RFC: Alternative git forge to GitHub

[avivace]

GitHub is not open source. GitHub Actions run on proprietary runners and we're increasingly relying on CI/CD pipelines based on them.

We need to establish a reliable alternative solution which we can start adopting as a mirror/backup for the time being and, in case of service disruptions, policy or billing changes, easily migrate to it.

The features we're interested in are:

• Plain git hosting
• Releases/Binaries
• CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
• Static serving capabilities (GitHub Pages)
• Issue trackers

Those features may be provided by different solutions, provided they can be integrated easily.

[LunarLambda]

Forgejo! https://forgejo.org

Hard fork of gitea, has ci/cd capabilities (forgejo-runner), releases/package pages, issue trackers, projects, wikis (all very similar in nature to github), search

unsure what is meant by 'plain git hosting'? I don't think there's git protocol support, just https and ssh.

I don't think there's static serving, but I'm also not sure if any other forges have this (I'm not even sure gitlab has it). But one could set up an nginx virtual host and then publish files to it via ci/cd

[exelotl]

Self-hosting Forgejo might not be a bad option! Using the same server as the forums seems like it would be a good choice for the time being. Forgejo should eventually get forgefed support which is pretty exciting - when it's ready, people will be able to send PRs etc. without specifically having an account on our instance.

In terms of existing instances - Codeberg is the most popular, it seems very well-run and has a static hosting service too (Codeberg Pages).

F-Hub is also a neat option, as well as a Forgejo instance they also provide a hybrid chat network (IRC, XMPP, Matrix, all bridged together)... though we almost finished our move to Libera Chat which makes me kinda reluctant to consider that at this point (in addition to my poor experiences with XMPP and Matrix). :(

There's also Sourcehut which I've been using for a few years. It's a remarkably lean and well-principled forge (and can also be self-hosted!) but in my experience the sending-paches-via-email workflow is absolutely horrendous, and navigating the site as a newcomer is hard. But it's great in theory, anyone can contribute without an account, all you need is an email address (and a lot of patience).

Bonus mention: Not exactly a forge but pr.pico.sh is a tiny self-hostable solution for PRs which really impressed me recently (still experimental though) x)

[pinobatch]

In gbdev/meta#18 (comment) CasualPokePlayer pointed out that GitHub Actions isn't as proprietary as one might think, seeing as the code for creating runner images is free software. On the other hand, CPP mentioned on gbdev Discord that other CI providers don't seem to be nearly as generous with runner minutes for a public project as GitHub Actions, mostly because of abuse to mine cryptocurrency.