cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45047387
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?
Locally I run forgejo. Anything I want available to me away from home, Codeberg now. Before I would use Gitlab because I’ve used that a lot more than Github since like 2014
I just selfhost in my own computer. 100% uptime when I need it (I don’t need it when my computer is turned off). And as a bonus, it’s not on the public internet so I’m not training slop scrappers.
I use Codeberg for public stuff. I also run a self hosted forgejo on coolify on a Hetzner cloud instance but realistically that’s overkill.
Personally, I use a combination of Codeberg (cloud backups) and a self-hosted Forgejo instance (local backups). Redundancy is always good, if one goes down I still have my projects saved in the other!
Just upload ye olde tarballs onto your static raw-HTML-coded site like the classic programmers (like the legendary Monsieur Bellard) do.
Seems weird nobody even mentioned Bitbucket
Is it really weird? Bitbucket is owned by Atlassian.
It’s weird to me since it exists and it works but there’s not even something like “there’s Bitbucket but, you know, yuck”.
Maybe I missed a requirement that it be open source? If so, then I’d fully agree with you - not weird at all.
It works. As long as it’s not a Thursday. Or any other day with a 5% chance or so.
CodeBerg
svn
I still use it, it works great and I don’t have fucking AI bullshit polluting my stuff.
OP is looking for a forge (Github, Gitlab, Forgejo, etc.), not a version control system (git, svn, mercurial, etc.)
Codeberg.
If you actually read his message you can see he is interested in hosting projects that aren’t open source.
Codeberg allows private repos: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/first-repository/
Codeberg, and because I already have a VPS (server), I’d check for Forgejo packages (I would only use them if security updates automatically update/install).
Selfhosting for personal projects is cheap. I’d choose Forgejo because it not so resource hungry as GitLab.
For my personal projects (all FOSS) I use Codeberg and mirror them to hosted GtiLab and GitHub.
Radicle, codeberg, gitlab, sourcehut, tale your pick. Github isn’t the only option. Far from it.
Radicle is tied to crypto nonsense.
Some alternative self-hosting options (besides full-fledged “forges”):
If you don’t need issues and stuff, you could just use git and back it up (by copying or cloning/updating to some other machine).
You could deploy soft-serve, which is a self-contained git/ssh server with cool cli (beware: it’s not super performant on large repos, so don’t host a clone of the linux kernel on it). Since you’ll use it via ssh, you don’t have to bother with https, certificates, reverse proxies and stuff.
If you are willing to put some effort into it, the (imho) coolest option would be to use radicle, which is a p2p forge (beware: documentation is not great, and - even if the “core” is solid - the cli tools are very much beta still).
I went with the simplest self-hosting I could think of for my private repos:
ssh my-server 'git init --bare git/foo.git' git clone my-server:git/foo.gitYou don’t get a web UI or anything but that’s OK for me, I just want the repo.
I’m not a programmer, but I have my dotfiles and bash scripts I like to keep in private repos. I just moved my dotfiles over to Codeberg, gonna do my scripts here soon…
But been relatively painless. I can see how bigger and public projects will take some coordination and planning but…it’s probably worth it?
Codeberg has been fun and simple to use, but again, I’m just a hobbyist.
Already do; Codeberg is great.









