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\chapter{Conclusion and Future Work}\label{ch:5}
\epigraph{In general, I hope to contribute to a world where we value
skills and relationships over careers and money, where we know
better than to trust cops or politicians, and where we're passionate
about building and creating things in a self-motivated and
self-directed way.}{\textit{Moxie Marlinspike}}
combox is at a stage where it can be used as a tool to use the storage
provided by two file storage providers -- Google Drive and Dropbox --
such that only part of each file in the encrypted form is stored on
the data store of the file storage providers. This method of storing
files on file storage providers makes it difficult, but not
impossible, for file storage providers or ``third parties'' to gain
access to the user's personal files.
combox is at version 0.2.3, it is a python package licensed under the
GNU General Public License version 3 or later. It is compatible with
GNU/Linux and OS X. The program is considered to be in ``alpha'' stage
and must be used for experimental use only. It is not recommended to
store critical files on storage provided by file storage providers
using combox. Individuals who wish to try combox would want to look at
\url{https://ricketyspace.net/combox/setup/} to get the program
installed on their machines; Individuals who want to hack/learn about
combox would want to look at
\url{https://ricketyspace.net/combox/api/}. combox's canonical source
repository is at \url{https://git.ricketyspace.net/combox}, the
repository is also mirrored at
\url{https://bitbucket.org/bgsucodeloverslab/combox/src} and
\url{http://rsiddharth.ninth.su/git/cb.git/}.
There are a lot of things that can be done to improve combox, and what
follows is a non-exhaustive list of things to do in the future:
\begin{itemize}
\item Make combox cognizant about space available on each node
directory. At the moment, combox reads the amount of free space
available on each node directory (file storage provider's directory)
when configuring combox on a computer but does not use this
information to reckon the space left in each node directory. The
major issue here is how to determine what space is available without
interacting with a service provider's API or asking the end user.
\item Re-think \verb+combox.events+ module. This module was written
with the assumption that combox will be the only one to make changes
to the node directories. This assumption was found to be not true
when manually testing combox with node clients (Google Drive and
Dropbox client that sync files to/from the respective node
directories to/from their respective data stores). Both the Google
Drive and the Dropbox client make modifications to the Google Drive
and Dropbox directory respectively whenever pulling a modified shard
from their data store to the user's computer, this behavior broke
combox and major changes were made to the \verb+combox.events+
module to make it understand the node client's behavior in the node
directory. These changes increased the complexity of the classes
defined in the \verb+combox.events+. Tt would be great to re-think
this module in such a way that it reduces its complexity.
\item Evaluate if more information needs to tracked about each file in
the combox directory. At the moment, combox only keeps track of the
SHA-256 hash of each file stored in the combox directory.
\item Support more file storage providers. For this, ideally no code
needs to be written for supporting a new file storage provider,
combox must be tested with the new file storage provider's directory
as a node directory. If the new file storage provider's client (that
sync's the shards their data store) makes non-standard changes to
its directory (like the official Dropbox and Google Drive clients
do), then the \verb+combox.events.NodeDirMonitor+ must be
accordingly updated to make combox cognizant about the file storage
provider client's non-standard behavior.
\item Make unit tests more modular. At the moment, there are some unit
test functions that test more than one usecase/facet of a function
or class. For instance, the \verb+test_CDM+ test method, part of the
the \verb+tests.events_test.TestEvents+ test class tests the
correctness of the \verb+combox.events.ComboxDirMonitor+ for file
creation, deletion, rename and modification; this method would
ideally broken down into four tests methods.
\item Make combox Python 3 compatible. The \verb+2to3+ program (which
is part of the standard Python library since Python version 2.6) and
the \verb+six+ library can be used to achieve this. See Appendix
\ref{a-python3c} for more information on this.
\item Support Microsoft Windows. The way to make combox compatible
with Windows will be to run unit tests on Windows. The failing tests
might give pointers to what parts of combox needs to be
changed/updated in order for it to be compatible with
Windows. Individuals interested in making combox compatible with
Windows might find
\url{https://ricketyspace.net/combox/setup/#windows} useful. It
contains information about setting up the development environment
for combox on Windows.
\end{itemize}
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