OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation

by vsurabhi • 7 years ago

813 220 7 years ago

This is great, especially considering that AirDrop is used for instance by Hong Kong protesters to bypass the great firewall [1].

[1] https://qz.com/1660460/hong-kong-protesters-use-airdrop-to-b...

est• 7 years ago

GFW is only implemented in the mainland China, not Hong Kong.

    China == (mainland + (Hongkong SAR + Macau SAR) + (... possibly other de jure claims))

To use Airdrop the main advantage is it can be used to spam everyone nearby.

If it can be used by protestors it also can be used by advertisers.

arghwhat3• 7 years ago

They are not using AirDrop to bypass the GFW for themselves, they are using it to spread information to citizens that are otherwise normally subject to GFW and therefore only have government-approved or government-generated information available to them.

Mainland news put HK protesters as violent, rebellious youngsters that are causing trouble and injury to everyone else by having greedy demands of something better than what mainland has. Such story leads to minimal sympathy and curiosity.

Even knowing that this information is filtered, few will end up truly questioning it, and thus even when they leave GFW, they will not know that there is conflicting information to find.

pashky• 7 years ago

And in UK it’s used to send dickpics to strangers on the train... opendrop requires to set security level to everybody instead of contacts. If you forget to switch back to default you get instant reminder once you get onto public transport.

devtanna• 7 years ago

I wish we had something like AirDrop to work between android and iOS devices.

jbverschoor3• 7 years ago

There it is

jeroenhd• 7 years ago

Knowing Apple, such an effort would likely be destroyed by an army of lawyers the moment you bring out an app that provides such features.

The Apple ecosystem is very closed and Apple will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Removing vendor lock-in would, after all, allow users to try switching to another brand without an enormous amount of hassle.

michaelkw• 7 years ago

Apple's open-source mDNS/DNS-SD implementation mDNSResponder underlies Android's NSD API, so I could one day see seamless interoperability over Wi-Fi Aware being a thing. I wouldn't bet on it happening, but given Windows (which ships with an mDNS/DNS-SD stack) and Android will be doing it before too long, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple join the party.

est31• 7 years ago

The Apple ecosystem is very closed and Apple will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

In general you are right, Apple is very adamant about keeping full control over their ecosystem (and locking users in). They even sponsor a C compiler project so that they can avoid gcc. There are exceptions though, like AirPrint which is a marketing name for open standard technologies: https://wiki.debian.org/AirPrint

scq• 7 years ago

https://snapdrop.net works pretty well if you're on the same Wi-Fi network.

spullara2• 7 years ago

AirDrop uses a sidechannel wifi network that doesn't expose the transfer to anyone else.

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

Not having to be in the same WiFi network is part of the whole point of AirDrop is it it?

vetinari• 7 years ago

Samsung devices support WiFi Direct, so you don't have to be on the same wifi network to send/receive files and the solution is standards-based.

In theory, other Android devices support WiFi Direct too, maybe they just don't ship userspace apps for that, like Samsung does.

jumelles• 7 years ago

iMessage too. It's insane to me that this is still a problem.

spullara2• 7 years ago

Anything that opens a network increases spam.

filleokus2• 7 years ago

I guess you mean something that is first party on both platforms? Otherwise SMS-like communication is obviously a solved issue (Signal/WhatsApp/Messenger et al).

Does Android have something similar to iMessage?

tecleandor2• 7 years ago

That's not a problem. That was precisely Apple's idea: a not interoperable message network.

We had XMPP among others, and Apple decided not to be open. We now also have Signal or Telegram, which are multi-platform.

eknkc• 7 years ago

I like that here in Turkey every single person uses WhatsApp. I recently switched from iOS to Android and haven't realized I lost iMessage.

cprecioso• 7 years ago

They found code for kind of that in the new Google Play Services bundles ( https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/30/google-fast-sharing... ). They theorize in the article that it uses the same technologies as Airdrop, so they might be compatible - though I doubt it.

lucb1e5• 7 years ago

I use https://dro.pm a lot to share files or links. Since the links are super short (I just made https://dro.pm/a --- note that it'll expire in 12 hours), you can just give the link to someone over the phone, put them in a presentation, or just share files independent of any operating system.

