to git or not to git

[Harald Welte]

Hi Alessandro,

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 11:35:21PM +0200, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> So, besides self-hosting (unfeasible for whole-kernel repos)

A remark for non-kernel-hackers: The linux.git tree is so large that
you need a serious amount of RAM (and I/O bandwidth, and CPU) to host
git repositories with it.  However, IMHO, hardware capacity has been
growing much quicker than the number of Linux kernel commits, so it
is more feasible these days, at least for git-daemon + cgit to self-host
that.

Also, more to Alessandro: Why not host your kernel tree[s?] on git.kernel.org?

> So, I feel a little uneasy, and I'm now wondering where to push my
> yet-unpushed projects (while keeping previous stuff on github for
> several reasons -- mostly link-rusting issues).

self-hosting small projects is absolutely feasible.  And there are tons
of FOSS projects that are self-hosting.

> How does the free software community feels in this respect?

At osmocom.org, we self-host everything, whether it's redmine, mailman,
git, cgit, gerrit, jenkins, ... and use github only for public mirrors.

I don't think "gitlab" or whatever "social git" site around the repositories
is needed unless you're involved in projects where you expect plenty of contributions
from developers who are not familia with git send-email.  And if a project grows
to that size, I found gerrit much more reasonable in terms of structured code review.

For some personal stuff, I also still run a separate git instance.

For people less inclined with spending their days maintaining their own
infrastructure, I would suggest to simply ask any of the existing FOSS
projects or entities if they could run a repo there?  Whether
freedesktop.org or kernel.org, Debian/SPI, ...

But I would actually agree that there is a gap that needs to be filled:
Community-hosted, non-for-profit FOSS project infrastructure.  Funded by
membership fees, operated by volunteers, with a legal entity/structure
in place that will make sure they just don't re-brand, get bought, go
out of business or depend on a single individual or corporation.  I've
already found this missing for simple mailing-list hosting.  The same
applies for git, gitlab, gerrit, jenkins, redmine, trac, patchwork, etc.

Regards,
	Harald
-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>           http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
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