShare for file sharing (not storage) is a good idea. Let's keep it alive for this, but think about archiving, too.

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[quote=PulkoMandy]… or someone could setup a public repository for these.
[/quote]

I see bbjimmy has instructions on his repository http://fatelk.com/repo on how you can FTP files to him, so I take it that it is meant to be used as a public repo to some extent.

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Guest One’s repo also has a way to submit hpkg files, now. Both of these still have the requirement of hpkg format, however.

I’m a bit scarce on disk space currently (I’ll probably move it to a separate disk soon) but my “beosarchive” page (at http://pulkomandy.tk/~beosarchive) could accept uploads of non-hpkg files. Contact me if you want FTP access.

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[quote=PulkoMandy]Hi,

I don't know if using BeShare for this is the best idea. There used to be a lot of things distributed there, then people left the network and now the files are nowhere to be found. What are your plans for archiving the software?

[/quote] I didn't really mean that BeShare should be the only place that files should be kept. I guess my concept is that if there are enough users, they would re-twee... er re-share stuff they were interested in, so it would nearly always be available somewhere. Certainly files should be store permanently somewhere, and multiple archives are always better! I'll always try to at least have my own software on my website.

[quote] As for the repository being "formal", the haikuports one requires packages to be built using haikuporter (if you need help with that for your software, the haikuports team is ready and willing to provide support). For anything turned into a package by other means (hpkg creator, directly using the package tool, etc), you can create your own repository, or someone could setup a public repository for these.

[/quote] The thing is, I still consider the overhead in creating an .hpkg is excessive for many things, and repositories don't cope with anything else. I have a lot of stuff on my system, like soundfonts, audio, midi, scripts, and so on that aren't really appropriate for the "formality" of packages, and I like to be able to put them where it suits me. (And in many cases, I feel the same about apps. I don't want them either in system or config. I'll unpack them somewhere where it suits my intention for them. I always resented SoftwareValet for its inflexibility.)

[quote] And for software not in package files, all you need is an FTP server. If anyone does this, please do allow mirroring of your repository.

[/quote] Is an FTP site any easier to set up than a [non-fancy (:-)] website? It has the same disadvantage that BeShare has had in that it's hard to get information about the files.

[quote] That being said, using BeShare for file sharing (not storage) is a good idea. Let's keep it alive for this, but think about archiving, too.[/quote] No real disagreement there... (:-)) But it'd be nice to see people using BeShare again. I've been seeing about five users logging in.

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[quote=Pete][quote=PulkoMandy]

[quote] And for software not in package files, all you need is an FTP server. If anyone does this, please do allow mirroring of your repository.

[/quote] Is an FTP site any easier to set up than a [non-fancy (:-)] website? It has the same disadvantage that BeShare has had in that it's hard to get information about the files.

[/quote]

The FTP access is important to allow easy mirroring. I don't mind also having a nice interface to search the files, and I tried to do so with beosarchive (the goal is to do something simialr to aminet for amiga software, but I'm no web developer).

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[quote=Pete][quote=PulkoMandy]

[quote] And for software not in package files, all you need is an FTP server. If anyone does this, please do allow mirroring of your repository.

[/quote] Is an FTP site any easier to set up than a [non-fancy (:-)] website? It has the same disadvantage that BeShare has had in that it's hard to get information about the files.

[/quote]

The FTP access is important to allow easy mirroring. I don't mind also having a nice interface to search the files, and I tried to do so with beosarchive (the goal is to do something simialr to aminet for amiga software, but I'm no web developer).

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Hi, Pete,

The version of BeShare that’s in HaikuDepot has sources at https://github.com/HaikuArchives/BeShare

Would you care to upstream your changes so we don’t fragment BeShare?
Thanks.

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Now that I’ve sorted out my “lost” password (!), I’ll just note that I emailed waddlesplash, and I’ll pass my additions on to him.

BTW, does anyone know anything about javashare or unizone? Are they reasonable approximations of a BeShare client, or severely restricted? It’d be great to be able to share files from my rPi, which runs 24/7. I’d guess one problem is preserving attributes (essential!). xattrs might do it, if the apps actually know anything about them.

Otherwise I suppose I might try writing something, but that’s not near-term…

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Since the haikuarchives stuff is in such bad shape, it might be better to dump it and start over with this code, at least it works.

