[Caml-list] [ANN] first official release: DAFT Allows File Transfers

[Francois Berenger <francois.berenger@inria.fr>]

Dear OCaml users,

I am very pleased to announce the first official release of DAFT (v0.0.1).

DAFT means DAFT Allows File Transfers.

DAFT is meant at computational scientists who want to move
files during distributed computational experiments from the command-line.
In other words, one can see DAFT as a kind of distributed file-system
except that it has a command line interface (instead of a file
interface) and doesn't allow modification or deletion of a file
once it was added to the system.

DAFT features the following commands:
- put (publish a file)
- get (retrieve a previously published file)
- bcast (publish a file (if needed) then make it available to all nodes)
- scatter (a put load-balancing chunks over nodes)
- ls (list the global state of the system)
- exit (exit the client, you can come back later)
- quit (shut down the whole system)

DAFT should be available in opam soon, under the package name daft.

DAFT should be a fine data companion to tools like PAR
(https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/par)
or GNU parallel
(https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/).
A tool related to DAFT is the excellent TakTuk
(http://taktuk.gforge.inria.fr/).

DAFT is meant to be used when you don't have access to a distributed
file-system on your nodes and you don't want to hammer the nearest NFS 
server (if any).

There is a video presentation of DAFT from the latest OCaml
Users in Paris meeting (OUPS), the presentation starts
around 6mn40s into the video:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ihqqa_conf-42-meetup-oups_tech

The slides of this presentation can be seen here:
http://files.meetup.com/6604932/meetup_hiver_2015.zip

DAFT is secure by default and a software for the post-Snowden era.
All its messages are signed then encrypted.

DAFT never require root rights to be compiled/installed/run.
All you need is a regular UNIX user account and ssh access to the nodes 
you want to use during your computational experiment.

DAFT uses the excellent open source libraries and tools:
- obuild (to build)
- batteries (extended stdlib)
- cryptokit (compression, signatures, ciphers, modes, CSPRNG)
- dolog (a minimalist lazy logger)
- fileutils (many FS operations)
- ZMQ (send atomic messages over the network)

I consider this is a beta release: users might
encounter bugs in case of intensive usage of the tool.
I only had time to do medium-scale experiments with it (128 computers 
from grid5000 and only broadcasting files).
I don't consider DAFT was used in production yet.

If you want to help with the project:
https://github.com/UnixJunkie/daft/issues

Best regards,
Francois Berenger.
--
"When in doubt, use more types"