gdrv

README

#gDrv

About gDrv

The idea behind gDrv came about when I started switching more frequently between mac / windows and linux (arch). To date there is no open source version of google drive that still works and this project aims to solve that issue.

Contributors are welcome.

Getting started with the project

go get -u https://github.com/Nitecon/gdrv

or if you would like to contribute, fork and clone it, fix / add functionality and PR back! Once you have cloned the project you need npm / node installed. Once you have installed and verified that you have npm installed running something like: npm --version You are now ready to start using the app, just run npm start.

• This will install and download all dependencies needed to start / compile the app
• The initial download / update takes the longest, future runs will be much faster.
• Once done you should see a popup of the application. If you are on mac / linux 32bit / windows
  • You will need to edit bin/build.sh to update it for your env it's set normally for a linux 64bit os.

That will upgrade you to the revision that we currently use for the program.

Why electron / some webkit garbage?

Answer to this is simple, it's easy to support multiple OS's which is obviously missing from the official clients. Second and probably most importantly it will allow us an easy way to do non intrusuve updates as the frontend is disconnected from teh backend that actually does the work etc. The frontend in this case electron is only responsible for spawning the application and eventually to check and do updates, downloads of the updates and respawn of the newly downloaded go binary. This greatly simplifies things and simplicity is very dear to me, so live with it. Finally this allows us the ability to build a cross OS app that can be deployed on windows / mac and perhaps in the future support more than just file syncing or at the very least make an application with the same functionality across all distros instead of having to jump through hoops between OS's to get the same functionality as what generally does happen with most software that tries to be cross platform.

How the application is structured / works and how I can contribute.

There is a couple of different ways you can help.

• Electron frontend to check a location for updates and downlaod / respawn
  • See the app/main.js file if you are interested in binary names / where it will be stored.
• If you are a go developer, think of this as a web app
• Which means we need both GUI / Backend help to interface with the drive api's etc.

More questions beyond reading the entry points (app/main.js) for electron and (main.go) for golang feel free to ask / create an issue.

How does gDrv essentially work?

gDrv design is based on a frontend / backend setup. The frontend is handled by electron (chromium) as it already has window management etc solved and reduces our need to deal with native gui implementations across multiple OS's. Node.js is responsible for spawning the OS specific golang binary application, and go into listening mode. The go application upon startup responds to the electron application with a random port location that the application is listening to locally, and then redirects to that location for the actual "main" or homepage whatever you want to call it. Beyond the redirection electron will have a couple of menu items over time for getting general application help / checking for updates, downloading updates / respawning the app and exit etc and thats just about it.