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The only problem with the HaikuArchives stuff now is file uploading, which I should have a fix for sometime soon. Everything else is solved (or else please file a bug report…)

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The thing that’s nice about the HaikuArchives version – for Haiku use – is that it uses the Layout library. I needed to modify the layout a bit in my version, to accommodate the extra button, and it was one major pain!

OTOH, I need the ‘retro’ code, because for the foreseeable future it needs to run in my BeOS machine, too.

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Thanks for your work on BeShare, Pete!
I’ve been always a big fan of that BeShare/m.u.s.c.l.e stuff.
Back in the BeOS-days™ i often used it, always nice conversations with people from around the world, everytime help from kind people for nearly every “problem” with BeOS and it’s software. Sadly at the time R5 has been released there wasn’t internet-flatrates available in my country :wink:

An m.u.s.c.l.e server has been (at least for me) the best solution to transfer files between my BeOS machines in LAN and still is with the HAIKU-OS machines!

Anyway, i have a lot of files from BeShare/BeBits around the timeframe of 2001 - 2007. Thousands of files (unfortunately just x86 (and only a couple PPC) files) but also a lot of sc from what has been available.
Last couple of months i had been successful in reading my old (IDE-)harddrives and Backup-CDs from that time. Even harddiscs which i left ‘unreadable’ back in the days had been successful restored.
Now all the files stored in my Linux-driven selfmade-NAS.
It would no problem to install JavaShare (thanks Bryan V. for that!) and share that folder but first of all i must divide in commercial software which i bought, and all the stuff been free available. And that needs a lot of time because of large zip-files and so on.

If anyone needs a file immediately drop me an eMail or write here, otherwise i plan to release all my (non-commercial-) files within next 6 months on BeShare and/or on my webspace.

1 Like
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[Quote]An m.u.s.c.l.e server has been (at least for me) the best solution to transfer files between my BeOS machines in LAN and still is with the HAIKU-OS machines![/Quote]
I’ve been finding it useful that way, too. muscled is always running on my rPi, which I seem to be using a lot as a communications hub of various kinds, so transfers via BeShare are quick and easy.

Sounds like you have a treasure trove of old files there! Be looking forward to seeing them. [And don’t talk to me about sorting! (:-/) A large proportion of the files clogging up my old BeOS machine are probably cruft – if I could only get the time to sort them…!]

I gather from what you say that JavaShare is capable of full sharing. I’ll take a look at it.

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[quote=ModeenF]This version are fully working… also it’s automaticly built for PM

So changes should go in to this or branch from this for easier update it.
[/quote]

Fine, if it happens… (:-)) In fact I sent Gus my extension patches a month ago, so you’re free to add them! [I know he’s busy on the Kitchen, and I’d definitely prefer he concentrate on that.]

The github process is always a bottleneck, though, because it depends on committers to be available and willing. I’ve pretty much gotten tired of the hassle in submitting patches to Haiku itself.

There were other reasons for going for an independent fork, As I said at the beginning, I need a “retro” app that still runs on BeOS, so it was far simpler to work from a perfectly good more generic version. (I see no advantage in insisting on the latest version of MUSCLE, when the changes in that have no impact on BeShare’s user experience.)

ATM I think the extensions make for a better user experience, and it looks like many(most?) users have installed it.

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Ok that I can relate to :slight_smile:

Do you still have the patch you sent him?

I’m also interested in what muscle changes you did.

You can reach me with “fredrik at modeen dot se”

//Fredrik

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Yes, sure, I can send you the patch. I should have mentioned, though, that the patch is against 2.28 rather than the github version of course.

Also, I’ve made that change since then to adjust the folder location for PM, so I should redo the patch first. Lelldorin suggested that the shared/downloads/logs folders should all be under a common /boot/home/BeShare directory, and that sounded good to me, too, as it avoids clutter in home, so I’ve done it that way.

The changes to muscle 3.20 were totally minor, just fixups for the slightly different Haiku headers.I’ll send you a separate patch for them.

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Worth noting that, thanks to the efforts of Clasqm, JimmyShaka, and AGMS, a lot of the old BeOS and even Haiku stuff that used to reside on BeBits and HaikuWare is now being shared on BeShare. Use the TyCom server.