Offline usage

[akaguny]

Task

Hi, how i may use cheat.sh offline, some of my servers don`t have access to the enternet, but i want to use cheat.sh)

Details

• cheat.sh local installation
• document installation process (installation and standalone usage)
• programming languages cheat sheets support

[chubin]

It's not yet implemented, but it will be implemented soon (on this weekend I hope). It's one of the most wanted features. Stay tuned!

[akaguny]

@chubin you are promise feature, up issue)

[chubin]

That's true. Thank you for upping it

[neilhwatson]

Offline or internal mirror?

[chubin]

I think that offline is better. Internal mirror is another option, but it is possible already. We (me and @akaguny) have meant offline usage here

[giraldeau]

After the ycombinator post, the service returns this:

$ ~/bin/cht.sh <whatever>
/*
 * Sorry, we are experiencing extremely highload now.
 * We are working on the problem and how to get it fixed soon.
 * Please come back in several hours or try some other queries:
 * 
 * For example:
 */

 curl cht.sh/:list               to list available cheat sheets
 curl cht.sh/LANGUAGE/:list      to list available cheat sheets for LANGUAGE
 curl cht.sh/LANGUAGE/:learn     to learn the LANGUAGE

Which means an offline mode would be certainly great.

[chubin]

@giraldeau Yes, it is true. We are trying to mitigate the high load problem currently. I think it will be fixed soon.

[brandonpittman]

I'm sure it won't matter after a few days, but this is the best reason to have it work offline.

However, by the time it works offline, the whole not being able to access it won't even matter.

Until HackerNews sends out its newsletter on Friday and starts the downtime cycle all over again.

[chubin]

@brandonpittman
We will fix the capacity problem (I hope so) and we will be able to handle such a load.

The offline feature is very useful still, for one of the main reasons why cheat.sh was created is to fight the distraction the comes from the web/browser. And the best method to fight the distraction is to go offline. That's why the offline (or semi-offline) mode is extremely important for us.

[brandonpittman]

@chubin I hope I didn't sound negative. 🙇

Love the project's goals and I'm looking forward to later today (Japan time) when maybe the load won't be so heavy and I can play with it a bit.

[Fake4d]

Can i just clone the repository to an internal webserver in my network to use it?

Is there a new plan for the release of an offline feature?

The tool is so useful! Thanks for all the hard work!

[brandonpittman]

Totally forgot about this project until I got the last comment notification.

[chubin]

@brandonpittman @giraldeau
The capacity problem is fixed (hopefully).
The service is still experiencing high load, but now it is working stable.
Please try your queries now, they should work.

Now back to the offline mode.
I would split the issue into two different topics, as proposed by @neilhwatson :

1. Offline mode
2. Mirror

Both of them are really important. I've already written about the offline mode. The mirror feature is very important too.

In the mirror mode, cheat.sh can be installed in Intranet (or even in the Internet) building a cascaded distributed cheat sheets repository:

cheat.sh # for the global cheat sheets
  ^
  |
cht.lan  # for local cheat sheets
 ^
  |
curl cht.lan

The users of cht.lan can access both local cheat sheets and the global cheat sheets.
Local cheat sheets can cover some internal topics such as names of internal services etc.
They local cheat sheets can be located in the root namespace as well as in some dedicated namespace.

This mode can be implemented quite easily. Actually, it is implemented already, the only missing part is the straightforward installation process + documentation.

The offline mode is trickier to implement because of the obvious fact that some cheat sheets should be generated on the fly. But as I said we have several good options here too.

[alphapapa]

I recently noticed the Dash project again, which has mirroring, offline access, and some forms of "cheat sheets" in its libraries. Maybe rather than reinvent the wheel, the content in this project could be added to Dash. Or maybe another instance of Dash's code and infrastructure could be set up with this project's content. Seems a shame to reinvent so many wheels. IIUC this project's primary contribution is how it "ingests" content from sources, and that could be connected with other destinations.