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1. John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 07:57:16 UTC John Goerzen

   I'd like to move my code off #Github. But to where? #Gitea, #Gitlab, etc. are basically things in the same area. #Git itself is decentralized, and I hate to centralize it again. Yet people seem to have forgotten git send-email. #sourcehut looks somewhat interesting. Are there other takes on #Git collaboration that make efforts to preserve decentralization?

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 07:57:12 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Slips

     @slips To be honest, I'm not entirely sure I know what I want. I've used distributed VCS since before Github (or even Git) existed, and things like git format-patch make tons of sense to me. But I am aware, not to many others. In short, Git is based for decentralized collaboration but the world has standardized on centralized collaboration. I'm looking for things that can nudge that needle back in the decentralized direction. https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/5w55pp/gitdit_decentralized_issue_tracking_for_git/ is interesting, for instance.

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   • Slips (slips@distrotoot.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 07:57:15 UTC Slips

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen gitea is selfhostable.

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 07:57:15 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Slips

     @slips Yep, I know. Although there's value in replacing one centralized service controlled by a corporation with a centralized service not controlled by a corporation, it's still a centralized service.

   • Slips (slips@distrotoot.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 07:57:15 UTC Slips

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen what do you mean by "centralized"? What are you looking for in a decentralized git service. Like federation or...?

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 08:00:18 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • brennen
     • kelbot ◖⎚∠⎚◗
     • ForgeFed

     @brennen @kelbot You sent me down an interesting path. I just learned of @forgefed and #gogs, which seems to be a gitea-like idea. AFAICT, nobody has implemented federation yet, but people are interested!

   • brennen (brennen@federation.p1k3.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 08:00:18 UTC brennen

     in reply to

     • kelbot ◖⎚∠⎚◗
     • ForgeFed

     @jgoerzen @kelbot @forgefed sidebar: as best i can remember, gitea is a fork of gogs.

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   • brennen (brennen@federation.p1k3.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 08:00:19 UTC brennen

     in reply to

     • kelbot ◖⎚∠⎚◗

     @kelbot @jgoerzen there was recently a bit of movement again around federation support in gitea specifically, which is an appealing idea.

     i know git-ssb is a thing - git over scuttlebutt. i'm not sure how practical it is.

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   • kelbot ◖⎚∠⎚◗ (kelbot@retro.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 08:00:23 UTC kelbot ◖⎚∠⎚◗

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen You could selfhost gitea.

   • Adrian Cochrane (alcinnz@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 08:04:02 UTC Adrian Cochrane

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen I'm looking into self-hosting BugsEverywhere with my CGit deployment specifically for my projects...

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   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:23 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     • Codeberg.org
     • Silmathoron
     @silmathoron @codeberg For gitea you mean? That would be very cool.
   • Silmathoron (silmathoron@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:27 UTC Silmathoron

     in reply to

     • Codeberg.org

     @codeberg
     Speaking about that, are they plans to provide per-project emails so that email patches can be made part of the normal interface? (Most maintainers don't know how to deal with them in my experience, so making the patches look like any other MR would be a great step forward on that side)

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:28 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Codeberg.org
     • Jean-Pierre F1RUM

     @F1RUM @codeberg Thank you, yep! Codeberg is on my radar as a solid Gitea instance. If I wind up with #Gitea, that might a place I go to if I don't host it myself.

   • Codeberg.org (codeberg@mastodon.technology)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:28 UTC Codeberg.org

     in reply to

     • Jean-Pierre F1RUM

     @jgoerzen
     BTW, Gitea is working on federation between instances. It already supports seamless migration including all metadata, so hopping between instances is fine.

     We always encourage maintainers to prominently state they are accepting patches via email, too.
     @F1RUM

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   • alex (aw@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:43 UTC alex

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen self hosted stagit + self hosted email archive

     https://git.alexwennerberg.com/
     https://lists.flounder.online/patches

     git-request-pull is a more familiar alternative to git-send-email that is still decentralized

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   • Jean-Pierre F1RUM (f1rum@mastodon.radio)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:54 UTC Jean-Pierre F1RUM

     in reply to

     • Codeberg.org

     @jgoerzen sourcehut looks like what you are looking for.
     @codeberg is a good place too

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:55 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • alex

     @aw Interesting! I hadn't known of git-request-pull. Yes, I worry that many people don't have a local MTA configured and so git-send-email (or, it seems, git-request-pull) aren't going to work and they'll be baffled why.

   • alex (aw@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:06:55 UTC alex

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen git-request-pull works without an MTA -- it just generates some text and you can put it in the body of an email using any email client

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   • Wolf480pl (wolf480pl@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:09:07 UTC Wolf480pl

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen reject collaboration, git push to your home directory on a server you have shell access to.

