Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#1

Post by mrsalty » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 8:51 AM UTC

Hi, I don't have a long history as OSS builder but I'm now focusing on a project which is keeping me busy and I want to maintain it in the long term.

The problem I'm facing is that I have the OSS part (code, public docs, etc) but also some private assets (private docs primarily, my personal notes, AI iterations, etc) which I don't want to push publicly. At the same time I don't want to keep the private stuff local only as they are valuable assets and they might get lost, so gitignore is not a solution.

So I am now maintaining 2 repos, one private and one public, I push to private then with a script I copy over (public) assets into the public one. But this is a lot of overhead and it's giving me headaches for many reasons.

Have you ever faced this before? What could be a smooth solution?

Cheers

Re: Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#2

Post by gus_massa » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 4:50 PM UTC

Why not just two non-overlapping repos?

Re: Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#3

Post by PaiDxng » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 3:33 AM UTC

I’d keep the private repo as the source of truth and automate a one-way subtree split to the public repo;manual copying invites drift and accidental leaks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#4

Post by mrsalty » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #2

Why not just two non-overlapping repos?

that's my current setup, but it requires quite some manual work. Especially when I want to release. ie I commit and push to private repo, create PR with summary, merge. Then I run the script to copy over files to public repo (skipping files listed in a custom .publicignore file), then manually commit to public repo (I have to copy over commit messages and PR summaries from private repo), then push and release on public. It's a bit exahusting, and when something drifts it becomes a hell to keep them both in sync.

Re: Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#5

Post by gus_massa » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

mrsalty wrote: post #4

gus_massa wrote: post #2

Why not just two non-overlapping repos?

that's my current setup, but it requires quite some manual work. Especially when I want to release. ie I commit and push to private repo, create PR with summary, merge. Then I run the script to copy over files to public repo (skipping files listed in a custom .publicignore file), then manually commit to public repo (I have to copy over commit messages and PR summaries from private repo), then push and release on publ…

My suggestion was to keep one repo with the docs and a separate repo with the code, and zero intersection.

I teletransported commits from one repo to another with "git format-patch" and "git am" or something like that. I never remember the magic spell. If you do that too often, you may automate it in a script.

Re: Ask HN: How do you handle OSS project with private artifacts?

#6

Post by mrsalty » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #5

mrsalty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's my current setup, but it requires quite some manual work. Especially when I want to release. ie I commit and push to private repo, create PR with summary, merge. Then I run the script to copy over files to public repo (skipping files listed in a custom .publicignore file), then manually commit to public repo (I have to copy over commit messages and PR summaries from private repo), then push and release on publ…

My suggestion was to keep one repo with the docs and a separate repo with the code, and zero intersection. I teletransported commits from one repo to another with "git format-patch" and "git am" or something like that. I never remember the magic spell. If you do that too often, you may automate it in a script.

thanks, I will try that