the single most important criteria when replacing Github
https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/the_single_most_important_criteria_when_replacing_Github/
Consider all the data that's used to provide the value-added features on top of git. Issue tracking, wikis, notes in commits, lists of forks, pull requests, access controls, hooks, other configuration, etc.
Is that data stored in a git repository?
@joeyh how do you feel about activitypub as an interoperability mechanism instead?
@technomancy like I say in the blog post, it neglects an pportunity.
Unless activitypub gets as much distributed power as git has.
(But, consuming data from a git repository and communicating it over activitypub would be fine.)
@technomancy no, *dozens* of people have found *different* ways, all non-interoperable. Which is why a github or a gitlab doing this and establishing a de-facto standard would be valuable.
(I have been active in the dist-bugs space for a decade or so.)
(and all my projects store their issues right alongside the code in git)
@joeyh interesting, so from your perspective the thing that's kept issues-in-git from catching on is the https://xkcd.com/927/ problem?
@technomancy yes, 100%
@joeyh is there anywhere I can read about the setup you've found that has worked for your projects?
@technomancy it's a MVP: Simply markdown files stored next to the code, rendered and editable on a wiki and accepting anonymous git pushes that edit only the markdown files. Far from ideal, but it does not stop users from giving more feedback than I can keep up with.
@joeyh @technomancy Even if you were to distribute your issues inside a git repo or etc (though, a PR inside a git repo? Do you have PRs for your PRs?) you'll still need a mechanism for notify someone that an update to that repository is available for consideration right? In which case you probably need some sort of messaging layer
@cwebber @technomancy yes, activitypub could be useful for that, but it seems it would be easy to end up with data stored in activitypub messages themselves
(No PR inception needed, use a separate branch for the data with validation hooks, etc)
ActivityPub could maybe be a way for a git server to notify a CI server that something's changed (triggering a CI build, test, deploy, etc). The ActivityPub message could carry the necessary metadata of the change (what ref changed, etc), and possibly the actual change (the commits), to avoid having CI having to pull from the CI server.
Then maybe any number of CI servers could subscribe to the ActivityPub stream (or what it's called?) for a git server.
@cwebber btw, activitypub (or ssb) could be very very useful for the whole social network side of things, which is sorta kinda orthagonal to what I've been talking about.
(But we also know how hard it is to get social network traction, any this is all going to mostly blow over soon; the gitlab import graphs are predictably trailing off. So my optimisim is slight.)
Joey, what do you mean by "Unless activitypub gets as much distributed power as git has."
Have you seen https://github.com/git-federation/gitpub ?
And does git-ssb have such power?
@bhaugen well, @cwebber has talked about using https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-spec/ in activitypub and the result looks a lot like ssb to me.
@joeyh I'm skeptical; I've seen many, many attempts to move issues into git as the backing data store, and no one has yet found a way to make it work in a way that's satisfactory.