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Szabolcs pointed in chat to this blog-post which tells us, that the upload functionality of GitHub is now turned off.

This renders our Attachments repository completely useless because now, someone needs a local copy to be able to push a file to this place. Even the fact, that you cannot use a simple web-interface to upload a file would probably be a reason for people to not use it.

In the blog-post they pointed to Amazon S3 or Amazon Cloud Front as alternative. Has someone experience here and can provide a good alternative for our former attachment storage? From my point of view, we have to following requirements:

  • We need more than one user. We have at least a couple of high rep users who transfer post attachment to this central place.
  • Uploading and link must be easy so that it is really used.
  • what else?
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  • To my mind, removing the upload functionality was a clear protective measure on the Github part, to prevent gross abuse of their site by people who need simple file-sharing for large files. One can still upload to repositories, just not through their web interface, but using Git. And the individual files in the repos can still be addressed by direct urls, if my understanding is correct. So, as long as the files are not huge, I don't see a real problem here. Am I missing something? – Leonid Shifrin Dec 14 '12 at 20:52
  • I just discovered this by searching the chat. I couldn't find the upload function, but that also happened a few months ago when that functionality was still available though very well hidden somewhere in the download menu or so. I'm afraid I don't agree with @Leonid that going through Git is a good solution. I don't think that the occasional asker should have to install a complete infrastructure just for dumping a few little files. – Sjoerd C. de Vries Dec 16 '12 at 17:17
  • @SjoerdC.deVries I may be misunderstanding the current process, but my current understanding is that occasional SE users don't use Githib now anyway. They just store their stuff at random file-sharing sites, but then a few dedicated volunteers like halirutan go through those links and edit those to a location on Githib, where they transfer those files. Please, halirutan, correct me if I get it wrong. – Leonid Shifrin Dec 16 '12 at 18:55
  • @SjoerdC.deVries Moreover, it is probably not desirable to introduce a shared SE account on Amazon or elsewhere, which would be available to all users, since there would be no way to prevent the abuse of such account by occasional low-rep users. – Leonid Shifrin Dec 16 '12 at 18:58
  • @LeonidShifrin You're right. I forgot how I got that power to upload stuff. Considered it a public thing, which it isn't. Anyway, since I'm not using Git myself, I'm not too pleased with the disappearance of the web-based upload functionality either. – Sjoerd C. de Vries Dec 16 '12 at 20:57
  • @SjoerdC.deVries My system will allow folks to publish their code and have a versioning etc directly from Mathematica without using Git explicitly. And its installation procedure will be fairly simple. Besides, the process probably can continue in the same way, only easier: a number of power users will continue to upload stuff and edit links, but this time with my system and from within Mathematica, in a fairly automatic way. – Leonid Shifrin Dec 16 '12 at 21:22
  • @LeonidShifrin I'm sure that it'll be great! – Sjoerd C. de Vries Dec 16 '12 at 21:55
  • @SjoerdC.deVries Well, thanks, I hope so too :). Will do my best. – Leonid Shifrin Dec 17 '12 at 14:12
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While I don't have a complete working solution yet, the system I currently work on (based on Github gists), will allow people to upload to gists, and return a stable URL. The files probably should not be too big, but up to 1Mb that probably should be OK. We can then have a central repository containing the links, and the stackmma user can fork the new gists for backup purposes. It is not necessary to create a new gist for every new file, a single gist can contain more than one file. And, files there will also have versioning, just like for usual repositories. The users will be able to upload files from within Mathematica. The only requirement is that they should have a Github account.

I will add practical directions once the system is ready, hopefully very soon.

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