Gnutella

[sjehuda]

Gnutella be a good addition.

GTK-GNUTELLA, LimeWire, Shareaza, et cetera.

https://g2.doxu.org

[paulo-roger]

This is cool! I will try to fork it to implement soulseek

[got3nks]

Thanks for the suggestion @sjehuda, and @paulo-roger glad you're looking at Soulseek — both are interesting additions.

Neither is on my personal roadmap (I'm not running Gnutella or Soulseek myself, so I can't usefully maintain them), but the client layer is intentionally pluggable and either could be added as a community PR without touching anything core.

First-class question before the design discussion: does the target client expose a remote-control API? aMuTorrent talks to every backend over an existing protocol (aMule's EC, qBittorrent's WebUI v2, rTorrent's XML-RPC, Deluge's JSON-RPC, Transmission's RPC). It doesn't run the protocol itself. So:

• gtk-gnutella has CLI control via its socket but no HTTP/JSON-RPC story that I'm aware of — a thin TCP shim would be needed first.
• Shareaza is Windows-only and unmaintained.
• LimeWire is long-dead; there's a fork (W-FOSS) that may or may not have a usable API.
• Soulseek — nicotine+ has a plugin system and there are community shims like nicotine-plus-extras that expose some API surface.

Whichever client is chosen needs a stable RPC of some kind. Without that, aMuTorrent can't integrate.

How a client is added

Five touch points, mostly self-contained:

1. server/lib/<clientname>/<ClientName>Client.js — the protocol implementation. One class with methods like connect(), getTorrents() (or equivalent), addDownload(), pauseTorrent(), deleteTorrent(), etc. Roughly the contract the existing clients (DelugeClient.js, TransmissionClient.js, QBittorrentClient.js) implement.
2. server/modules/<clientname>Manager.js — the lifecycle wrapper. Extends BaseClientManager, handles connect/reconnect/auth, exposes a unified fetchData() returning { downloads, sharedFiles }. Look at delugeManager.js as the closest template — JSON-RPC over HTTP with session auth, similar shape to what Gnutella/Soulseek clients would need.
3. server/lib/clientMeta.js — a capability block declaring what the client can do: nativeMove, categories, sharedFiles, tracksPid, trackers, search, etc. Capability-driven so the frontend lights up the right features for each instance without hardcoded type checks.
4. server/lib/downloadNormalizer.js — a normalize<ClientName>Download(item) function that maps the client's native shape to our unified item shape (hash, name, size, downloaded, progress, state, peers, …). All five existing clients already live here for reference.
5. server/lib/ClientRegistry.js + server/server.js wiring — register the new manager type so it shows up in the setup wizard. Mostly mechanical.

Frontend changes are usually zero if the capability flags are set correctly — ClientInstanceModal, ClientIcon, the setup wizard, and the data tables all key off clientMeta rather than the client name.

Happy to review a PR for either client — flag any abstraction question on a draft PR or in this thread and I'll respond. Just be aware that without an RPC I can hit from outside the client process, integration isn't going to work.

[paulo-roger]

I think I am getting the handle of it

[paulo-roger]

@sjehuda after eveything working out with slskd I will look for GNUtella

[sjehuda]

I will be glad to assist with Gnutella; because I want to study how it works.

I think that, Gnutella should be the "de-facto" standard to communicate data over the internet.

[sjehuda]

@got3nks

gtk-gnutella has CLI control via its socket but no HTTP/JSON-RPC story that I'm aware of — a thin TCP shim would be needed first.

With my projects I utilize IPC of type "BSD"; and I am lesser fond of RPC. Why is RFC necessary?

Shareaza is Windows-only and unmaintained.

That graphical interface should be replaced by a graphical interface which is available for other systems, so it be available with other systems.

Shareaza is still maintained, somewhere; and we might want to contact Mr. Salvatore Ansani in that regards.

https://sourceforge.net/p/shareaza/tickets/239/

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Note, that if Shareaza was utilized by hundreds of millions, then it would have been the internet standard.

The fear of some governments to have Shareaza (i.e. Gnutella) over many desktops, is as greate as having a currency which is backed by gold or silver.

There are many bad organizations that want the internet to be more manual than automated, because they exploit that state of affairs against all of us.

[paulo-roger]

The fear of some governments

I don't totally disagree, but governments are not the endpoint, they are only puppets of the ruling class. The billionaires are the ones that control (and pay) politicians. They are the ones in control and that fear the power of the regular people.

[sjehuda]

Yes. Indeed. I agree.

As one who has worked in the parliament of the premises where I am from; I would agree, that most of the "elected representatives" there are mostly clueless; and, are certainly do not mobilize anything.