Radicle: Sovereign {code forge} built on Git
radicle.dev
radicle.dev
Still, time has passed and I have become more interested in GitHub alternatives (https://figbert.com/posts/ideating-tragit/). Will likely end up moving to Tangled. But first I need to add support over there for pushing over HTTPS...
The best response I’m aware of is to invalidate any secrets that have been accidentally shared. Sometimes that is easier said than done though. And of course there are plenty of other reasons someone might want to delete data.
It is acutely true for peer-to-peer distributed systems like Radicle, but is still true for the more centralized GitHub, and for the Web in general. If you want to be able to walk something back, better don't publush it.
Publishing a token or an ssh key should not be a big deal, such a token or key should be immediately revoked, which is as good as deleted. The problem occurs when the fact is not noticed immediately. A git hook can help avoid such mishaps.
If there's purely an agentic forge one day, it's likely going to be a distributed one, with cryptographic identities and signed artifacts by default.
There's long been a way to make Zulip channels searchable with zulip-archive (https://github.com/zulip/zulip-archive), and that continues to be available.
Making the app-native web-public channels accessible to search engines is a big technical project, tracked as https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/21881.
I guess this feature has been requested for Zulip for a long time
But yea, rust-chat in a way seems like more of a proper open source project ...
Indeed, this seems to be already planned. https://radicle.dev/faq "Radworks intends to offer services built on top of Radicle."
All you would need is cargo compatibility, and a trusted namespace that kept up with the metadata of the current contents of crates.io, right?
edit: I really, really like rust, and love basically all of their choices about the language, but I can't stand the feeling that I'm being tricked into an ecosystem dependent on one of the worst behaved companies in the world, and I can't stand that a lot of rust projects smell like GPL-washing.
That being said, git is GPL and radicle is MIT, so it feels like the same thing, but Github also ain't git. I prefer MIT to MS; if radicle gets important enough and decides to rubpull, there will inevitably be a Free fork anyway.
[^1]: https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/369274-General...
* crates.io's attachment to GitHub is a fact about crates.io specifically, not the Cargo crate registry protocol
* Cargo's support for Git repositories is generic across Git and has nothing to do with GitHub specifically
* Radicle offers nothing to a crate registry that a Git remote doesn't
* and none of this has anything to do with the GPL.
It feels like you're just listing off things you like and don't like aesthetically. They have nothing to do with each other structurally.
Crates.io has not moved away from Github-only authentication, and got into the habit of yelling at people who complained about it.
> crates.io's attachment to GitHub is a fact about crates.io specifically, not the Cargo crate registry protocol
Is this just trivia you wanted to share? I feel like I covered it in the second sentence of the comment you're replying to.
> Cargo's support for Git repositories is generic across Git and has nothing to do with GitHub specifically
I'm looking to compile Rust projects from the semi-standard commonly-used crates. I do not want a Github account.
> Radicle offers nothing to a crate registry that a Git remote doesn't
Radicle offers peer-to-peer hosting that does not require a Github account.
> none of this has anything to do with the GPL.
Radicle is a project being built in Rust that partially reimplements git. Git is GPL-licensed, Radicle is MIT-licensed.
> It feels like you're just listing off things you like and don't like aesthetically.
I am unconcerned about your feelings. What I was saying is that I would like a peer-to-peer hosted, namespaced code repository that mirrors (or replaces) crates.io, and I do not want a github account to be necessary to use it.
> They have nothing to do with each other structurally.
I have no idea what "they" is referring to in this sentence.
> Crates.io has not moved away from Github-only authentication, and got into the habit of yelling at people who complained about it.
This was me updating you on the present state of the world. Replying with the previous state of the world, as though this is somehow new and better information, without even looking up whether it was still true, is a level of deliberate ignorance I can't fathom displaying on purpose. Again: crates.io is presently in the process of moving away from GitHub-only authentication.
[^1]: https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/369876-RIPs/to...
I also added some network rules to block non-local network access to radicle. Not needed but I really wanted it to work only on my lan.
Works great. I setup several skills for agent harnesses and they use radicle + jj + git perfectly. It is fun watching issues pop up and monitoring progress via the flow.
I am building more tools around this workflow because it is so effective. Radicle acts as the long term project memory bank and management. I can write issues and they can automatically be picked up.
What I'm adding is making the issues more searchable and an agent proxy that integrates radicle into calls. among other things.
This is all pretty straight forward to do, I really recommend it.
