webtorrentify-github-release ALPHA

Generate a .torrent file corresponding to a particular Github Release

Why?

Distributing your application over WebTorrent/BitTorrent is cool! 😎

It can improve reliability and save money:

• Your application can still be downloaded if Github gets blocked, goes down, or kicks you off*
• You save Github 💲 by placing less demand on Github's AWS storage servers! ❤️

* as long as the torrent is being seeded

How?

This tool makes it easy to add a .torrent file to your existing Github Releases!

It downloads the files associated with a particular Github Release and creates a torrent file for them. If you provide a Github OAuth token in the environment variable, it will add the torrent file to your release for you.

You don't even have to add any new code or change your CI deployment process. You can try it first and see if you like it, and only automate it later.

TODO: Simplify seeding the result.

Installation

npm install webtorrentify-github-release --global

Usage

webtorrentify-github-release [owner] [repo] [version] [--upload]

If you don't specify owner, repo, or version it will try to obtain them from package.json in the current working directory.

Otherwise

• owner is the Github username or name.
• repo is the repository name.
• version is the release to use. It must exactly match the git tag.

If --upload is used, it will create a Github OAuth token using ghauth or reuse one previously saved by gh-release, and use putasset to upload the .torrent file to your release.

The Github Release files are downloaded to a temporary directory and deleted afterwards. The torrent file is saved in the current working directory and named ${repo}-${version}.torrent. If there was a problem it will exit with a non-zero exit code.

Examples

> cd mymodule
> webtorrentify-github-release
Downloading wmhilton/[email protected]...
RELEASES                 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 0.0s
Skipping upload to Github because the --upload flag wasn\'t used.
> ls
mymodule-v0.0.2.torrent

Publishing torrent to Github the first time:

> webtorrentify-github-release --upload
Downloading wmhilton/[email protected]...
RELEASES                 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 0.0s
Your GitHub username: wmhilton
Your GitHub password: ✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔

Your GitHub OTP/2FA Code (optional): ******
Uploaded .torrent to Github.

Subsequent usage:

> webtorrentify-github-release --upload
Downloading wmhilton/[email protected]...
RELEASES                 ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 0.0s
Uploaded .torrent to Github.

Automated usage

Install it as a dev dependency and add a script in your package.json

"devDependencies": {
  "webtorrentify-github-release": "1.x"
},
"scripts": {
  "deploy:torrent": "webtorrentify-github-release"
}

Then you can run it using "npm run deploy:torrent".

License

Copyright 2017 William Hilton. Licensed under The Unlicense.