Cloning from anonymous github

[suyash67]

How do we clone a repository from anonymous github? Please help me out.

[tdurieux]

it is not possible, sorry.

[TheShadow29]

@tdurieux Thank you for the amazing work.

Wondering if is there any interest in supporting cloning from an anonymous repository? One use case is where we want to upload our code in a zip format after anonymization.

[tdurieux]

I m considering it but it would require a complete reimplementation of the service. I need time and I don’t have a lot :/

[ShoufaChen]

hello, @TheShadow29, @tdurieux .

I have finished a simple project to download the repository from anonymous4open.
https://github.com/ShoufaChen/clone-anonymous4open

This implementation is not very elegant now but works properly. Hope it will be helpful.

[real-or-random]

@tdurieux Thank you for the amazing work.

Wondering if is there any interest in supporting cloning from an anonymous repository? One use case is where we want to upload our code in a zip format after anonymization.

Do you mean "download" instead of "upload"? This would really be a useful thing. For now, a simple workaround is to add a zip file to the repo itself for submission. But this won't have the "XXX" feature of course.

[johentsch]

Thank you for the great tool! Unfortunately without any possibility for reviewers to download files, in most cases it cannot be used for paper submissions.

[tdurieux]

I understand I am working on a new version that will allow this. But will have some restrictions in terms of project size (I don't have an infinite storage on my server).

[gwern]

If you are unable to provide any kind of git clone or archive download due to lack of time, please at least don't go out of your way to detect and block downloading entirely!

 $ wget -m 'https://anonymous.4open.science/r/5c1049ba-109f-4a12-9d74-9a4a5130ce97/'
--2020-11-17 12:46:23--  https://anonymous.4open.science/r/5c1049ba-109f-4a12-9d74-9a4a5130ce97/
Resolving anonymous.4open.science (anonymous.4open.science)... 104.31.90.163, 172.67.183.76, 104.31.91.163, ...
Connecting to anonymous.4open.science (anonymous.4open.science)|104.31.90.163|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2020-11-17 12:46:23 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

[tdurieux]

I did nothing about that.

[gwern]

It is your server blocking requests, and even if you did not explicitly enable it, that does users no good. How exactly are we supposed to use the anonymous repos to do any kind of peer review or test things out when there is no download functionality and your server blocks the usual last resorts of crawling/scraping? I did not expect to have to fight DRM and pull out my old notes on cookies and HTTP headers just to download a repo.

[tdurieux]

This is not the usage of this service. It is meant to be a service to visualize the anonymized GitHub repo not to download it.
I am sorry that you would like other features but with the current implementation, it is not possible for several technical reasons.

Feel free to create your own anonymize service, pay and maintain it for a year. I would be happy to use it.

[gwern]

I wouldn't because anonymized peer review is deeply flawed and has been repeatedly experimentally shown to be highly unreliable and largely useless compared to much better methodologies like pre-registered reports (and that's without adding in silliness like blocking downloads and making excuses for it).

For everyone else, the best approach I have found so far is using https://github.com/ShoufaChen/clone-anonymous4open to download repos and bypass the web interface. It has some bugs which I've filed fixes on (specifically, too-large files & spaces in filenames).

[monperrus]

It is your server blocking requests,

No, the server does not block anything. But maybe Cloudflare does so.

https://github.com/ShoufaChen/clone-anonymous4open

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

How exactly are we supposed to use the anonymous repos to do any kind of peer review

I'd suggest to ask your PC chair about a better solution.

[johentsch]

It is your server blocking requests, and even if you did not explicitly enable it, that does users no good. How exactly are we supposed to use the anonymous repos to do any kind of peer review or test things out when there is no download functionality and your server blocks the usual last resorts of crawling/scraping? I did not expect to have to fight DRM and pull out my old notes on cookies and HTTP headers just to download a repo.

The reproachful tone is out of place in thr context of open source where developers give away work they did in their free time. If you have to blind review the repo, ask the editor to provide the anonymized data as a ZIP because you require it to properly review and that's that.

[gwern]

A reproachful tone is perfectly appropriate when dealing with a maintainer whose response to a serious bug is to deflect and give the most narrowly technically-correct (surely the best possible way of being correct...) answer of "I did nothing about that", without investigating what the problem is, which does nothing to solve this problem and serves only to deflect blame onto the (many) users who are having this problem of being unable to download repos, as you also are doing in your comment by coming up with reasons for everyone but anonymous_github to do things to work around its problems.