Is there a plan for jj repositories in radicle proper? I'm very tired of git shortcomings.
We will benefit from jj's compatibility with Git for the time being, and seeing how that evolves.
Interoperating with jj's repository would likely be a bigger task and it is still evolving quite quickly itself.
Show HN: Epiq – Distributed Git based issue tracker TUI
> Radicle supports private repositories that are only shared among a trusted set of peers, not the entire network. These are not encrypted at rest but rely on selective replication and are thus completely invisible to the rest of the network.
There's no structural separation of public / private repositories; this is one bug or fat-finger away from a leak.
I was looking into how to get a radicle node running, but connected to only my own devices.
You can't seem to start the radicle node without it automatically connecting to the (generously provided) global shared seed nodes, and you can't examine/change the config without starting the node (at least with rad subcommands).
If you do `rad auth` and then delete the four seed addresses from ~/.radicle/config.json before starting the rad node, it helpfully re-adds them on startup:
[...]
INFO node Opening node database..
INFO node Address book is empty. Adding bootstrap nodes..
INFO node 4 nodes added to address book
[...]
Is there a guide to using Radicle like one might use Fossil within a small company / within a small group of people (disconnected from the iris/rosa radicle.network seeds)?
When a repository is initialised as private [1], it's encoded in the repository identity document. The only way to change a repository to be public is to update the identity document; in the case of a repository with multiple delegates (repo maintainers in Radicle nomenclature), such a change requires a quorum to be met. So I'd say it's more than a fat-finger away from leaking.
> I was looking into how to get a radicle node running, but connected to only my own devices.
There's an open proposal [2] to introduce the concept of network configuration that would help with these kinds of use cases. Moreover, we're working on other ways to improve the collaboration experience for small teams, so stay tuned and thank you for this feedback!
[1] https://radicle.dev/guides/user#initializing-a-private-repos... [2] https://radicle.network/nodes/iris.radicle.network/rad:z3trN...
Maybe I'm not the target audience for this, so pardon my ignorance when I ask what problem does this solve? Centralization and censorship?
1. Does Radicle also work over TOR? 2. Does Radicle support Git LFS and/or Git Annex?
[1] - https://radicle.dev/guides/user#4-embracing-the-onion [2] - https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/369873-Support
https://radicle.network/nodes/iris.radicle.network/rad%3Az4V...
Some nitpicks:
* What is with the forced serif font on the website?
* Does this support other version control systems? Like mercurial, SVN, pijul, etc.?
No it doesn't currently support other VCS's but we have planned for that possibility in future!
There are rough edges and the seeding thing is a bit mehhh. And honestly there are a bunch of things I would do differently but I like the spirit of things.
Not sure where the authors of the project stand, but it's fun to see them make progress.
Basically allow people to deploy something closer to gitea on a webserver initially, which has all the basic protocol features and sharing aspects implemented.
Currently the focus seems to have been very much on just the seeding & p2p part which honestly is good but not very useful for me as a developer/user who wants to work on a collaborative project.
Prioritizing P2P makes sense, but the UX/DX of radicle is not intuitive to put it mildly.
I went to the explorer radicle.network and my own as well and I still had no idea how to create an issue or submit a patch or login to an account or anything of that sort.
I opened the cli and figured out how to do all that, but then I created another node on my web server and now I have no idea how to connect to it, then I figured out how to do that, now how do I share my node without sharing it publicly, figured that out.
Cool now we are at the starting point, so every time I need to work on a project i will have to clone it, but why can't I create stuff in webui.
Maybe there is a setting I can't seem to find it yet.
But the jumping through hoops is mindbending. For a solution that could replace github for me and my friends who maintain a few public projects that wants small contributions from large number of folks as we try and maintain the local "tech" clubs.
Getting low information folks to use within 10 mins, is the bar that I have set for any platform I can use to replace github.
Radicle isn't that yet! anyways.
But I like the direction, putting contributors, access list, issues and prs in the repo is a brilliant idea, maybe put agent plans in it too, agent sessions as well maybe...
I would go as far as to say, something like a radicle network is better than every other alternative, but the UX is just not there yet.
Fwiw, I think this is a matter of UI/UX. I think radicle provides the foundation for everything you describe -- it is just the pr/patch & issue tracking substrate, and the p2p layer for federation.
