ysaie

31 / ⚧ / code, music, art, games

──────────────────────────────
🌸 many-shaped creature
✨ too many projects
🚀 cannot be stopped
🌙 stayed up too late
:eggbug: eggbug enjoyer
──────────────────────────────
header image: chapter 8 complete from celeste
avatar: made using this character builder


📩 email
contact@echowritescode.dev

how much of a downside would you say it is for code to NOT be hosted on one of the big Git providers? as in, definitely still open source, definitely still freely available, just through itch.io or as a .zip file on a private host or something. would you ever not use a cool looking library because it isn't on GitHub, GitLab, etc.? and either way, what would you miss from those services?


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @ysaie's post:

i am very whiny about code i cannot see before i download a package but i do it if i think the app is worth it, but even a clonable link is preferred over just a zip

check out codeberg and sourcehut for hosting that has some ethics

or if you have a server you can host your own, i have a list of them if you want

there are even site generators like stagit so you can show off the source without running anything on the backend other than a file server

Not being able to link to source code fragments and discussions is something I'll miss a lot.
A large part of my programming time is spent reading online code, commits and issues.

As far as "the big Git providers" go, the only downside I see is the lack of a protocol for pull requests. But that's because they don't support federated forges.
Why are you considering distributing OSS .zips instead of using a forge?

sorry, could you define "forge" for me? i think i understand but i've never heard that term before

issue tracking was something i was thinking of - i don't use it at all for my own projects because it's kind of silly when i'm the only person opening and closing tickets, but it is a very convenient place to put bug reports and feature requests for end users.

i guess some context might be useful - i have several small-to-medium sized projects that i work on in my spare time that i would love to share for people to read or use, but i have very little interest in dealing with additional collaborators since they're just personal projects. a lot of this stuff (discussions, issues, pull requests) definitely matter a lot more in a collaborative environment.

forge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)
GitHub and GitLab are forges.
SourceForge.

There's work in Forgejo (fork of Gitea used and maintained by CodeBerg) to federate forges using W3C's ActivityPub. This would permit collaboration (and sending pull requests) untied from particular forge services.

Though, while I'm a big fan of everything decentralised and privacy & all that, what matters to me really is the ability to read code and link back to particular fragments, commits and discussions, to which I did not participate.
... I'm an AI, am I not?

depends! if you can give me a nice way to view the source code (and ideally docs) without needing to download anything (e.g. what hackage/haddock does) i wouldn't mind it!
not having an easily accessible public issue/pr tracker would be a bit unfortunate though.

just out of curiosity: why would you not want to host it on a standard git provider?

thanks for your answer!

so, a few reasons, depending on the provider.

GitHub specifically i fundamentally don't trust to behave ethically, with the stuff about Copilot stealing people's code and their ongoing (to my knowledge) partnership with ICE. i would prefer to not work with them on principle.

GitLab i tried for about a year, and it was fine, but over time i noticed that i found all of the extra features more distracting than helpful.

Bitbucket i also tried for a while, but when they got Atlassianified they just became what i dislike about every Atlassian product: slow, unintuitive, and just kind of a pain.

for some context, i don't have or want any collaborators on my work right now, i just want a place to host my little side projects so that people can see and use them if they want to. my own personal workflow just depends on me having a place to push and pull from, so that's what i've made due with for the last year or so. i'm just trying to figure out how best to share it c:

IMO the main reason to host a project on GitHub is to help people find it. This includes making it easier to host coding portfolios for potential clients/employers.

Bit, I think more and more developers are going to move to other solutions as GitHub grows more bloated and ethically compromised. We'll see!

discoverability is super big, yeah! that's one of the main things i'm thinking about when i'm rotating the idea of having or not having a GitHub account in my head. like, i deeply dislike the company, but there are lots of companies i deeply dislike that i use anyway because they have a stranglehold on some service that i can't really do without. that's kind of why i'm asking people here - trying to get a bigger perspective on the whole thing.

thanks for your answer! c: