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Comment by bpw | Hacker News Reader

dgit dev here: first, let me say git-ssb is a great project as well!

We see a few distinct advantages:

- Using dgit doesn't require running a "node" of any kind (aka an SSB peer). This is possible because of the unique architecture of the Tupelo DLT: https://github.com/quorumcontrol/tupelo.

- Because of ^, installing and adding a dgit remote to your existing workflow is super easy.

- The storage in dgit is separated from the ownership of the repo. This means you can distribute the actual git objects across any storage system you would like, see my comment to cfstras below.

ssb is a few years ahead here - having a web ui and more robust suite of collaboration tools is great, but we're hoping to add those features down the road as well! Another unique advantage is the Tupelo js client (https://github.com/QuorumControl/tupelo-wasm-sdk) can run fully in the browser, meaning a fully decentralized UI is possible!

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> Using dgit doesn't require running a "node" of any kind (aka an SSB peer)

I'm not sure that I understand this, could you add details? The only interpreteation that makes sense is "you don't have to run any software on your computer", but that would suggest that the storage is centralized on some internet services.

Happy to chat about SSB any time. Good luck on this project!

In the default setup, storage is provided by sia skynet, so on push all git objects are distributed across the sia network and are simply retrieved when you do a git fetch / clone from a dgit url. But as mentioned, thats configurable and could be any other storage system.

However, even with distributed storage, you still need to know what makes up the git index on a given git url (aka dgit://quorumcontrol/tupelo) - this is where the Tupelo DLT comes in. When you do a push, the Tupelo network verifies the request and updates the refs of that repo.

Both of these are just basic tcp/https requests, so there truly is no long running daemon on your machine required in order to push or fetch dgit repos.

> Using dgit doesn't require running a "node" of any kind (aka an SSB peer)

Can you expand on this? An SSB "peer" is entirely local, so conceptually similar to a `.git` directory.

I'm struggling to understand how a decentralised system can operate without peers.

(I clicked through on the Tupelo link, but from what I can glean from the README, a Chain Tree sounds very similar to an SSB peer. Just trying to understand the distinction)

Also: Does this work offline, or on just a LAN? To be completely candid, I feel very strongly that we should be moving away from decentralized protocol that require anything more than two friends and a wifi network.

Well the basics underneath Tupelo are cryptographic signatures and an immutable chain we use call a ChainTree (which is per repo), so in theory this could work between two people so long as you trusted each other's signatures. Using the Tupelo network provides trust for the specific name, as well as prevents conflicting updates to the same repo.

It's a very interesting idea though, would love to hear more. Feel free to drop by our gitter: https://gitter.im/quorumcontrol-dgit/community

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