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Written by Matija Šuklje on 2024-12-31 at 02:21

I'm undecided whether to move my git repos (not many really) from GitLab and GitHub to a (#YunoHost) self-hosted #Forgejo instance or not.

On one hand it'd be kinda neat.

On the other, I don't want to make the few contributors' lives more difficult and my niche projects even harder to find.

Also, might make sense to have a mirror somewhere in case my own server goes down. And then the question is again, where to mirror to and why not just use that instead.

Dilemma …

Thoughts very welcome!

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Descendants

Written by Evan Prodromou on 2024-12-31 at 02:22

@hook the point of Federation is that you shouldn't have to choose.

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Written by Matija Šuklje on 2024-12-31 at 02:29

@evan, I know, and this was the idea behind Git in the first place, IIRC.

I know great improvements have been made to Forgejo since the forking and federation is sweet and all.

But how easy/practical is it in practice? Especially for those who are not me on my server.

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Written by Evan Prodromou on 2024-12-31 at 02:41

@hook Yeah, I agree. I know that Gitlab has some ActivityPub features, but I don't know how well they work. It would be cool to see this expanded.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/activitypub/

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Written by Matija Šuklje on 2024-12-31 at 02:49

Reading about https://forgefed.org and the following link has made me more optimistic about trying out self-hosting #Forgejo, but I'd still love to hear some experience from others.

https://forgejo.org/2023-01-10-answering-forgejo-federation-questions/

@evan

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Written by Aleš on 2024-12-31 at 08:23

@hook @evan i was thinking the same. And having same thoughts, so I‘m just adding myself in thread, to hear any good ideas 😆

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Written by Kevin P. Fleming on 2024-12-31 at 12:43

@hook @evan I have some personal projects on a self-hosted Forgejo instance. Since there isn't any federation yet (and isn't likely to ever be federation with GitHub or GitLab), I enabled OAuth2 account creation and login using GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg. Anyone who wants to contribute to one of my projects and who already uses one of those platforms can create an account in seconds and be on their way.

it's a small bump in the road (the smallest I could make it).

If you want to give it a try, head over to https://forge.km6g.us.

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Written by Matija Šuklje on 2024-12-31 at 14:15

@kevin, thanks, that is exactly the insight I was looking for.

Pulling in @algernon if he has something to share on this topic too, as he seems to be contributing to #Forgejo

cc @evan

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Written by algernon ludd on 2024-12-31 at 14:32

@hook I haven't got much that @kevin didn't mention already. I run my own Forge the same way, letting people create an account via GitHub or Codeberg (not GitLab, because I don't have an account there, and GitHub + Codeberg already covers a large number of potential contributors).

My projects are fairly niche, they never had much contributors, nor much of a community when they were on GitHub. I've had a couple of people register on my forge and report bugs, or even send pull requests, and registering was never a problem (or at least, noone told me!), except in one case, where I accidentally broke the GitHub OAuth2 setup and it didn't work.

What I can talk more about, is my experience as a drive by contributor. If I see a project on GitHub, I will think very long, and very hard to even bother contributing. For a Forgejo-hosted project, if I have something to contribute, I will do so, without much thinking.

"Why?", you may ask. Because contributing a PR on GitHub is a pain in the ass. I have to fork the repo, prepare my changes, send a pull request, and eventually delete my fork (I'm not in the business of keeping a million stale repos around). On a Forgejo instance, if they have Codeberg or GitHub OAuth2 enabled, I'll register, and git push using the AGit workflow. No fork, nothing to delete after.

When it comes to contributing, chances are, I already cloned the upstream repo. With GitHub, I have to fork it to my account, add that as a remote, push there, then open a PR. With Forgejo, I just register & git push. If it's on Codeberg, even better, because then it is literally a single git push away.

For GitHub-hosted projects, if I have a problem, I'm much more likely to just report an issue and leave it at that. With Codeberg or Forgejo-hosted projects, the drive-by contributor experience is - imo - much more convenient, so if I have a problem, I'll try to address it, and send a PR.

So, from my point of view, Codeberg/Forgejo hosted projects are much, much, much more preferable over GitHub ones. Even if I have to make a million small accounts, because making a million accounts is less friction than GitHub's PR flow.

Regarding federation: while some steps have been taken towards that recently within Forgejo, it is still very far from being ready. Don't hold your breath.

cc @evan

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Written by Nico Rikken on 2024-12-31 at 07:34

@hook

I totally recognize this issue. Current optimal solution seems to be to host on a platform where others can sign up, like GitLab or Codeberg. I'm hoping for federation. You could always copy patches from other platforms. It would be a bit uncommon to have a codebase be developed at different places.

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Written by التنينوكس on 2024-12-31 at 12:15

@hook You can self-host them, and have read only mirrors to GitHub or GitLab. Kind of what forjeo themselves are doing or Linux kernel.

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Written by Paul Hoffman on 2024-12-31 at 16:43

@hook Good replies so far on which forges to use. As for a “mirror”, a simple-but-complete backup of your local copies of all the repos should suffice. I happily use Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/), which is cheap. The UI is all CLI, so it’s not appropriate for everyone, but it certainly works for “here is a list of directories I want backed up”, particularly by cron.

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