p2p distributed substitutes; Swarm

[Attila Lendvai]

dear Guixers,

i have put together a Swarm service for Guix, that can start up Bee nodes of 
https://www.ethswarm.org/

Swarm is a censorship resistant p2p storage solution with a content addressable 
API, not unlike IPFS, but with crypto based incentives.

i'm considering adding Swarm as another backend to store and distribute 
substitute binaries. i lack the necessary overview of Guix substitutes, but i'm 
working closely with the Swarm developers.

is there anything written up anywhere about this topic? what i'm looking for is 
a very high-level bird's eye view of what components would be involved in such 
an endeavor, and what would need to be implemented in them.

is the architecture in question already prepared for multiple storage backends? 
or would it involve a refactoring of the Guix infrastructure?

i'm a seasoned CL coder, and getting accustomed in Scheme, too, but i'm a few 
months new to the Guix codebase.

as an answer i'd also appreciate any pointers to readings, including into the 
code, and even more so a wiki page where people interested in this project can 
draw the outlines, and coordinate on the implementation.

- attila
PGP: 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39

PS: for now the Swarm service is in a PR for that other channel, because it 
fetches the binaries of Bee and the go ethereum clients. it's on my TODO to 
smarten up the go importer and put together a source based package for them 
that would be eligible for Guix proper.