Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

lalitm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 143 posts

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#91

Post by el_io »

thataccount wrote: post #84
Brian_K_White wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git was harder to use (harder to reason about), but it did something cvs/svn didn't do, so, harder or not, it made something possible vs not possible. Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn.

>Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn. I used shorthand since I assumed people here were smart enough to assume that Microsoft buying Git would be understood as Github and not Git. It has proven to be a bad assumption.

I don't know, maybe that's because people are somewhat used to see other people confusing Git with GitHub.

There's no way everyone knew you're so smart.

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#92

Post by apple1417 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #6
delduca wrote: post #3

The only reason I keep my projects on it is the Windows and macOS runners.

Not saying it doesn't come with downsides and the hassle of maintenance, but at home I have a Linux server (running a Windows VM) + Mac Mini + Forgejo + Forgejo workers on each one of them. With NixOS it was relatively painless to get setup correctly, everything in a reproducible manner, and now I can have a ~10 line YAML file that adds cross-platform builds+signing+publishing when needed, and performance is much bet…

Last time I looked into self hosting Windows CI, it seemed like everything kind of expected you to install all your tools ahead of time, rather than anything containerised. I assume Nix helps with that? Are there any docs you can point me at?

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#93

Post by dwroberts »

tombert wrote: post #28

I hadn't ever used the email-based pull request until I started using Sourcehut, but ever since I did I've honestly grown to prefer it. People shouldn't require an account at a for-profit company to make contributions to FOSS. Sourcehut is pretty niche but I like it a lot, and I don't really mind paying for things relative to the value they provide me.

I really like sourcehut but I do find it frustrating that it does not offer LFS. I know I could point at another providers’ LFS, but then I may as well use their entire git offering too

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#95

Post by ruszki »

merelydev wrote: post #82

There is a view where developers think of a forge as a place where they host their code. Than there is another view where the forge is where you go to get code others have written, and this is where GitHub shines. Because of the collective audit.

Didn’t we have these also without GitHub? If you wanted to share code, you could that even without GitHub.

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#96

Post by tombert »

thataccount wrote: post #84
Brian_K_White wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git was harder to use (harder to reason about), but it did something cvs/svn didn't do, so, harder or not, it made something possible vs not possible. Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn.

>Did you confuse github with git? Indeed centralized git in Github is hardly any different from svn. I used shorthand since I assumed people here were smart enough to assume that Microsoft buying Git would be understood as Github and not Git. It has proven to be a bad assumption.

The article in which you are replying to is specifically about different git-compatible forges, not just Github. If you use "Git", people are going to (correctly) think you're referring to the version control software, not Github. This isn't weird.

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#97

Post by highpost »

embedding-shape wrote: post #6
delduca wrote: post #3

The only reason I keep my projects on it is the Windows and macOS runners.

Not saying it doesn't come with downsides and the hassle of maintenance, but at home I have a Linux server (running a Windows VM) + Mac Mini + Forgejo + Forgejo workers on each one of them. With NixOS it was relatively painless to get setup correctly, everything in a reproducible manner, and now I can have a ~10 line YAML file that adds cross-platform builds+signing+publishing when needed, and performance is much bet…

https://github.com/highpost/forgejo-appliance

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#98

Post by tombert »

dwroberts wrote: post #93
tombert wrote: post #28

I hadn't ever used the email-based pull request until I started using Sourcehut, but ever since I did I've honestly grown to prefer it. People shouldn't require an account at a for-profit company to make contributions to FOSS. Sourcehut is pretty niche but I like it a lot, and I don't really mind paying for things relative to the value they provide me.

I really like sourcehut but I do find it frustrating that it does not offer LFS. I know I could point at another providers’ LFS, but then I may as well use their entire git offering too

Agreed; I occasionally have to awkwardly work around the lack of support for large files by hard-coding S3 links and the like. That kind of sucks.

Honestly I mostly just kind of wish that Git had proper support for binary files. I really need to play with that Lore VCS that Epic made.

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#99

Post by kloud »

GitHub is really two separate products: a code forge for teams and a social coding platform to collaborate on open source.

When I use the social platform, it is mostly as a read-only website. I am occasionally commenting, opening issues, PRs etc. The slowness and annoyances do not matter that much.

But I live in the team tool, where the annoyances and paper cuts are painful. Besides poor craftsmanship, there is often tension between the simpler design for social which sacrifices usability for pro use cases.

The social platform, which has huge network effects and is really hard to replace, is basically a loss leader for marketing the team product. I wonder if it would be viable for another company to create a team tool that stands on its own by outclassing Github like Linear outclasses Jira? That should be easier to replace. And Microsoft could keep running the social platform for the time being, where the adoption of alternatives is much slower and requires a much longer time frame.

Re: GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement

#100

Post by IshKebab »

delduca wrote: post #3

The only reason I keep my projects on it is the Windows and macOS runners.

Yeah I think people vastly underestimate the value of free CI runners - especially free Windows/Mac runners. Big projects with dozens of members can afford the effort to set up their own runners but small one-man projects aren't going to bother and they represent the vast majority of Github.

Microsoft spends around $100m/year on free CI runners. Github is going to have to get a lot worse before most people give that up.

Also the post correctly mentions the importance of stacked PRs and how it's crazy that it has taken Github this long to get them. But it fails to mention that it's taking its competitors even longer. Gitlab doesn't have them. Forgejo has no plans. The only other forges I know that support them are Phabricator/Phorge (I think anyway; it's been a while), and Tangled, which tbh looks like it has blown its weirdness budget way too much to be a viable Github competitor.

Post reply on HN