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   • Abbie Normal (abbienormal@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:10:23 UTC Abbie Normal

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen

     issue tracking in files makes me curious

     that way, you can trade inetractions in issues with patches, the same way you do wih code

     So you could just have a repo on your laptop and trade emails with patches attached wih your fiends to manage both code edits and issue edits

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:12:13 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @eludom 3/ So centralization is causing important details about a project to be locked up at #github -- bad enough -- but also forcing humans to context switch between local code and remote website, and fragmenting discussion into n different places. The only reason people haven't risen up against the high barriers to entry at #Github is because "everyone" already has a #Github account, right?

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:12:14 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @eludom The important question right there. So I love about #DVCS that every participant is, technologically, an equal peer. The only thing special about the Linux kernel tree is the sociological agreement that it's special. But with #github and similar (#gitlab, #gitea, etc), the site becomes special. My repo on my laptop isn't an equal participant; I have to clone it to Github to even attempt that. With the centralization of so much metadata about the project, failure of GH is risky. 1/

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:12:14 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @eludom 2/ And the #Github -style workflow is TERRIBLE when you stop to think about it. Any PR of any size can't be effectively reviewed in the web interface. So you have comments on the web, and code locally, and are constantly having to context switch, which is expensive for humans. The hub CLI and clients only mitigate this to a small extent. The original #git workflow - patches via email with integrated discussion - still makes tons of sense to me.

   • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode: (eludom@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:12:19 UTC George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen with decentralization there's the meta question of what you want to decentralize and does it make sense?

     I've got my blog source up on my own gitea, but I'm probably the only person in the world who cares about it.

     The Linux kernel (for instance) is a widely distributed source code base with many contributors.

     Gotta think about the "why?" question? Because the empire is evil, I want to play with new tech, I have code that actually needs distribution... ??!

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   • raboof@merveilles.town's status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:13:42 UTC raboof

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @jgoerzen @eludom this may be a bit of a tangent, but I'd like to understand better why people like "patches via email" so much.

     I agree it's nice to submit your contribution from the commandline.

     However, once you've sent it, I usualy quite miss the reporting of a forge: giving the contribution a URL, tracking the state (waiting for review, reviewed with comments, merged, closed).

     1/3?

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   • raboof@merveilles.town's status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:13:55 UTC raboof

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @jgoerzen @eludom sending to a private address you're in the dark: did they get the email at all? Was it marked spam?

     With a mailinglist, when you don't get a quick reply (which you can't always expect), having you contribution hidden in the email archive for months ago makes you wonder - did they forget about it? Should I remind someone?

     Having it in the 'open prs report' is nice, and easier to discover esp. for others that don't follow the list closely.

     2/3?

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   • raboof@merveilles.town's status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:14:13 UTC raboof

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @jgoerzen @eludom I agree the GitHub review web interface leaves a lot to be desired, but on the other hand: is context-switching between the code and a consolidated webpage so much worse than context-switching between the code and a large email thread/tree? I didn't find other options (gerrit etc) very pleasant to use here either, but still better than wading through a mailing list archive...

     3/4

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   • raboof@merveilles.town's status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:14:28 UTC raboof

     in reply to

     • George Jones :emacs: :orgmode:

     @jgoerzen @eludom I'm definitely not trying to say GitHub is so great, I share your desire to bring more decentralization back to the forefront - but I'd like to understand better what people like so much about email for collaboration.

     My personal feeling so far is that we indeed need better tools for 'contribution tracking' (that should include good email interfaces as well), but 'just' going back to mailinglists would throw out a lot of baby with the bathwater.

     4/4

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:21:12 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉

     @ij Those are thought-provoking points. There is a network effect on those sites, which can be helpful, but it's a 2-edged sword. To be sure, my projects are always somewhat obscure and I occasionally get drive-by PRs and issue submissions, but not very often. I guess I've seen the main thing as "I already have an account here, so I can make a PR a way I know" rather than surfacing interesting projects.

     Did you mean a push mirror from localhost to codeberg, or from codeberg to #github?

   • ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉 (ij@nerdculture.de)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:21:12 UTC ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen Well, in the case of Codeberg, I think it's from Codeberg to somewhere else, according to the screenshot.

     But as Codeberg is using Gitea, I assume that this option does also exist on self-hosted Gitea installations.

     Another bonus for Codeberg/Gitea: afaik there is work on implementing ActivityPub in Gitea, which could result in a better network effect of distributed Gitea instances. At least an interesting option, I'd say...

   • ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉 (ij@nerdculture.de)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 09:21:16 UTC ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen Well, with Codeberg/Gitea (maybe also with others) you could setup a push mirror.
     My consideration was: when I use my own Gitlab/Gitea instance, I won't be found on the internet. If using a more centralized service like Codeberg my projects will more likely to be found and contributors may benefit from having already an account there.

     As always: it's a tradeoff to some degree, but with Codeberg I don't feel that locked in like with Github because of the non-profit org.

   • Nelson Chu Pavlosky (skyfaller@jawns.club)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 11:20:55 UTC Nelson Chu Pavlosky

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen The method of "hydra hosting", where rather than having a primary remote with mirrors you have multiple remotes of equal status, looks interesting: https://seirdy.one/2020/11/18/git-workflow-1.html

     Haven't tried it myself yet.

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   • Ethan Blanton (elb@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 11:21:00 UTC Ethan Blanton

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen https://radicle.xyz/ is not at all like email coordination, but may be interesting to you nonetheless. I haven't looked closely in a while but it had promise (maybe not quite realized) the last time I did.

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   • Nelson Chu Pavlosky (skyfaller@jawns.club)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 11:21:06 UTC Nelson Chu Pavlosky

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen One barrier to making hydra hosting meaningful is that wherever you host the bug tracker will in practice be the primary host, in the sense that if it goes down, you've lost a lot of important data.

     One solution would be to use something like git-bug to keep issues inside your repo, which you replicate to the multiple equal remotes: https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug

     I also have not tried this yet, in part because there is no bridge to SourceHut issues yet.

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:30:18 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Adrian Cochrane

     @alcinnz Ooo, #BugsEverywhere looks nifty! Thanks!

   • Silmathoron (silmathoron@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:34:59 UTC Silmathoron

     in reply to

     • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅
     • Codeberg.org

     @clacke
     Yes, making email-based MR (and issues for that matter) first-class citizens would (I think) greatly lower the entry barriers that are currently associated to them.
     @codeberg

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   • Codeberg.org (codeberg@mastodon.technology)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:35:05 UTC Codeberg.org

     in reply to

     • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅
     • Silmathoron

     @silmathoron
     We threw some ideas around for an external API-based service, fetching IMAP accounts, converting into issues and MRs, or forwarding requests from Codeberg to other, e.g. proprietary, forges.

     Maybe I'll spell this out and create an issue, but we'd need community contributions - we can't currently work on that ourselves.
     @clacke

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   • alex (aw@merveilles.town)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:35:54 UTC alex

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen It is bare-bones simple which is a bit of a downside, but it's super, super easy to maintain once you set it up, you just need static file hosting somewhere. there are a lot of forks with additional features like markdown, etc

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:35:55 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • alex

     @aw Also thanks for pointing me to #stagit, that one is new to me!

   • CMDR Yojimbosan [UTC+13] (yojimbo@hackers.town)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 16:36:13 UTC CMDR Yojimbosan [UTC+13]

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen Selfhost and publish your own repo, and also sync it with a service that helps you with additional features, like bug trackers and "pull requests". But don't rely on the services unless you understand why they exist and how they will be able to continue existing.

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   • ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉 (ij@nerdculture.de)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 23:58:15 UTC ij :xmpp: :debian: 💉💉💉

     in reply to

     • Codeberg.org

     @jgoerzen Others already have mentioned @codeberg and I recently blogged about it on planet.d.o as well.
     I think, Codeberg is a good option, if you don't want to host yourself, but do want to move away from Github, because Codeberg is a German-based non-profit organization.

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   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 23:59:24 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Chris Wiegman

     @chris Thanks! It was taken by my son on one of our flights together. My long-repressed aviation dream got un-repressed a few years ago What kind of flying did you do? Also #AOPA has a rusty pilots program in case you ever get back into it 🙂

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   • Chris Wiegman (chris@mastodon.chriswiegman.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 23:59:25 UTC Chris Wiegman

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen Side note… as an ex-pilot turned dev (now engineering manager for a SaaS company… love the profile pic

   • Chris Wiegman (chris@mastodon.chriswiegman.com)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 23:59:26 UTC Chris Wiegman

     in reply to

     @jgoerzen I tried to move off. Setup my own Gitea for a while, tried Gitlab and others too. In the end I couldn’t get rid of my GitHub account as too much still happens there. Today I use it as the main repo. Considering if I publish to a package repo like npm, etc there isn’t much difference anyway I don’t know how much it matters. That said, I also back up all my repos just in case.

   • John Goerzen (jgoerzen@floss.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jan-2022 23:59:26 UTC John Goerzen

     in reply to

     • Chris Wiegman

     @chris I can understand. I guess I encourage people to try to break the Github monopoly that's out there, as much as they can. It's so ingrained in even Go and such.