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Radicle Client Services

🏕️ Services backing the Radicle client interfaces.

Setting up a Seed Node

A seed node is a type of node that replicates and distributes Radicle projects making them freely and publicly accessible on the web, and via peer-to-peer protocols.

Though it's possible to rely on shared infrastructure and community seed nodes, it is recommend for most teams and communities to self-host their projects in true peer-to-peer fashion. This can be achieved by running radicle-http-api and radicle-git-server on a server or instance in the cloud.

radicle-http-api

The Radicle HTTP API is a lightweight HTTP service that runs on top of a Radicle monorepo. As a reminder, the "monorepo" is the repository that contains all projects and associated metadata stored and replicated by Radicle Link.

By running the API, projects stored in the local monorepo are exposed via a JSON HTTP API. This can enable clients to query project source code directly via HTTP, without having to run a node themselves. In particular, the Radicle web client was built around this API.

radicle-git-server

The Radicle Git Server is an HTTP server that can serve repositories managed by Radicle. Since Radicle projects are stored in a shared, monolithic repository, commands like git clone cannot work out of the box. The Radicle Git Server maps requests to specific namespaces in the shared repository and allows a Radicle node to act as a typical Git server. It is then possible to clone a project by simply specifying its ID, for example:

git clone https://seed.alt-clients.radicle.xyz/hnrkyghsrokxzxpy9pww69xr11dr9q7edbxfo.git

Service setup

The services should have access to the same file-system. The git server requires write access to the file system, while the HTTP API only requires read access.

For this setup to work, it's import to point all services to the same root, which is the path to the monorepo, eg.:

$ radicle-http-api --root ~/.radicle/root …
$ radicle-git-server --root ~/.radicle/root …

This ensures the API and Git server can read the same state.

Identity file

Nodes on the Radicle peer-to-peer network are identified with a Peer ID, which is essentially an encoding of a public key. This identity needs to be specified on the CLI via the --identity flag, similar to SSH's -i flag. Specifically, the path to the private key file should be used. If no private key is found at that path, a new key will be generated.

Firewall configuration

For radicle-http-api, an HTTP port of your choosing should be opened. This port can then be specified via the --listen parameter, eg. radicle-http-api --listen 0.0.0.0:8777. The default port is 8777.

For radicle-git-server, it is recommended that port 443 be open.

Using authorized-keys for Authorization

By default, the pre-receive hook will check the mono-repository for a authorized-keys public key file on push. If it exists, it will check the public key's fingerprint matches the $GIT_PUSH_CERT_KEY set by the http-backend. The $GIT_PUSH_CERT_KEY is used to find the file in the namespace tree, comparing the fingerprint in the authorized keyring against the signed certificate.

TLS

For radicle-http-api and radicle-git-server, it's important to setup TLS when running in production. This is to allow for compatibility with web clients that will mostly be using the https protocol. Web browser nowadays do not allow requests to unencrypted HTTP servers from websites using TLS.

The API service has built-in support for TLS, so there is no need to set up HTTPS termination via a separate service. Simply pass in the --tls-cert and --tls-key flags to enable TLS.

Certificates can be obtained from Let's Encrypt, using Certbot.

Logging

To enable logging for either service, set the RUST_LOG environment variable. Setting it to info is usually enough, but debug is also possible.

ENS setup

Once these services are running, users wishing to point Radicle clients to them for project browsing should set the relevant records on ENS. This requires an ENS name to be registered for each seed node.

To point Radicle clients to the right seed endpoint, use the eth.radicle.seed.host text record, usually labeled "Seed Host" to the seed host, eg seed.acme.org.

These records can be set on the web client. For example, the records for the Alt.-clients org can be found at https://app.radicle.network/registrations/alt-clients.radicle.eth.

Docker

There are Dockerfile provided for both services in the respective directories.

Building

To build the containers, run:

$ docker build -t radicle-services/http-api -f http-api/Dockerfile .
$ docker build -t radicle-services/git-server -f git-server/Dockerfile .

Running

To run the HTTP API, run:

$ docker run \
    --init \
    -e RUST_LOG=info \
    -p 8777:8777 \
    -v $HOME/.radicle:/app/radicle radicle-services/http-api \
    --tls-cert /app/radicle/fullchain.pem \
    --tls-key /app/radicle/privkey.pem

Make sure your TLS certificate files can be found under $HOME/.radicle. If you are not using TLS termination, simply omit the --tls-* arguments.

Running radicle-git-server is more or less identical to running the HTTP API.

You may also want to detach the process (-d) and run with a TTY in interactive mode (-it).

Docker Compose

As an alternative to building the containers yourself, a docker-compose.yml file is included in the repository. To run the services via Docker Compose, you have to:

  1. Install Docker and Docker Compose
  2. Clone this repository
  3. Set the necessary environment variables
  4. Start the radicle client services via Docker Compose

To install Docker Compose, run:

sudo apt-get install docker
pip install docker-compose

Then clone this repository and cd into it:

git clone <repository-url> radicle-client-services
cd radicle-client-service

Then set RADICLE_DOMAIN to your seed node's domain, eg. seed.cloudhead.io. These can be set in the environment, or in a .env file in the current directory.

Finally, pull the containers and start the services:

docker-compose pull
docker-compose up --detach