In the next article we are going to take a look at Radicle. This is an open source project that aims to facilitate peer-to-peer collaboration to create code, all without depending on a centralized server. In other words, it is a P2P alternative to GitHub.
If you are a user of those who They don’t want to use centralized servers for their projects, but do want to have a peer-to-peer code collaboration feature available and something that works offline, Radicle is a tool that may interest you.
Radicle is a peer-to-peer stack that can help with collaborative code building. It enables developers to collaborate on code without relying on trusted intermediaries. This tool has been designed to provide functionality similar to centralized code collaboration platforms. At the same time it preserves the peer-to-peer nature of Git.
The network is powered by a peer-to-peer replication protocol built for Git, called Radicle Link. It extends Git by spreading data through a process called “gossip”. Participants in the network share and disseminate the data of interest to them by maintaining redundant copies locally and sharing their local data with selected peers. By leveraging Git’s smart transfer protocol, Radicle Link keeps Git efficient when it comes to data replication. Meanwhile, it offers global decentralized repository storage through the network layer peer-to-peer.
Radicle Features
- Radicle is an open source project which aims to provide a decentralized application for code collaboration. You can connect peer-to-peer if we need to share the project and work with someone else. Radicle is completely free. This tool is released under version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3).
- The desktop app still is in beta phase, but it’s worth a try. Due to lack of time I was only able to perform a couple of basic tests, but it seems to be quite promising.
- The program offers the ability to add multiple remote peers. We will be able to create an interconnected network with peers.
- It will offer us features to follow a project of a specific pair.
- Allows you to use a light and dark theme.
- We will have the possibility of share our project using a unique id.
- Does not depend on central servers. Forget about platforms. Easily share your code without depending on a third party.
- Includes the ability to work offline.
- This tool is built to be easy and comfortable for most developers to use.
Use Radicle in Ubuntu
Its creators offer from their website an .AppImage file for Gnu / Linux distributions. Thanks to this, it will not matter which distribution you use, any user can easily use this tool on their Gnu / Linux system.
To download the .AppImage file, users we can go to the download page or directly open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run wget as follows to download the latest publication as of today:
wget https://releases.radicle.xyz/radicle-upstream-0.1.5.AppImage
After finishing the download, we will have to give execute permissions to the downloaded file to be able to launch the tool.
sudo chmod +x radicle-upstream-0.1.5.AppImage
It is important to be clear that we need to configure Git with our name and email address before we start. We will need the terminal to configure and use git version control:
git config --global user.name "Nombre-usuario" git config --global user.email "tu-correo@electronico.com"
The GUI of this tool is easy to use and understand. It’s easy to manage remote controls, copy unique ID to share project, and more. It must be said that if you are familiar with the Git version control system, using this tool should be very simple.
To gain ease when using this tool, it is advisable to experiment with it. To obtain information on its use, users can consult the official documentation that they have published in the project website.
