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Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#71

Post by shagie »

amelius wrote: post #51
shagie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you worked at a company and had a fork of a private repo that company maintained of some software... do you want employees who have left to have their access to the repos removed? or an email that says that it will be removed?

I'd prefer it if the repo was returned to the company, rather than removed.

That gets complicated. It's in (for example) my namespace. So shagie/foo.git

And now you want to return it to BigOrg/foo.git - where does it go in that namespace of BigOrg? What are the permissions for who should have access to that? Who gets billed with a scheduled action runs and chews up a lot of CI credits as a parting gift?

The workflows for anything other than "delete it" gets GitHub in a bit of a mess.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#72

Post by benatkin »

tryauuum wrote: post #60
benatkin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried running gitea? It's very light on resources, has good documentation, and also defualts to a main branch. It's also very easy to control where all the data is stored, and works well w/ sqlite.

Is the "main" branch an advantage? I guess only if >50 percent of your repos use "main" branch

[flagged]

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#73

Post by smeagull »

This destroys the very basic idea of opensource. That the first developer on a project can hand off to someone else to take over the project, and have the project continue past their involvement.

Now if the first developer deletes their account or repo everything dies.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#74

Post by simcop2387 »

benatkin wrote: post #58
capableweb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because I sync’d them to a usb stick with gitea Just a tip: no need to use gitea if you want to replicate a git repository to somewhere else on disk/other disk. Just do something like this: mkdir /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo (cd /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo && git init) git remote add backup /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo git push backup master And now you have a new repository at /media/run/usb-…

Have you tried running gitea? It's very light on resources, has good documentation, and also defualts to a main branch. It's also very easy to control where all the data is stored, and works well w/ sqlite.

The biggest reason to do this is thah it supports "mirror" repositories where it will keep your copy up to date, even using github keys to get at a private repo if you want.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#77

Post by benatkin »

simcop2387 wrote: post #74
benatkin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried running gitea? It's very light on resources, has good documentation, and also defualts to a main branch. It's also very easy to control where all the data is stored, and works well w/ sqlite.

The biggest reason to do this is thah it supports "mirror" repositories where it will keep your copy up to date, even using github keys to get at a private repo if you want.

Yes, and if you stop the process and start it again, gitea doesn't complain and picks up right up where it left off. Ditto if you lose internet connectivity. It's a well-designed piece of software. I considered using it as a BaaS and am actually thinking again of using it as one.

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#78

Post by capableweb »

benatkin wrote: post #58
capableweb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because I sync’d them to a usb stick with gitea Just a tip: no need to use gitea if you want to replicate a git repository to somewhere else on disk/other disk. Just do something like this: mkdir /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo (cd /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo && git init) git remote add backup /media/run/usb-drive/my-backup-repo git push backup master And now you have a new repository at /media/run/usb-…

Have you tried running gitea? It's very light on resources, has good documentation, and also defualts to a main branch. It's also very easy to control where all the data is stored, and works well w/ sqlite.

Yes, I've tried it (and actually run a personal instance myself), but I would never try to run an application meant as an webapp when I want to copy something from one filesystem to another, when git can do it already without any external programs.

Also, the `master` is just an example, it works for `main` as well, don't worry :) The created git repository on your usb-stick works like a regular git repository, you can use whatever branch names you want.

Btw, way to focus on the absolutely least interesting part of my comment, what I chose to name the branch...

Re: Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original

#80

Post by bcrosby95 »

kitkat_new wrote: post #46
gregwebs wrote: post #33

This unfortunately makes sense because it is a private repo. Even if a repo is labeled as being MIT and has an MIT license in it, it still may contain other code of a different license. Github could do better by warning the repo owner when they delete a private repo. Github could ask the repo owner if they want to convert it to public first (a "set it free" option) or otherwise give the option to avoid deleting the f…

"This unfortunately makes sense because it is a private repo." I disagree. I expect a (i.e. my) fork to be independent of the original repository, no matter if it is private or not. It's enough if a fork of a private repository is private then too.

This is why I don't use github's fork feature. There's more than just this restriction they impose upon you.

Instead I prefer to use a "git" fork. I just clone it and upload it to my own repo. Assuming the license permits of course.

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