cedrickchee / min-torrent

Yet another minimalistic torrent client

MinTorrent

MinTorrent is a minimalistic, zero dependency torrent client, written in Go (golang).

Demo of the CLI downloading torrent:

BitTorrent protocol

This BitTorrent client implemented the original BitTorrent protocol spec from 2001.

Features

• Simple, 'no-nonsense' torrent leeching (doesn't support seeding yet)
• Supports .torrent files (doesn't support magnet links yet)
• HTTP trackers (no UDP trackers)

Also:

• Single binary
• Cross platform
• Tiny runtime footprint — designed for running on servers and in the future, on resource-constrained environments such as embedded devices.

Installation

go get github.com/cedrickchee/min-torrent

TODO: provide prebuild binaries (compiled downloads).

Basic usage

min-torrent <torrent_file_path.torrent> <output_file_path>

# Example: downloading Arch Linux ISO from
# https://www.archlinux.org/download/
min-torrent archlinux-2020.01.01-x86_64.iso.torrent archlinux.iso

Development

Running on embedded devices/microcontroller boards

That's the plan! However, this is still work-in-progress.

I believe, if we compile the program using TinyGo, we can run on several different microcontroller boards such as the Arduino Uno and the Rasberry Pi.

Limitations

• No support for DHT, uTP, PEX and various extensions.

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Why I started this project?

In 2019, I was motivated to learn a new programming language after I've been writing JavaScript for a over a decade. I decided to learn a statically typed and compiled programming language and I choose Go.

I started this project to relearn Go and to practice systems programming. My project idea was inspired by several blog posts and tutorials below (credits to them):

• A BitTorrent client in Go – Part 1: Torrent file and announcement
• How to make your own bittorrent client
• Building a BitTorrent client from the ground up in Go
• A BitTorrent client in Python 3.5