Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

I find that this network effect really makes me want to improve my projects, too. I've worked for hours on README files, making sure I had my licenses in check, and crafting the short repo description to be informative and useful for this reason [0]. If it's on GitHub, I feel like it needs to be presentation ready. Not everyone feels this way, but I do.

If I just need a git repository, I store it locally. Git is a DVCS for a reason -- most single person projects don't need a remote anyway. This makes GitHub the home for my more permanent projects, with local git for everything else.

[0]: https://github.com/Pryaxis/TShock

View on HN

>If I just need a git repository, I store it locally. Git is a DVCS for a reason -- most single person projects don't need a remote anyway.

I use a remote as an easier-to-maintain-and-test backup than trying to maintain a mirrored local repository on another drive.

> I use a remote as an easier-to-maintain-and-test backup than trying to maintain a mirrored local repository on another drive.

You should really consider getting a good backup solution, like Tarsnap or Backblaze, to follow from the "two is one and one is none" principle of backups. That is, if you haven't already.

I already use Backblaze as it's important to have off-site backups whenever possible. However, needing to wait several weeks to download my data is not always an option. I'm a digital hoarder and by that I mean I have >30TB of data. My backup solution for most things is 3 local copies and 1 remote copy. Files I don't deem important enough to pay to store 3 times locally aren't backed up locally but still are backed up with Backblaze. Some things are easier to entrust to someone else (eg: git repos) than trying to maintain local mirrors. Also a Backblaze backup of a git repository doesn't do me much good if I want to quickly grab it (talking minutes to download from Gitlab instead of hours/days from Backblaze) so it makes more sense to use Gitlab as a remote so I can quickly grab it if I lose my local copy.

All of that aside, it's still easier to maintain-and-test a remote repository than to maintain-and-test local repositories.

I intentionally leave some of my projects in a super-raw state as a way to obfuscate their true intended purpose; utilizing a public [but obscured] repo as a quasi-private one. :)

I realize not everyone feels this way, but I do.

Why not just host them somewhere private repos are free of charge? (i.e. GitLab, Bitbucket)

It's like putting something on the blockchain-- I want it there so that I can point to it from the future as "my work" but without attracting too much attention in the meantime.

If the attention comes, no worry. If it doesn't, perfect.

There are a lot more eyes on those repositories than you think. Things like misplaced API tokens are vacuumed up nearly instantly. You'd be much, much better off hosting private stuff on GitLab or BitBucket.

I do have the really secret stuff on BitBucket. :)

Appreciate all the hard work! TShock is great :)

Thanks! It's a community effort, though, and I only deserve a small fraction of the credit. I'll pass along your message to my team.

I havent found a code yet that I will only keep locally in a git repo. Can you give an example of such type of code?

I don't know about other debs, but I have a decently large directory of python scripts that are kinda 'single-use', such as scripts to reformat a json that is screwed up in some oddball way. I used git for version control, and save them on the off chance they'll be useful someday for cut n paste, but there is no need for storing something I may never use again remotely. In fact, the only reason they aren't deleted is the space saved wouldn't be worth it when archive disks are so cheap. If my house burns down or the NAT is stolen, that code is the last thing that will be on my mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com