The release of the Radicle P2P platform version 1.7 has been announced. This platform aims to create a decentralized collaborative development and code storage service similar to GitHub and GitLab, but without the need for specific servers, making it resistant to censorship and utilizing the resources of participants in a P2P network. The platform supports common elements of social interaction among developers, such as issues, patches, and code reviews. The project's codebase is written in Rust and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 and MIT licenses. Builds are available for Linux and macOS. Additionally, a desktop client, web interface, and console interface are under development. <\/p>\n
Radicle allows developers to work on and distribute code independently from centralized platforms and corporations, which can introduce additional risks such as a single point of failure, and the company might shut down or change its terms of service. Code management in Radicle uses the familiar Git, enhanced with tools for identifying repositories in a P2P network. All data is primarily stored locally (a local-first concept) and is always accessible on the developer\u2019s computer, regardless of the status of the network connection. <\/p>\n
Participants grant access to their code and related artifacts, such as patches and discussions about bug fixes (issues), which are stored locally and replicated on the nodes of other interested developers connected to the shared decentralized P2P network. As a result, a global decentralized Git repository is formed, with data replicated and duplicated across various participants' systems. <\/p>\n
To identify neighboring nodes in the P2P network, the Gossip protocol is used, while data replication between nodes is managed by the Heartwood protocol, based on Git. Since the protocol is based on Git, the platform can be easily integrated with existing Git development tools. For node identification and repository verification, cryptography based on public keys is utilized, without the use of accounts. Authentication and authorization are carried out based on public keys without centralized authorities. servers<\/a>. <\/p>\n Each repository in the P2P network has its own unique identifier and is self-certifying, meaning all actions in the repository, such as adding commits and leaving comments on issues, are validated by the owner with a digital signature, allowing verification of data integrity on other nodes without the use of centralized certificate authorities. To access the repository, it is sufficient for at least one node containing its replicated copy to be online. <\/p>\n Nodes in the P2P network can subscribe to specific repositories and receive updates. Private repositories can be created, accessible only to certain nodes. The concept of 'delegates' is used for managing and owning the repository. A delegate can be an individual user, a bot, or a group tied to a special identifier. Delegates can submit patches to the repository, close issues, and assign access rights to the repository. Multiple delegates can be associated with each repository. <\/p>\n Radicle repositories are stored on users' systems as regular git repositories, which include additional namespaces to store data about peers and forks with which current work is being done. Discussions, proposed patches, and components for conducting reviews are also stored in the git repository as collaborative objects (COB - Collaborative Objects) and are replicated among peers. <\/p>\n In the new release: <\/p>\n\n