I even use it even between my laptop and my phone fairly frequently, since the top suggestion on my phone keyboard in the browser is dro.pm and I just have to add a slash (long-press "m") and a letter. It's quicker to use dropm than to open a chat with myself or send myself an email or something.

Of course this is just protected by https, and although it is source-available and the links are really gone after expiry (or when you edited it, the old contents are irretrievable), magic-wormhole is superior in that you don't have a trusted third party. For the cases where the other party doesn't have magic-wormhole installed, this might be helpful. This also alleviates the requirement of WebRTC for both parties to be online simultaneously.

newscracker2• 7 years ago

Firefox Send (send.firefox.com) may be another option to share files, though the link would be longer than what you have with dro.pm.

magic-wormhole is superior in that you don't have a trusted third party.

Well, magic-wormhole does need a trusted third party called Rendezvous Server. [1]

[1] https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api.html#ren...

newscracker2• 7 years ago

Apple wouldn't allow a solution that's integrated within the OS, but if you want to share data between devices, AirDroid [1] is one such free service. It is available on multiple platforms, including Android, iOS, macOS, Windows and web. Use web.airdroid.com on devices/computers where you don't want to install the application.

[1] https://www.airdroid.com/

postcynical• 7 years ago

Could this technology be used to create a "shadow" internet/network/messaging service where devices connect and communicate directly with each other. This way governments can't just block internet access or services during demonstrations.

rlpb4• 7 years ago

this technology

XMPP over Zeroconf (https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0174.html) has already existed for many years and at least previously has been trivial to enable on Ubuntu (I haven't tried it recently).

oarsinsync2• 7 years ago

Requires an underlying network infrastructure to communicate over. Not quite the same as disparate peer to peer wireless mesh.

willvarfar2• 7 years ago

A government - or even just a sufficiently motivated individual - can trivially jam all phone, wifi, bluetooth etc communication.

Or they could just 'listen in' to record the signatures of all detected phones, so they can work out and identify who is in the crowd etc.

Military systems use frequency hopping etc and would be a more difficult target. But doubtless motivated governments could hamper their use in crowds too. Here's a fun comment I just found when I googled that: https://www.quora.com/Is-noise-jamming-an-AESA-radar-possibl...

abdullahkhalids2• 7 years ago

Absolutely, but I can ask a bit more nuanced question.

In any society, there is state-"friendly" communication and state-"unfriendly" communication. Also there are state-"essential" communications like state-propoganda [1]. Is it possible to build communication networks that allow for secure and anonymous state-unfriendly communication, such that trivially jamming it also jams state-friendly and state-essential communications?

As you might realize, a yes answer to this question is sufficient for protestors communication needs. Not the harder question of completely unblockable communications - which as we know is impossible. Of course, in the real world, the answer to my question might not be a "yes/no" but a resource-tradeoff.

[1] which every country in the world democratic or dictorial engages in. If you don't agree, please read Manufacturing Consent.

ymolodtsov2• 7 years ago

FireChat.

neilalexander4• 7 years ago

For what it’s worth, I have been able to get the Yggdrasil Network (https://yggdrasil-network.github.io) to peer over AWDL, allowing nearby Macs to mesh without even being connected to the same Wi-Fi network, or any network at all.

It’s not perfect - there are trade offs, like how the wireless performance is reduced somewhat when AWDL is active due to channel hopping and how AWDL expects a single node to play the role of clock sync source. It’s also not very well tested yet.

However, it works and in theory it allows an infrastructure-free IPv6 mesh network to be built ad-hoc.

theresistor• 7 years ago

I would be very interested to learn more about this if you have any pointers.

big_chungus4• 7 years ago

Any chance you could throw together a quick blog post on this? Or maybe a quick gist; doesn't have to be polished.

new_here• 7 years ago

Not all heroes wear capes.

krtkush2• 7 years ago

I haven't looked at the OP yet but as convenient as AirDrop is, I find its reliance on both BT and WiFi confusing. One needs both the devices to be connected to the same network to be able to able to drop stuff.

Few days back my home router broke down and I was unable to send URLs from my iPhone to Mac just because there was no common network.

I wish for AirDrop to be more like Pushbullet.

dannyw• 7 years ago

You just have to be within bluetooth distance; AirDrop doesn't require the same wifi network. It does require wifi to be enabled, because AirDrop creates its own wifi network side channel for the actual transferring of files.

krtkush2• 7 years ago

Really? I'll give it a try again. It was clearly not working for me when the router was down.

jbverschoor3• 7 years ago

Yep. But still it’s kind of annoying to have to enable everything. It’s confusing to people who don’t know this.

trollied• 7 years ago

It doesn't need a wifi network, it's direct device-to-device.

In fact, it can be much faster than copying using traditional file shares etc, as wireless routers can slow things down.

jtbayly• 7 years ago

Yes. I've been surprised how very fast it is when sharing videos between devices.

micheljansen• 7 years ago

I wonder if it's more reliable than Apple's own implementation for MacOs. It used to be rock solid – and between iOS devices it still is – but between Macs I regularly have to switch both to "Search for an older Mac" to make them see each other, with no explanation why.

shimms• 7 years ago

I was complaining about this with a coworker today. AirDrop 1 was flawless, since 2.0 it has been more often than not unreliable between Macs.

I’d love to know if anyone knows the technical details about what caused this regression?

flixic2• 7 years ago

Interesting, my own experience has been the opposite. From what I remember v1 was constantly broken, initial v2 was not much better but now everything is very smooth all the time.

knolan• 7 years ago

I had massive issues with Airdrop 2 when it first came out. After many lengthy chats with Apple support it managed to resolve itself. All I can offer and a working solution is signing out and back into iCloud on each affected device. This of course comes with the resync penalty.

lostgame4• 7 years ago

AirDrop 1 never worked for me, ever. With any combination of iOS or MacOS devices.

AirDrop 2 is still so finicky I just much rather put stuff on a USB key.

DerDangDerDang• 7 years ago

I’ve found it very flaky on iOS - regularly try to transfer between my phone and my wife’s sitting next to each other and it will randomly not see the other phone or take minutes to find it :(

When it works, it just works.

jclardy2• 7 years ago

I've never had issues with iOS - discovery is near immediate every time. The only time I've had issues is when sharing with random people that have it set to contacts only and we haven't shared a contact, or if someone turned wifi off manually.

On the Mac though, it is a different story. Just yesterday my wife was trying to send me a PDF and I had to send it to my phone from her Mac, then dump it into iCloud Drive. I rebooted my Mac and then it worked again - but these are stock 2018/2019 Apple laptops, they shouldn't have these issues.

cerberusss• 7 years ago

Yep, for me it's also quite flaky. When I mentioned this to a friend, he asked me if I was kidding -- it always worked for him.

chapium• 7 years ago

I found that the macos firewall is to blame.

ekwogefee• 7 years ago

Cross-platform local file transfer alternative with resumable file transfer:

https://feem.io

amq• 7 years ago

Looks great, I wonder why it doesn't have more traction.

flixic2• 7 years ago

The killer feature of AirDrop is that it's built in. Impossible to compete against network effects like that.

elcomet• 7 years ago

Maybe because it's not free: 5$ a year for 4 devices but only the same type, you cannot install it on your Mac and your iPhone With only one licence. So if you want to transfer between Mac and iPhone, it's at least 10$ a year.

skrowl4• 7 years ago

Because not only is it not free, but it also has an annual license to use it.

nesadi2• 7 years ago

This looks interesting. I'm a bit confused though. It seems like all the pricing plans are structured in a way that you're either only paying for iOS devices or for every kind of device except iOS ones. Does this mean transfers between iOS and non-iOS devices aren't supported? Or do I have to buy two plans in order to do it?

edit: Okay, on a closer look, it seems like you do need two licenses, because the iOS license can only be purchased through the iOS app. Just wish they'd provide a brief trial so I could test it.

edit2: Nevermind, apparently, if you install the apps, you can use them in a limited fashion before buying. It doesn't say anywhere what the limits are, but it says there are limits.

aardshark2• 7 years ago

One of the limits is that you can't choose where your downloads go. Also, there are now ads on the unpaid version, which I think weren't there before.

