Catalogs and distribution by name

[prettydiff]

Currently installing biddle looks like

biddle install http://prettydiff.com/downloads/prettydiff/prettydiff_latest.zip

which is far more frustrating than the NPM and Homebrew way

npm install prettydiff

The frustration grows as the length of applications grows. The middle ground is to allow users to retain local application catalogs. Quite simply it can be something as simple as a JSON of name value pairs where the name is the application name and the value is its publication point.

This functionality is already present once an application is installed. The value add from this feature is to ease the burden of initial installation. Situations where this would be beneficial:

• Trading catalogs between people online
• Starting fresh on a new machine
• Providing software list recommendations

[prettydiff]

With IPFS integration in upcoming version 2.0.0, #50 , this issue will be a third of the way solved. Here is the breakdown:

• complete Version 2: IPFS integration #50 and integrate with IPFS
• Allow browsing of published artifacts from the browser via address
• Create a URI alias to mask the hash value with the publication domain and application name

It seems people are working on item 2 for the IPFS project, but this work isn't mature at this time. The third point will require a bit of work in the biddle publication step and possibly external help.