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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is the advantage of running something like GitLab vs what I do which is just a server with SSH and a file system? To create a new repo I do:

  ssh example.com ‘mkdir repos/my-proj.git && cd repos/my-proj.git && git init —bare .’

Then I just set my remote origin URL to example.com:repos/my-proj.git

The filesystem on example.com is backed up daily. Since I do not need to send myself pull requests for personal projects and track my own TODOs and issues via TODO.md, what exactly am I missing? I have been using GitHub for open source projects and work for years but for projects where I am the only author, why would I need a UI besides git and my code editor of choice?

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> why would I need a UI besides git and my code editor of choice?

If you ever find yourself wishing for a web UI as well, there's cgit[1]. It's what kernel.org uses[2].

[1]: https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/ [2]: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

What exactly is the advantage of running something like a restaurant vs what I do at home which is just cook it myself?

-> convenience, collaboration, mobility

Personal projects that you work on by yourself do not need collaboration. I feel like I pretty clearly implied that in my comment.

CI runners would be the main advantage of GitLab over bare Git, I think. Also if you want to show other people your personal project at some point, it may be nice to be able to link to a diff or a historical version of a file that they can see in a browser. Or just a syntax-highlighted file or a rendered Markdown or Jupyter file. Also previous release tarballs.

Collaboration and specifically collaboration with non git nerds. That's primarily what made GitHub win the VCS wars back in the day. The pull request model appealed to anyone who didn't want to learn crafting and emailing patches.

Yes, it's the PRs, and there is a misunderstanding I think because the OP and the GP's use-cases are quite different. Self-hosting your own repository on a remote server (and perhaps sharing it with 1 or 2 collaborators) is simple but quite different than running a public open source project that solicits contributions.

I’d argue they if you can’t prepare a patch diff then your abilities as a contributing developer should be thoroughly questioned.

Yes, the projects that are emailing patches around generally have a much higher bar then the ones that accept GitHub PRs, but whatever works for a given project I guess

I specifically was talking about “personal projects” and excluded PRs for the reason that I would be the only contributor.

We at $DAYJOB had an internal git server that was literally what the parent of this comment mentioned (`git init --bare`). It became a little cumbersome, so when I stumbled across forgejo, I was happy to see that importing the existing git repos was a breeze, just had to point the config to look at the existing git storage root and assign groups and permissions via the GUI.

You don’t! Forges are for collaboration outside of the rhythm of git commits. You’re happy to make a new commit every time you have something to add to an issue. With X issues and Y comments a hour, polluting the git timeline with commentary is going to become unhelpful.

Some forges even include(d) instant messaging!

https://secure.phabricator.com/Z1336

This is kind of like asking what the point of Dropbox is when we have rsync. Rsync is nice, but most people won't know how to use it.

Setting up a server with SSH and GitLab is more work than setting up a server with SSH. Dropbox is great and I use it but only because I can’t get the same functionality out of rsync without major additional orchestration. But if I am the only one working on my own project why would I need a second read-only UI for my own code?

If you're working alone you can also send raw IP packets down the wire by way of telegraph key if you'd like. What you do alone behind closed doors isn't really anyone's business and is up to you. For everyone else, the benefit of using Gitlab is that once it's set up, a wide range of users of varying skill levels and backgrounds can use it to collaborate.

Which is why I asked if there is any benefit to that type of setup for personal projects. Your answer so far has been the least helpful or informative.

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