I grew to dislike the app after running into the limits/ads. It does work, but it feels cheap and unpolished. There's no way I'd ever buy one of the pricing plans. I just don't feel like I would be getting my money's worth, especially when I could just go through a more involved solution.

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

Interestingly the article on the bottom links to a Usenix 2019 (held Aug 14 - 16) paper with the title "A Billion Open Interfaces for Eve and Mallory: MitM, DoS, and Tracking Attacks on iOS and macOS Through Apple Wireless Direct Link"

Abstract:

"Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) is a key protocol in Apple's ecosystem used by over one billion iOS and macOS devices for device-to-device communications. AWDL is a proprietary extension of the IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard and integrates with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for providing services such as Apple AirDrop. We conduct the first security and privacy analysis of AWDL and its integration with BLE. We uncover several security and privacy vulnerabilities ranging from design flaws to implementation bugs leading to a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack enabling stealthy modification of files transmitted via AirDrop, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks preventing communication, privacy leaks that enable user identification and long-term tracking undermining MAC address randomization, and DoS attacks enabling targeted or simultaneous crashing of all neighboring devices. The flaws span across AirDrop's BLE discovery mechanism, AWDL synchronization, UI design, and Wi-Fi driver implementation. Our analysis is based on a combination of reverse engineering of protocols and code supported by analyzing patents. We provide proof-of-concept implementations and demonstrate that the attacks can be mounted using a low-cost ($20) micro:bit device and an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi card. We propose practical and effective countermeasures. While Apple was able to issue a fix for a DoS attack vulnerability after our responsible disclosure, the other security and privacy vulnerabilities require the redesign of some of their services." [1]

I got nothing to add regarding OpenDrop other than that I love interoperability, and that I love it when FOSS enables this.

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19/presentat...

toxik3• 7 years ago

I can’t hep but think that these seemingly numerous security flaws are a product of proprietary software development. There is the old “many eyes” idea for software bugs, but even on a standards level. Did Apple not send out an RFC? Isn’t this type of architectural level screw up exactly what you want to avoid with an RFC?

I’m glad Apple are taking the privacy issue to heart, but for every inch we’ve won in privacy, we lost an inch in openness and interoperability. Apple is perhaps one of the worst offenders when it comes to vendor lock-in.

I use almost only Apple products out of sheer laziness (and honestly inertia.) At least their war with Qualcomm and NVIDIA creates some competition in their respective markets...

adestefan• 7 years ago

The “many eyes” hypothesis is routinely debunked when severe security bugs are found in things like the Linux kernel that have been there for years. The same is true for standards that end up being fundamentally broken at later dates. In the end software and hardware is so overly complicated that we cannot currently build secure systems.

tinus_hn• 7 years ago

If you allow anyone to send you files over the air without authenticating you or them, there is no way to prevent the files from being modified in transit.

atombender2• 7 years ago

There's also this 2018 paper by the same authors: "One Billion Apples’ Secret Sauce: Recipe for the Apple Wireless Direct Link Ad hoc Protocol" [1]. Not sure which paper came first.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.03156.pdf

HNcantBtrustd2• 7 years ago

FOSS may have downsides, for instance it's free, but doesn't have iTunes built in.

I consider both of these advantages, but some users don't. I consider the benefits of open source far exceeds the perceived benefits of Apple's Ecosystem.

Maybe as developers it's important to teach our Apple Peers the problems they perpetuate by paying for walled gardens.

oarsinsync2• 7 years ago

What about your apple peer developers, who have made a deliberate and conscious choice to use Apple devices in their day to day life, and stable open source solutions in production / deployment environments?

Some of us used to live in the FOSS garden, and decided to trade extra money in exchange for receiving a lot of time back and a shiny finish. Everyones values vary.

andrewstuart2• 7 years ago

I'm guessing someone will take a $10 esp32 chip and put this code on it and just drop the esp32 in some hidden location and it just sending images to any open airdrop that passes by.

dvcrn• 7 years ago

I had it a couple times in trains that people tried airdropping me porn when I forgot to turn it off

tcxqy• 7 years ago

Good things never happen to me.

perillamint• 7 years ago

ESP32 theoretically can provide all of the hardware requirements (WLAN monitor mode, BLE) but there is one missing part:

Triggering macOS/iOS receivers via Bluetooth Low Energy. Apple devices start their AWDL interface and AirDrop server only after receiving a custom advertisement via Bluetooth LE (see USENIX paper for details). This means, that Apple AirDrop receivers may not be discovered even if they are discoverable by everyone.

