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394 points dahrkael | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Hello everyone!

I'm currently in a journey to learn and improve my Elixir and Go skills (my daily job uses C++) and looking through my backlog for projects to take on I decided Elixir is the perfect language to write a highly-parallel BitTorrent tracker. So I have spent my free time these last 3 months writing one! Now I think it has enough features to present it to the world (and a docker image to give it a quick try).

I know some people see trackers as relics of the past now that DHT and PEX are common but I think they still serve a purpose in today's Internet (purely talking about public trackers). That said there is not a lot going on in terms of new developments since everyone just throws opentracker in a vps a calls it a day (honorable exceptions: aquatic and torrust).

I plan to continue development for the foreseeable future and add some (optional) esoteric features along the way so if anyone currently operates a tracker please give a try and enjoy the lack of crashes.

note: only swarm_printout.ex has been vibe coded, the rest has all been written by hand.

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nesarkvechnep ◴[] No.44326028[source]
I really wished to see an OTP-first design. Unfortunately for me, the code is almost procedural as it's touching ETS or Application, which is built on ETS, in nearly every operation.

If the author wishes to learn how to design services in Elixir, or any BEAM language, with OTP, they can take a look at "Designing Elixir Systems with OTP" by by James Edward Gray and Bruce Tate, and "Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix" by Lance Halvorsen.

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dahrkael ◴[] No.44326242[source]
On my first try I did write it in a more OTP-y style but the scaling potential for this very specific flow is just not the same. In the end a torrent tracker is just a specialized database and handling the data as fast as possible is the top objective. That said I'll give the books a go.
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1. throwawaymaths ◴[] No.44327623[source]
using ets is fine.