Basic infrastructure for Extension messages (BEP 0010)

[functorrent.git] / README.md

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-# A bittorrent client.
+# A command line BitTorrent client.
 
-[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/vu3rdd/functorrent.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/vu3rdd/functorrent)
+I started writing a BitTorrent client because it seemed like fun
+and I am learning Haskell and wanted to see if I can write something
+real with Haskell than just heat the room. It is turning out to be a
+lot of fun.
 
-## building
+### Building
 
-I suggest using cabal sandbox.
+You need to install [Stack](https://github.com/commercialhaskell/stack), either via
+the OS package manager or via `cabal` (`cabal install stack`).
 
-### Steps:
+    $ git clone https://github.com/vu3rdd/functorrent && cd functorrent
+    $ cabal install stack # or install stack by other means
+    $ stack build # binaries in $(pwd)/.stack-work/install/x86..../lts-2.16/7.8.4/bin/functorrent
 
-clone the repo; cd functorrent;
+### Usage
 
-    $ cabal sandbox init
-    $ wget http://www.stackage.org/lts/cabal.config
-    $ cabal install --only-dependencies --enable-tests
-    $ cabal build # binaries in ./dist/built/functorrent/*
+If you invoke functorrent without any options, it expects the contents of a torrent file
+to be given in stdin. So
 
-## Goals
+    $ cat ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent | functorrent
+    [....]
 
+Or one can explicitly specify the torrent file as input.
+
+    $ functorrent ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent
+    [...]
+
+### Goals
+
+- [Optimized for Fun](http://www.slideshare.net/autang/ofun-optimizing-for-fun).
+  (should have called it "funtorrent")
 - Become more profient with Haskell.
 - Implement something non-trivial with Haskell (crypto, file operations, network
   operations, concurrency, bit twiddling, DHT).
-- Follow the spec - https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification
-- Easy for newbies like me to read and understand along side the spec.
+- Follow the spec ([official spec](http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html), [unofficial spec](https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification))
+- Easy for newbies like me to read and understand alongside the spec.
 - doctest and quickcheck tests.
 - Follow Haskell Style Guide - https://github.com/tibbe/haskell-style-guide/blob/master/haskell-style.md
 
-## Current Status
+### WARNING
+
+This client is not usable as your daily BitTorrent client yet. You may get
+corrupted files and end up wasting a lot of bandwidth. So, until we achieve
+some robustness, consider this as a programmer-friendly project to learn
+about a bunch of stuff.
+
+### Current Status
+
+- most of the peer wire protocol works.
+- talks only to one peer at the moment.
+- can download files. But needs every piece to be served by the peer it connected to.
+- can talk to http/udp trackers.
+
+### TODO
 
-- can decode torrent files (bencoding)
-- talk to the tracker and get the peer list
-- the `main' program takes a torrent file (in the local file system) as input and
-  prints the {ip,port} for each peer, after talking to the tracker.
+- Test suite.
+- Talk to multiple peers concurrently.
+- Piece download algorithms.
+- Multifile torrent support.
+- Magnet link support.
+- other advanced features of BitTorrent (like DHT).
 
-## TODO
+### Misc
 
-*    Test suite.
-*    Peer protocol.
-*    Get the file download working in the simplest possible way.
-*    Concurrency (threads per peer)
-*    other advanced features of Bit Torrent (like DHT).
+The Bangalore Haskell group forked an early version of this code and started to develop it as a group. My code has diverged a lot from it. Both are calling it functorrent. Perhaps that needs to be fixed.