If someone reverse engineer BLE advertisement, yes they can build such hardware.

Kliment• 7 years ago

This has been reversed - see https://hexway.io/blog/apple-bleee/

mstute• 7 years ago

The reverse engineering was already done and everything is described our the paper (https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19). We just have not implemented it yet.

snuxoll• 7 years ago

Bluetooth OBEX spam for the current decade.

andrewstuart2• 7 years ago

Is there any valid use cases for something like "legitimate airdrop"?

Maybe things like hyper local advertisements.

azinman23• 7 years ago

I wouldn’t consider that legitimate at all. Legitimate airdrop is its exact intended use case: p2p transfer between people who are both consenting into it.

mobilemidget• 7 years ago

Would it also be possible to share contacts and links to sites? Thinking of a new reception desk feature (lots of apple customers)

badwolf• 7 years ago

You can absolutely do both with AirDrop (from ios/MacOS)

dsl2• 7 years ago

I believe AirDrop defaults to "Contacts Only" so you'd need to have every customer add your reception phone number.

epixcz• 7 years ago

Xiaomi, Oppo And Vivo just introduced their own version of AirDrop. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2019/08/19/xiaomi-oppo-a...

dijit• 7 years ago

Seems like theirs is not cross-compatible with airdrop. But OpenDrop is.

rektide3• 7 years ago

If there's a standard for this new thing, apple can stuff it.

edandersen• 7 years ago

How hard would it be to use this to spam iOS devices where AirDrop is set to "Everyone"?

mxuribe• 7 years ago

It is 2019, and it is quite surprising - and disappointing - that we STILL haven't universally solved the means to easily, securely, and (yes, I'll use this term again) universally share files. I wish we could share files in a peer-to-peer fashion securely without hindrance of mobile platform, nor blockage of network MiTM, etc. </sigh>

skrowl4• 7 years ago

https://files.google.com/ is a standard and it works on the vast majority of phone sold this year, by every manufacturer except Apple. Checks all 3 of peer-to-peer, secure, no MiTM network blockage. It's only 11MB.

Many popular file manager apps on android have peer-to-peer xfers as well, via WiFi direct, etc.

EDIT - As people are pointing out this isn't universal because it doesn't work on Apple devices or desktops / laptops, but it's as close as I can think of currently.

ahmedfromtunis2• 7 years ago

Almost. People need to install the app to use its transfer functionality, and it does not work with computers. We're still far from the universal, no-install solution that should've existed for so many years now.

thedanbob• 7 years ago

except Apple

I wouldn't exactly call that universal...

lucideer• 7 years ago

There are numerous problems with this suggestion.

- "is a standard"? What does this mean? Google Files is not a standard of any kind.

- others have mentioned that this is very far from universal. Whatever about Apple devices, you're also discounting all non-mobile devices. Transferring files easily from computer to phone is probably the most common use-case. Yes, you can use Google Drive for that, but that's neither p2p nor seamless.

- the above commenter mentioned wanting a "secure" solution. That's a bit of a subjective term, but I would guess, at least on HN, the typical one would be e2e encrypted, and private. Google Files is neither of these things.

- the p2p function is severely limited in that it requires both a Google account, and location services to be enabled. Neither of which are necessary to initiate a p2p file transfer.

(as another commenter has mentioned), if we're just looking for "the closest thing", I would suggest https://send.firefox.com/ It isn't p2p, but it is secure and universal, so it ticks a lot more boxes overall.

lostgame4• 7 years ago

The situation isn't being helped by another proprietary solution that won't be cross-platform. (I'm an iOS dev, and I don't see integration of this possible without using private API's, and this would also fall under the 'Duplicate existing service' issue.)

briandear• 7 years ago

It’s just as “standard” as AirDrop on iOS/MacOS which means it isn’t a standard at all.

rconti• 7 years ago

What's the standard this implements?

staticvoidmaine• 7 years ago

Rather than the google solution suggested by a sibling comment, I’d suggest a look at send.firefox.com.

ahmedfromtunis2• 7 years ago

They don't offer the same solution; Google's works on a peer to peer manner, no internet needed. Firefox's is more like Wetransfer.

badumtss• 7 years ago

I just wish they'd hurry up and make the android app useable. I signed up for the beta and was pretty disappointed as my uploads were cancelled if my screen locked or, horribly enough, rotated ...

skrowl4• 7 years ago

Send.firefox.com sends files over the internet, not peer-to-peer.

If you're somewhere with poor (or no) network connectivity you can still use Google Files or AirDrop (I believe, not 100% sure on AirDrop).

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

Or magic-wormhole [1]. FOSS, x-platform, Python.

[1] https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

Opera Unite did it (and that's about the fifth time this year I've mentioned Opera Unite in response to a comment bemoaning a lack in currently embedded internet systems/apps).

cyphar2• 7 years ago

Have you taken a look at magic-wormhole[1]? I've started using it recently and it's insanely easy to use.

It does have a centralised signalling server for key exchange between peers, but it does attempt to do peer-to-peer data transfer (only falling back to a TURN-style relay if both clients are behind NATs and aren't on the same local network). An explanation of the cryptography and design was given at PyCon 2016[2]. It also has built-in optional Tor support (though I'm not sure if it attempts to use an onion service for data transfer).

[1] https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole [2]: https://youtu.be/oFrTqQw0_3c

zaroth• 7 years ago

I think this project demonstrates quite handily that the problem scope of a seemingly simple task can be quite large. ~1,500 commits in that repo.

oefrha3• 7 years ago

I’m a happy user of magic-wormhole myself. It doesn’t solve the problem of sending files to phones, though.

big_chungus4• 7 years ago

Magic wormhole is good, and I've used it before, but it's never as fast as it could be. Something like piping to netcat is always faster. I know it's possible (albeit with a lot of work) to do this over HTTP, but google drive is probably the only site that can mostly saturate a connection. Can any one link more info on how exactly they achieve this? The only trick I know of is a better TCP congestion control algorithm.

anderspitman• 7 years ago

file.pizza has mostly solved this for me. Not ideal UX, but it gets the job done.

lucb1e5• 7 years ago

For those who don't know it, I'm not sure if it's clear that this is a link: yes, it really is just file.pizza (https://file.pizza).

mackrevinack• 7 years ago

the safe network is making good progress lately.you might be waiting another year or two though

dvfjsdhgfv• 7 years ago

Personally I've been using Nitroshare for years in my home network and it works like a charm (between Windows, Linux, and macOS). Android is also supported, but not iOS (I saw someone created an iOS app, but I doubt it works still).

infectoid• 7 years ago

Isn't that what Bump was all about until Google killed it?

http://techland.time.com/2014/01/01/sadly-but-inevitably-goo...

smurfpandey• 7 years ago

An HTML5 alternative: https://github.com/cowbell/sharedrop

Uses WebRTC for file transfer.

theomega• 7 years ago

Just to make it more obvious: You don’t have to self host it, there is a free (no registration) Version deployed at https://sharedrop.io

Works perfect between IOS, Android, Linux, MacOS and Windows.

explorigin• 7 years ago

Why does it need firebase? That doesn't seem to tic the "not-google" box. :-)

felipeerias• 7 years ago

If you are interested in possible uses for this kind of technology, my R&D work until recently has been to find use cases for WiFi Aware and bring them to life.

Some examples:

* 1-tap file transfers: https://darker.ink/static/media/uploads/08_awarebeam_1.mp4

* Sharing presentations, images and drawings: https://darker.ink/static/media/uploads/05_meshpresenter_1.m...

* Playing Quake 3 (OpenArena): https://darker.ink/static/media/uploads/02_openarena_1.mp4

If you want to know more details, this talk is a good starting point:

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/device_to_device_netw...

https://darker.ink/blog/mobile-design-with-device-to-device-...

bborud4• 7 years ago

God, I wish people would stop using Python for these sorts of things.

It is an okay language, but after tracking down why it doesn't build and considering messing around in my system and making either installing older versions of libraries or messing around with symlinks I stopped and asked myself "really? I want to spend my time fixing this?" and just deleted the entire clone of the git repos.

