hyperboot
offline webapp bootloader
Single page applications, where appropriate, have many usability benefits: you can just give someone a URL and they can immediately start using the application. Native and desktop applications require more setup but once you've installed an app it doesn't change or disappear without warning.
hyperboot gives your users the benefits of explicit, immutable versioning with
control over upgrades while preserving the simplicity of passing around a URL.
Plus, offline works by default!
problems
Explicit versioning and upgrades addresses many problems that users currently experience with webapps:
- an app disappears, leaving users with no recourse
- an app changes to have user-hostile features over time
- underlying infrastructure changes or vanishes
- an app is compromised silently with no mechanism for auditing
Compromising apps by criminal, spy agency, or court order will become an increasingly important problem to solve as browsers gain crypto primitives. Malicious code could be silently inserted into any update.
hyperboot solves some of these problems by using immutable hashes and control over upgrades, but a more complete solution might also involve:
- use peer to peer connections (webrtc, webtorrent, etc) as much as possible
- document and version the external protocols and provide a mechanism to swap out external endpoints
- let users volunteer server infrastructure with open protocols and service implementations, like seeding content on bittorrent
getting started
For a more complete example, look at the hyperboot-example-app repository.
Otherise, to get started do:
$ npm install -g hyperboot html-inline
$ echo -n "console.log('beep boop')" > main.js
$ echo -e '<body><script src="main.js"></script></body>' > index.html
$ html-inline index.html > bundle.html
now given our bundle.html with complete inlined assets:
$ cat bundle.html
<body><script>console.log('beep boop')</script>
we can generate a release:
$ hyperboot release bundle.html -v 1.0.0 -m 'initial release!'
9ef1a61f55fade7724f09f5a8940e2dfcacd371103f6eae3f0ba0286a8ada05e
The hyperboot release command generates a new hyperdata directory:
$ ls hyperdata/
9ef1a61f55fade7724f09f5a8940e2dfcacd371103f6eae3f0ba0286a8ada05e.html
versions.json
Now we can start a hyperboot server that will read releases from ./hyperdata:
$ hyperboot server -p 5000 -v
http://localhost:5000
The -v tells the server to print all HTTP requests.
Click the icon in the upper right corner to see the application releases. Refresh the page, kill the server, and note how the app keeps working just the same!
usage
hyperboot release HTMLFILE { -m MESSAGE, -v VERSION }
Create a release from HTMLFILE, a self-contained html payload.
All of HTMLFILE's assets should be inlined.
Set a VERSION and optionally a MESSAGE for the release.
These will be visible to the user along with the hash in the user
interface.
hyperboot server { -p PORT }
Start an http server for the app.
hyperboot list
Show the available releases.
todo
- update mechanism for hyperboot itself
- load versions from url
- auditing tools
in closing
The default mechanics of the web are highly skewed toward service providers and away from users. To correct this imbalance, we developers should irrevocably limit our own ability to exert control. A manifesto means nothing without a mechanism.
install
With npm do:
npm install -g hyperboot
license
MIT
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent