You already have a Git server • Hacker News Board

Re: You already have a Git server

#11

Post by cess11 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

Looks like a bot doing self-promotion.

Re: You already have a Git server

#12

Post by skydhash » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #2

You can also have an upstream git repo on a local filesystem and add that as a remote. But when most people talk about a git server that includes collaboration and giving people SSH access just so that they can read from your repo is not reasonable.

Git support http as a transport.

Actual collaboration does not require write access on the repo. You need to share your patch to the repo owner via another mechanism (email is very suitable for that, but anything that can share text file is ok). The repo owner handle merging patches.

Re: You already have a Git server

#13

Post by cbm-vic-20 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #2

You can also have an upstream git repo on a local filesystem and add that as a remote. But when most people talk about a git server that includes collaboration and giving people SSH access just so that they can read from your repo is not reasonable.

Nobody seems to have really embraced the truly distributed model of git, where you can expose a local repository via read-only HTTP, and collaborate by pulling from each others' repositories. No pushes.

This would be unwieldy in a corporate environment and for those who don't really grok git, but for a small cadre of experienced developers, this may be a workable model.

Re: You already have a Git server

#14

Post by coin » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

> This is a nice way to work on server-side files without SSH lag or error-prone copying.

Are people really copying files to the servers then committing there?

Re: You already have a Git server

#15

Post by skydhash » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

Huh, I've always set up bare repos as my "local" (on a desktop somewhere in my house) destination. I didn't realize you could just use regular repos.

You can but any edit to the working directory will render the repo ineffectual for pushing.

Re: You already have a Git server

#16

Post by luxcem » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

When I started using Git around 2006, we didn't have GitHub. We used Google Code for SVN hosting, but we wanted to try Git because it was 'truely' decentralized, so we just pulled from other developers' computers directly. It involved setting up port forwarding on the router and letting your computer on 24/7. Fun times.

Re: You already have a Git server

#17

Post by _heimdall » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

luxcem wrote: post #16

When I started using Git around 2006, we didn't have GitHub. We used Google Code for SVN hosting, but we wanted to try Git because it was 'truely' decentralized, so we just pulled from other developers' computers directly. It involved setting up port forwarding on the router and letting your computer on 24/7. Fun times.

We did something similar, but used a dedicated server we already had on the network instead of another dev's machine.

Re: You already have a Git server

#18

Post by WhyNotHugo » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #13

account42 wrote: post #2

You can also have an upstream git repo on a local filesystem and add that as a remote. But when most people talk about a git server that includes collaboration and giving people SSH access just so that they can read from your repo is not reasonable.

Nobody seems to have really embraced the truly distributed model of git, where you can expose a local repository via read-only HTTP, and collaborate by pulling from each others' repositories. No pushes. This would be unwieldy in a corporate environment and for those who don't really grok git, but for a small cadre of experienced developers, this may be a workable model.

Sourcehut _kind of_ pushes for this model. Folks publish their own repositories, and email patches to others. But you can also just email a patch to the author without a Sourcehut account, because email is descentralised.

The Linux kernel and u-boot also follow similar flows.

Honestly, it's incredibly convenient to send a patch via `git send-email -1`, instead of having to create a for, add a remote, push, and then navigate some web-based wizard.

Re: You already have a Git server

#19

Post by luxcem » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #13

account42 wrote: post #2

You can also have an upstream git repo on a local filesystem and add that as a remote. But when most people talk about a git server that includes collaboration and giving people SSH access just so that they can read from your repo is not reasonable.

Nobody seems to have really embraced the truly distributed model of git, where you can expose a local repository via read-only HTTP, and collaborate by pulling from each others' repositories. No pushes. This would be unwieldy in a corporate environment and for those who don't really grok git, but for a small cadre of experienced developers, this may be a workable model.

That's how I learned git before GitHub, but it was a pain to configure DNS and port-forwarding when ISP didn't provide static IP.

Re: You already have a Git server

#20

Post by xg15 » Tue, Jun 23, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

ramon156 wrote: post #6

Can you rewrite this by hand, please? I was so confused what this article was supposed to tell me. > No YAML file with 47 indents. What is this referencing? what yaml file? The front-end also screams AI generated

I think it's just a general jab at the unwieldiness of yaml (because the model was in the "talk about yaml files" and "be witty" parts of the latent space I imagine), not some particular file.