Python is a nice language and all, but it is not a language suitable for writing applications that you distribute. (I wish the Python core developer would devote some time to making Python less horrible for distributing applications, but after around 30 years, I don't think so).

djsumdog• 7 years ago

I honestly haven't run into this issue in a long time. `pip install --user` is one of your friends. Just using the official python:3 docker container is another. If you really want, you can even go back to virtualenvs.

npm was also really bad about nothing building or working a few years back. It's improved, and there are alternatives like yarn. Rust/Cargo has this issue as well (whenever I attempted to pick up some Rust; every example I found would break -- constant language changes were an issue; not sure if that's still the case).

Package management is a big problem in general, but we have solutions like the ones I've mentioned. This is a bad argument against not using Python. I honestly thing this type of application is fine in Python (you might need a privileged container if you go the docker route; wasn't sure how low level the Wi-Fi stuff it needs is).

What language do you recommend for this type of application and why?

bborud4• 7 years ago

Primarily any language that can produce executable binaries. Preferably statically linked binaries so that you can ship a unit that will not depend on the state of the system you try to run things on.

(With disk and memory sizes, dynamically linked binaries aren't really as relevant anymore since the often trivial cost of size more than makes up for the nontrivial cost of having to fiddle around to make things actually work)

derrick_jensen• 7 years ago

Rust is pretty good about library support and reproducible builds

daeken• 7 years ago

What language do you recommend for this type of application and why?

This is the #1 reason why .NET Core gets so much of my mindshare these days. If I write something and put it out there, it will Just Work (TM) 99.99999% of the time. As soon as the user runs `dotnet build` or `dotnet run`, it'll automatically go grab the exact right versions of packages from NuGet and set everything up locally. The only time anything tricky ever happens is if some third-party library doesn't ship a native library dep for each platform; that's rare, but does occasionally happen.

atombender2• 7 years ago

I don't use Python, but I've never had any issues with any distributed Python app. I have, however, had endless problems with C and C++ apps.

The C way of referring to header files and libraries on the host system invariably leads to situations where the app wants to use a specific version that your system doesn't have. And we're not necessarily talking about system libs, either. Apparently authors thought the only way to mitigate the problem was to invent Automake/Autoconf in order to sniff what your system is capable of. (The saner solution for non-system libs would be to "vendor" your dependencies inside the app's source tree.)

Python has that pretty much solved with PIP. (Dependencies can still be a problem if a package uses the C way to link to things like Readline or OpenSSL or whatever.)

bborud4• 7 years ago

Did you try to install OpenDrop?

Just hope you are lucky enough to have the right C dependencies installed.

acomjean• 7 years ago

I deal with biology researchers trying to install various analysis programs. Python has caused me some pain recently. Its not easy, some use python 2.7 some packages use python 3.0. Many use different environments (pyenv/conda..). I ended up with a separate environment for each package..

To be fair java based software install isn't much better.

R is oddly a standout, in ease of installing packages. (Except the one time it didn't work, but in this case it wasn't much worse than anything else).

In general software distribution could be made much better.

encoderer• 7 years ago

You’re right and the other half of this is the hoops you jump through as a developer to target as many python releases as possible. It’s insanity.

I built all of Cronitor in Python, still love it, but when we started building server agents it was not a hard decision to leave Python behind. (In this case, for Go)

slovenlyrobot• 7 years ago

- Click link, blown away by impossible feat of reverse engineering proprietary system done by apparently a lone hero contributor

- Realize nothing I work on really has so much impact as this one lone hero is likely to have already achieved by releasing this code

- Open HN thread with a sense of wonderment

- Read top comment, engulfed by a wave of revulsion, remember why we can't have nice things

godzillabrennus• 7 years ago

My sentiments mirrored almost exactly.

Except to add that Python has issues but is clearly winning hearts and minds for a reason. It’s wonderful that an open source language has become so powerful, versatile, and widely adopted.

I’d take this era of computing over the days of ActiveX and Flash being the ubiquitous approach to releasing software.

oefrha3• 7 years ago

Gosh, I wish people stop complaining about the language choice whenever cool project X happens to be written in a pet peeve of theirs.

jtl999• 7 years ago

I do agree that's an issue, although I wouldn't put it as drastic as you did.

