Title…
I’m kinda disgusted with Microsoft and Github has been declining into an AI-Centric hellhole, to the point my recommendations are almost exclusively AI related… And let’s not forget, the new Copilot Training enabled by default (which honestly, how do you get rid of this thing, VSCode also feels intrusive with AI-First bullshittery)
I’ve been wondering about moving to Gitlab but… “Finally, AI for the entire software lifecycle.” is literally plastered in the landing page. So… that feels like a no-go.
Codeberg is very decent, it’s based on Forgejo so ActivityPub is also a thing (but is cross-instance contributions possible?) but it’s exclusive for Source-Available and Free Projects, which, by all means, totally fine! Half of my “active” projects are for free, and are open source (does that make them FOSS even though I’m basically the only dev?)
And last but not least, Forgejo and Gitlab themselves are self-hostable, but…how expensive (price and storage) would it be to self host a Git Forge??
And maybe I’m being narrow-sighted… For FOSS projects in Github, sadly I’ll have no choice but to contribute there, if that’s the only place where the project resides, same for Gitlab, and Codeberg* (unless cross-instance contrib is a thing)
For now, I’m thinking of moving FOSS/OSS projects to Codeberg, but for personal projects? What are some good options?
Codeberg has been doing awesome things, and they maintain an open source self-hostable forge called Forgejo.
I’m in the process of moving all of my repos over from GitHub to https://forge.sciactive.com/, my own Forgejo instance.
Did not realize these were the same thing and the have my own forgejo install.
What about non-foss collaboration? (Ie Game Dev)
You can set up a git server with minimal fuss, just a bit of ssh-ing. Unless you need a gui for some reason.
If the Devs can use terminal and git natively then you just need an Ubuntu server and space for the files. Git is just ssh u derbthe hood. There’s a page on the git site showing how to set it up. I was very pleased how easy it was.
I mean you can have private repos.
Codeberg has limited private repos though which i assume is what they were referring to.
Not if you self-host.
100MB limit
It’s super easy to host your own. You could probably spin up a server on a VPS for like $5 a month.
Sourcehut allows private repos. Alternatively id look into a self hosted forgejo instance you control.
And many people overlook it but git has its own webui.
If you pick a FOSS license then your project is FOSS. The number of developers doesn’t matter.
I moved all my (meager bullshit) personal projects to Codeberg awhile ago. My stuff was already open source, but I did explicitly add some license files I neglected to add before just to make it clear. So far so good.
Before you archive your Github repos make sure to update them with one last commit explaining that the repo has moved to somewhere else (and potentially why). Once you lock the repo you can’t make changes. If you straight-up delete them then this isn’t an issue.
If you are looking for something ready made i recommend looking into git.gay they run a pretty good service over there
Gitea is completely worth it, easy to setup, minimal effort. Many benefits, though I did it for automation with Actions. Such a time saver.
Honestly Forgejo is easy and low-resource to self-host so I just do that for private projects
For personal projects you can either just use git locally or make them source-available with a restrictive license. If you don’t even want the source to be available then why use a public repo?
Codeburg
For personal projects I’ve just got a VPS where me and a couple of partners in crime push over ssh. It’s very informal and merges are requested in our group chat.
At my previous place of employment we selfhosted gitlab. I much prefer that over corporate github. I want my own fork, not a shared repo.
For private projects I use Forgejo on my device that hosts various other servers
Codeberg works for me. I used to use a couple of indie instances of gitea for various smaller project, but both have either gone down or been at risk, so I mostly use Codeberg which is more organized and failsafe.
I’ve self-hosted Gogs which is a predecessor of Forgejo and it used very few resources. A tiny VPS is plenty. Fossil (fossil-scm.org) is even smaller, but it’s a DVCS that’s not directly compatible with Git.
For personal projects you don’t really need a “forge”. I just use self-hosted git directly, with no web UI. Just “git pull” and so on. That’s what the Linux kernel devs do, so it’s obviously workable even for huge projects. There’s actually a web interface (gitweb) that comes with git, but it’s mostly to let other users browse your repo.
If you’re doing something of public interest, savannah.gnu.org and savannah.nongnu.org might be worth looking into. They are curated, so you have to submit your project and they decide if they want host it. There’s lots of stuff there, it’s just not for random personal projects.
I don’t feel a need to use github. Github users can pull from non-github repos. If I’m not on github I don’t get to use their workflow but that’s ok. That’s a deficiency in github obviously, and it’s not my job to fix github.
Codeberg has been working fine.
I’ve hosted a GitLab instance for like 5 years with a $10 VPS from Contabo and all I have to remember is to
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade. Though, I have experienced problems when forgetting to update for months at a time.If GitHub didn’t exist, I’d use Codeberg, then the free hosted version of GitLab.
I would host them on my own server the way I did before Github. Open SSH access or use a VPN and connect using that.
