Davix aims to make the task of managing files over HTTP-based protocols simple. It is being developed by IT-ST at CERN, and while the project's purpose is its use on the CERN grid, the functionality offered is generic.
Visit https://davix.web.cern.ch to view the latest documentation.
HTTP is gaining popularity for file management tasks, beyond its traditional use for serving web pages. It is versatile enough to be fit for this purpose; PUT, MOVE and DELETE requests can be used for basic file manipulation, for example. (uploading, moving, and deleting a file, respectively)
Some common file-management operations are not possible to do with plain HTTP, however, which is why the WebDAV extensions were developed, which davix supports.
Davix also supports a plethora of authentication methods:
- x509 user certificate
- VOMS proxy
- RFC proxy with VOMS extensions support
- username / password
- AWS S3 compatible services
- Microsoft Azure compatible services
Davix provides a shared library as well as a few command line tools. The library offers two sets of APIs, a file-oriented and a POSIX-like interface.
Here are some example invocations of the command-line tools.
# upload a file using a VOMS proxy
davix-put myfile https://someserver/dir/myfile -E /tmp/x509up_u1000
# download a file from an Amazon S3 bucket
davix-get https://mybucket.s3.amazonaws.com/somefile --s3accesskey [..] --s3secretkey [..]
# do an ls on a WebDAV-enabled server
davix-ls https://someserver/dir
-
Install the necessary dependencies:
- cmake
- libxml2-devel
- openssl-devel
-
Compile:
git clone https://github.com/cern-fts/davix.git
cd davix
git submodule update --recursive --init
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
You can now try running an example command:
./src/tools/davix-get https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.0.1
To generate a blessed release tarball, run packaging/make-dist.sh from the root of this git repository.
The tarball will appear under ./build, and will correspond to whichever git commit or tag you're currently on.
The official repository is the one on GitHub. It's automatically mirrored on CERN Gitlab for CI purposes. This means:
- Use GitHub for new commits, issues, or pull requests.
- Please don't commit directly on GitLab.
- After a commit, GitLab will mirror the changes automatically, and run CI. Treat Gitlab as if it were ie a Jenkins CI instance.
The project uses a simplified GitFlow branching approach.
The main branch is the devel branch, with master being reserved only for tagged released.
Feature branches are developed separately and merged into the devel branch.
When preparing a release, either devel is merged directly into master
or a release branch is created. Hotfix branches start from master, have a very
targeted objective before being merged back into master and should be employed
only in case of necessity. Changes done on release and hotfix branches
must be merged back into devel.
Suggestions and patches are more than welcome. You can send an email to the davix-devel CERN mailing list, or contact directly the current maintainer.