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Comment by k00b | Hacker News Reader

Hello! I'm Keyan and I'm building https://gitern.com

Perhaps I'm an odd duck (I am) but I think current git hosts are no longer meant for hackers and I really wanted a git host that is and that's why I'm building gitern.

Gitern is just getting started and only has essential features today but we already have a few differentiators: - all auth is done with ssh keys (no password or email required) - arbitrary repository paths allowing for (1) familiar namespacing and (2) access control (eventually) - a cli-first ui - private repos are default

I think better tools make for better hackers and I think git hosts can be a lot better.

I'll be in the comments if anyone wants to ask questions or scold me or something :). Very very open to feedback!

Cheers everyone

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If you're going all-in on the hacker aesthetic, have you considered supporting Pijul? http://pijul.org/

In theory it has many advantages over Git, with the downsides being adoption and rough edges... but those shouldn't be a problem for hackers ;)

Very cool. I've added it to my reading list

Do you follow to pijul development? Looks like it stall or paused, no new patches since 2019 :(

One of the main authors apparently claims that he is re-writing the core intensely. Hopefully that will go well and we'll see it re-surface, though it carries all the usual risks of vaporware.

I'm really hopeful we'll see Pijul or something like it take off at least with "hackers." The promise of a robust patch theory is pretty exciting!

nice to hear that but honestly, "re-writing the core" for 6 months - not a good sign at all :( I use pijul intensively for my own pet project and now feel insecure about that.

Pijul's native Diff implementation, https://crates.io/crates/diffs / https://nest.pijul.com/pijul_org/pijul:master/6afda19ba69307..., is a key part to the Rust+Lua version control system we're working on, https://github.com/speakeasy-engine/gut. (This app will be a game changer.)

I started migrating the library tonight, because, moving forward, we'll be adopting it (btw, I just discovered it has some recent changes worth reviewing). We also maintain native Rust libraries for interdiff (wip), combinediff, splitdiff, lsdiff, and patch. It's late now, but I'll add it in with those libraries in https://github.com/changeutils.

If you'd like to add support in Gut for existing Pijul-managed sources, you could help work on the migration feature. We plan to support compatability with other patch-oriented version control systems, as well as with Git. It'll make history when we add that feature.

VCSs can seem a lot more complicated than they need to be. Getting back to the basics, as we're doing with Gut, really illuminates a lot of obscured opportunities. As a few other parts of the Speakeasy Engine soon come together, even a Web UI for version control management will fit well in our coding toolset.

Sounds cool! What's your theory of patches? Or do you use patches only for storage (like Git in some cases)? What's the story for very large files?

Also, it seems Gut hasn't had any updates for more than a year, which is even before Pijul's last public patch.

Hi! main author here. I'm about to release it, should be ready in the next few days. Most of the 6 months were spent testing and debugging it, actually.

Great news to hear!

Hey, I know gitern is cli based, but I wanted to compliment you on the design of the gitern.com site. Love the colors, artwork, everything. Very minimalistic and tasteful.

Thank you! That makes me feel so good, thank you

I thought you were trolling with the colors, but there is actually content below the fold, which I completely missed.

Looks very nice, minimalistic. Just wanted to make you aware of ForgeFed [0]. Don't know how it fits in your approach and that depends on features you planned, but maybe just like Vervis [1] you could be one of the early adopters and become the forge of choice on the fediverse (they love this stuff, just like they also embrace Sourcehut).

[0] https://forgefed.peers.community

[1] https://dev.angeley.es/s/fr33domlover/p/vervis

My favorite feature is the SSH-as-account instead of the usual email/password combo! I'm definitely going to check this out. Down with passwords!

Why would I use this instead of a pure ssh storage service like rsync.net? Because of per-repo keys?

Mostly because you have or anticipate having git-specific needs other than backups, like having a central collaboration point as part of your git workflows. You can use gitern like a backup service, but that is a subset of what is intended.

(I don't use that rsync service so I'm just guessing as to how you use it. If you can provide more context, I might be able to help further.)

At the moment, the feature set around git workflows is not more than just providing authorized access for several users to a git repo itself but I'll be providing more features around this soon in a way that improves on what currently exists on git hosts.

I think the point is not about backups. It is really, really easy to set up a remote git repository. Everything is nicely documented in chapter 4 of Pro Git [1]. Because a git remote is nothing more than a plain directory, you could serve a git repo anywhere you could store files, even on your own disks.

If multiple people need push access to a private repository, just serve a central repository as on a VPS and use SSH for authentication. I am not sure if there is a reason to use a third party hosting service for this, especially when hosting private repos.

[1]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git...

> just serve a central repository as on a VPS and use SSH for authentication

Reminds me of this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Edit: I don't mean to dismiss your comment. I just mean to say I'm obviously comfortable doing what you described but it's not a trivial amount of effort even if it is conceptually straightforward.

It's a little bit of work, but really it's surprising how well Git works with the dumbest servers. I run a number of Git mirrors off a $5 VPS served from a folder that I run python3 -m http.server in; it's literally just that and it works beautifully.

Agreed, git is great!

And what about ssl?

Ignored ;)

Does rsync.net give me the ability to stop people from force-pushing to `master`? My understanding was that it was aware of files but had no concept of Git.

Hey Keyan!

Sort of off-topic, but I just tried your chore chart -- what does '2X' mean? How can something get assigned to me twice?

Cheers.

lol thanks for checking choremate out!

Assuming you're using the chore chart with others, you are now assigned the chore twice rather than once in the rotation of the chore. It's no more than a weak disincentive for missing chores. (A better disincentive would be fines as I write about here https://keyankousha.com/the-best-chore-chart-in-the-world.ht... ... which I haven't implemented because I didn't need them in my housing situation as the weak disincentive of more chores worked fine.)

Thanks for the response. How do you get assigned twice though? Once a task is assigned I don't see a way to be able to assign someone a second time. Does it happen via a menu that's only available after someone has missed an assigned chore?

Also, any interest in releasing it as an open source project? :~)

Hmmmm it's probably best demonstrated with an example: if you have users a b and c, a normal rotation of a chore would be a b c a b c a b c ... and so on. If user b has 2X, the rotation would be a b b c a b c ... Does that make sense?

Assignment and rotation happens automatically. A chore is setup with a frequency, etc, then as users are assigned they are notified and they only need to intervene when they do the chore.

Yep, I understand what happens after B has 2X, but I'm confused about how you can get to 2X in the first place. If you go ABCABB then it doesn't look like C gets 2X, it looks like B gets O instead.

How does a mate end up with 2X in the first place?

Also: are there chores where everyone is assigned? Like "pay your rent" where it's important that everyone does it?

When you don't do your chore, you're assigned the chore for an additional contiguous period. e.g. Floors are set to be swept every week. You didn't sweep the floors on time this week, so now you will sweep the floors the next 2 weeks.

There are group chores, but there aren't penalties for individuals missing group chores so that's a use case hole.

Shoot me an email to discuss more: keyan@choremate.co

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