Show HN: A chat client built on git | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A chat client built on git

github.com

81 pointsjonstaab33 comments

Sure this is a joke, but it's not crazy to think about a distributed commit log as the basis for distributed messaging. That's why I'm starting GitQ, a ZeroMQ-like distributed messaging framework that offers full auditability, customizable conflict resolution, and lazy reconciliation. Use it for your next microservices architecture!

I'm already using git commit logs as a micro-blog! ...internal to myself.

I had all this tooling already to e.g. scrape all the git repositories in my projects directory, and aggregate them into an activity feed for reviewing my own productivity. A dedicated repository to git commit --allow-empty -m "..." in, for non-code work, seemed like a natural and logical enough step.

Heh, you could use my fugitive project [1] and adapt the templates to build a static html + rss (micro)blog from your commit log :).

[1] https://shebang.ws/fugitive-readme.html

Nice documentation.

Did you consider using datomic instead of git?

I'm having fun thinking about git semantics in terms of a conversation. "I didn't like how that conversation went, oh just make a new branch or rebase master"

I said something stupid yesterday, better force push over that

This train of thougt was too messed up...but we have interactive rebase!

I've been toying with the idea of a git-backed MIME email, where each thread is a repo, each message is a commit, and send/receive semantics map to push/pull operations.

I don't work on it because I don't want to reinvent email -- a trap many have tried -- but I do want explore ways of doing content-addressed distributed messaging, and a DCVS gives you those for free.

that wouldn't be reinventing email. it'd be reinventing an email client, which is a great idea. HOWEVER a repo per thread seems ... not good. I'd go with a branch per thread. Maybe encode the subject in a way that git is happy with as a branch name but can be decoded to the original text or looked up from.

It's a bit about the protocol, a bit about the client, I think.

In worldspace, every message's direct descendants form a DAG, i.e. classic threading, so messages only know about their ancestors or successors.

The "inbox" contains many independent, unrelated threads. From a client's perspective, I can see wanting to treat the inbox as a repo containing many files, each file being a thread.

From a protocol perspective, the total contents and state of the parties' inboxes is not relevant (nor particularly wise to share); but you would want to push your changeset to a thread (i.e. a new message) to your recipient. A git changeset can affect many files, which is not consistent with the semantics I'd want to convey.

Sometimes I'll reply to two related posts in one email. Might be that gits ability to merge threads would be a bonus vs the usual idea of representing threads as trees.

you may want a branch per mailbox so that you can merge them, fork etc

> push/pull operations.

Exactly what I need: the opportunity to merge when trying to read my email.

public-inbox is a project to use git as a mailstore, so mailing list archives can be synced with a git pull. Not quite what you're describing, and they don't exactly have a detailed website, but: https://public-inbox.org/

You should remove node_modules from the repo. I see you have it in your .gitignore, so just delete the folder and make a new commit.

I don't think it's smart to commit login credentials to that GitHub account, even if it's a throw away: https://github.com/staab/git-chat/blob/61c401e719febaf3e05f4...

Consider using a OAuth token.

I'm sure someone's going to eventually hijack the account. I'm not too worried about it. 0Auth would've been a good idea though.

I just went ahead: https://github.com/staab/git-chat/pull/1

Thanks! OS is the bomb

I forgot about the security feature by GitHub: oauth_authorization.destroy – Personal access token (API) deleted automatically (found in a public repository)

ooops

This just made me really happy.

On OSX, I'm getting timestamps sent to me, but not the messages contained.

Also I think you need to slap a `npm install` in there--- I know you have node_modules in the repo but I think they don't really like being cloned.

Also, what repo is this writing to?

Ah good call. I'll add the install bit in there.

The repo is here:

https://github.com/git-chat-client/git-chat-messages

Also, I don't have OSX, so I'm not sure how to test that. Probably something with your git configuration or maybe my naive parsing of the logs?

Hmm. I changed this line https://github.com/staab/git-chat/blob/a78fac3e078001ea8e564... to

    var match = line.match("Subject: (.+)")

and it worked for me. I wonder if there's a more consistent way to grab the subject line from git logs.

That's super interesting; I didn't know git was so inconsistent across platforms. Valuable knowledge. I'll add that in.

GIT IS THE DATABASE...

The aesthetics of the site is refreshingly simple.

Does it poll? Or does it use push notifications?

It polls. If too many people join we'll end up DDoSing github again

Doesn't that happen regardless?

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