I was working on a Flask project many years ago and it didn't seem straightforward to "vendor" dependencies with the `pip install` paradigm. Guess I was wrong.

https://medium.com/underdog-io-engineering/vendoring-python-...

There's a reason why virtualenv and similar exist. Another interesting point. Gentoo Linux (which uses Python in the Portage package manager) doesn't support installing modules as system (by default) to presumably avoid breaking the system package manager.

xmichael999• 7 years ago

I agree, it really is to bad there isn't a better way of distributing Python. I've not had much of an issue with it running for console based pure linux stuff mind you, it tends to in my experience fall apart when you add gui elements and/or go outside of linux.

nitrogen• 7 years ago

Does Python have something analogous to RVM or Gemsets, or Bundler (Bundler can exclude incompatible dependencies at runtime)?

rolltiide2• 7 years ago

People use Anaconda to avoid this and get a pretty seamless experience. Lets you use multiple python configs on the same system and manages that for you.

I learned this when taking a computational finance class specifically to figure out why that and the quant/ai/ml community gravitated around python.

Python's advantages here came from about 12 years ago, when the syntax was friendly but other similar syntax friendly languages had a lot of overhead and other compromises. But these differentiators are mostly non-existent today, and Python is the only one with basically two different programming languages (py 2.x, py 3.x) operating under a single "Python" brand.

rektide3• 7 years ago

Balls in Android's court to deliver some kind of p2p connectivity that works beyond Android2android. Can't happen soon enough. Stop playing with yourself & start doing real computing, Android.

fulafel• 7 years ago

WebRTC has been around for a while.

rektide3• 7 years ago

What a dumb reply. Webrtc works on the web for p2p ok. But how do people in the same area transfer files with each other? There are huge rendezvous problems webrtc comes no where near addressing.

rolltiide2• 7 years ago

Get this into Android at the OS level and I would consider one of those sexy flagship devices

But it would also need to seamlessly mix bluetooth and wifi discovery too.

shireboy2• 7 years ago

Let's talk for a minute about why all the Apple things aren't open. There is zero about iMessage or AirDrop that should be proprietary. The only reason I know of is vendor lock-in, and that stinks for users. It would be way more helpful to way more people if these features were ubiquitous, open, and standards-based like SMTP or IMAP is for email. We wouldn't except an Apple-only iMail, why do we accept iChat and iPhotoShare?

lawnchair_larry• 7 years ago

I agree that they should be open, but there are some advantages to the current model besides vendor lock-in.

Requiring a device certificate to communicate puts a pretty high bar on the integrity of the system. Being closed also allows unrestricted innovation at a faster pace.

It’s very difficult to add features once an open standard is out. Just look at the evolution of the major web browsers for example.

rtkwe2• 7 years ago

Being closed also allows unrestricted innovation at a faster pace.

Theoretically but has there been any new actual development in AirDrop though? From the outside it seems like it's been the same since it was released but my only Apple device is my iPad Pro so I don't really have a use for it.

Terretta• 7 years ago

OK, I'll talk about why...

What does Apple sell? A commodity computing device running undifferentiated software? Or the experience of a holistic tool?

When someone distributes a Messenger by itself, you don't ask why it isn't open. You don't ask why the hardware device isn't open. Why should a vendor unbundle the two just to make you happy?

What if it doesn't really unbundle, what if the capabilities combine to offer most buyers something they value more than pieces parts?

shireboy2• 7 years ago

I totally get that argument for things that aren’t commodity. Chat and file share should be interoperable services in 2019. Like Email is and has been for ages (though not always as any GroupWise or BBS user will tell you). The vendors can bundle and have closed source implementations, but by definition they should work with any provider. But I feel the same way about “you can only iMessage other iPhones” as I would if I could only email other iPhones (or as a better analogy if emails to non-iPhones were reduced in functionality.) and yes, they should make me happy- I’m the customer.

neop1x• 7 years ago

It's sad there is a certificate involved so it can't be 100% compatible open alternative. I use Linux with KDE and KDE Connect which offers "send file" functionality from Android and it's enough for my use case.

OpenDrop: An Open Source AirDrop Implementation

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