Ask HN: Anyone interested in an offline version of Stack Overflow?

Hi, Rafael here from https://curiosity.ai.

I was just talking to someone today that works in a restrictive IT environment (no internet), and the person mentioned how annoying it is to not have access to Stack Overflow. There is an open source project on GitHub (https://github.com/tools4j/stacked-off) that seems to provide an offline server using the public dumps, but this person found it a bit cumbersome to work with.

As we build a desktop search app, we could add an offline Stack Overflow integration. I was curious (!) if anyone would be interested before taking the effort to build it.

WDYT?

10 comments

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vmoore 4y ago ↗

One solution is to have an offline virtual machine that is configured not to speak to the public Internet, and do your coding in that. If you need to lookup something online, the host machine can do that and it can be copy and pasted from the host to the offline VM (Virtualbox allows you to do this).

AlexAndScripts 4y ago ↗

If the restrictions were for security, this wouldn't work - the host could access the VM.

horsemans 4y ago ↗

You may be interested in Dash, which provides offline dockets of StackOverflow across a variety of different language/technology categories:

https://kapeli.com/dash

theolivenbaum 4y ago ↗

Interesting, never heard of Dash! Is it only macOS?

theolivenbaum 4y ago ↗

Found a similar one for Windows & Linux: https://github.com/zealdocs/zeal

agustif 4y ago ↗

Can vouch for both apps! They're great for offline mode.

jakemauer 4y ago ↗

Another option to consider that I only discovered yesterday is Kiwix: https://www.kiwix.org/en/

You can browse the different packages that the community has preprared, including Wikipedia and a ton of different stack exchange sites: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lWXdwy3OIfZ1Ob2cQR70...

markus_zhang 4y ago ↗

I'm thinking we could use Postgresql as backend, import all xml files as tables and then build a simple frontend with whatever language people are comfortable about.

Then you only need to do a monthly or quarterly update.

908B64B197 4y ago ↗

> in a restrictive IT environment (no internet)

I think the question is why?

Is it a real security risk or simply cargo culting?

nonameiguess 4y ago ↗

I've mentioned before that this already exists. The NSA maintains mirrors of Stack Overflow and Wikipedia that get synchronized from the Internet to classified airgapped networks once every 24 hours. I have no idea what the software is they've used to do it, but you could arguably file a FOIA request or something since the code they're using has no reason to be classified. They've open-sourced simple tools and libraries like this in the past.