Remove git integration, replace with S3 synchronization + client side encryption. #71
Description
Background
Although I always thought having native git support was a super cool feature, getting it to work in a cross platform manner has proven to be a pain in the ass. PowerShell, for all it's benefits, still doesn't have a great process for compiling and packaging native binaries in a way that works consistently across operating systems. The only solution is to hand craft a needlessly complicated build that reorganizes binary artifacts in a specific way so they load correctly, according to the running OS. This issue totally threw off my development momentum a year ago. I've since decided on a different approach which provides many more benefits than native git integration, without significant downsides.
The Approach
- Remove all git integration.
- Create a new command
Sync-Journalwhich will encrypt all journal entries on the client and then upload them to an AWS S3 bucket owned by the user. (Not owned or maintained by me.) - Journal CLI will handle provisioning of the bucket so that server side encryption and object versioning are both enabled.
- Additional commands will be included so that version history for each journal entry can be reviewed, including the ability to show a diff in the console.
The Benefits
- No more native binaries to distribute.
- Journal can easily be accessed by any machine with PowerShell installed.
- End to end encryption.
- Complete journal entry versioning, even without git.
- Users could take advantage of services like Cryptomator to synchronize their journals, if they chose, which is not currently possible because Cryptomator does not play nice with git.
- Journals can still be encrypted locally using a VeryCrypt container.
The Downside
All git history will be rendered obsolete. But given how few people are using this tool, I don't think that matters. :D