To make an analogy, I think what you are saying is "Look, BitTorrent is great and all, but I want to be able to search for music and movies. I want IMDB with a download button." That's fair, but the problem BitTorrent is solving is more fundamental, and you can build Napster or ThePirateBay on top.
Radicle, like BitTorrent, is solving the transport layer.
How are folks wiring up CI/CD? Seems you want to trigger compute DAGs on the patches you receive, what’s the latest and greatest here?
We'll have more docs on this very soon. Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48153535 for more info
[1]: https://radicle.network/nodes/seed.radicle.garden/rad%3AzBNX...
Gitlab and Github have pages and pages going over the domain language used to configure the job triggers. Jobs can trigger other jobs either in response to completion or as a dependency etc etc.
I would say these radicle-ci designs as they are now are actually quite rudimentary. That's perfectly fine for an early project but at this point I think you have to say that they won't have a CI system ready for quite some time.
Feels like using a free Jenkins gets you everything you want. Doesn't need more than a container or Java either.
[1] - https://radicle.network/nodes/index.radicle.garden/rad%3Az3G... , [2] - https://ambient.liw.fi/
> What is Radicle? How is it different from Git/GitHub?
> Radicle is a peer-to-peer code collaboration platform (“forge”) built on Git. Unlike centralized platforms like GitHub, there is no single entity controlling the network or user data. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner. Radicle is an alternative for people and organizations who want full control of their data and user experience, without compromising on the social aspects of collaboration platforms.
(Quote from their FAQ).
This isn't even trying to answer the titular question... None of them, actually.
So, what is Radicle? A platform built on Git? What does this mean? A platform for what? What is it for?
Why Git/GitHub are used as if they were the same category of things? There's not even an attempt at answering the "how is this different from Git?" question. What does it offer that Git doesn't? Wtf is "forge"?
Radicle is an alternative... to what? I believe I have full control of my data in my Git repository... why do I need an alternative with even more control? How will I have even more control?
* * *
Maybe whatever this software does is actually useful or even good, but the documentation can't be worse.
> Radicle is a peer-to-peer code collaboration platform (“forge”) built on Git.
-----
> Why Git/GitHub are used as if they were the same category of things?
They are not. Github is a centralized collaboration platform built on git, and radicle is a peer-to-peer collaboration platform built on git.
-----
> Wtf is "forge"?
A word some people started using for the class of Github/Bitbucket(RIP) or even Fossil-type things, as FOSS alternatives began to multiply.
-----
> Radicle is an alternative... to what?
To Github, or other "forges."
Then why do they bring Git into the picture? They are not comparing themselves to Git...
> Radicle is a peer-to-peer code collaboration platform (“forge”) built on Git.
This is a word salad that means nothing... more than 99% of moderns software is built on Git in one way or another. Anything that is designed to be used by more than a single user could be arguably called a "collaboration platform". This description completely fails to describe anything useful about the program they are trying to describe. For instance, Git is a peer-to-peer code collaboration platform built on Git. And the same can be said about a huge number of programs that share very little in terms of purpose or application.
When someone writes a definition, s.a. you'd find in encyclopedia, the rule is that it has to (a) link to the broader category of things (b) specify in what way the subject is (mostly) unique in the category (a). If you give only (a), then the reader walks away wondering how is subject different from anything else in (a). If you only give (b), then the reader needs to guess (a), and if they fail, they may misattribute or simply abandon efforts to understand the subject.
This attempt at "definition" is the textbook example of forgetting the (b). It's something that a 10-12 y.o. could come up with... this is not what an adult should strive for.
> They are not. Github is a centralized collaboration platform built on git, and radicle is a peer-to-peer collaboration platform built on git.
You didn't understand the question.
Edit:
Breaking down the “word salad”:
> Radicle is a peer-to-peer code collaboration platform (“forge”) built on Git.
Peer-to-peer: it functions with individual nodes on the network spreading state for tracking it without relying on a single entity or centralised service.
Code collaboration platform (forge): you use it not just to store code but provides a way to keep track of “patches” (their term for PRs) and issues, amongst other things, to enable multiple people to collaborate on a code base
Built on git: the technology runs on top of git insofar as not only is the VCS just git, but the issues, patches, etc are stored in git. So the project isn’t merely developed using git, but when running the tool yourself it’s still backing everything under git.
I hope the definitions shared in the sibling comment will help.
> Then why do they bring Git into the picture? They are not comparing themselves to Git...
I would find it very strange if Github didn't mention git. It would be equally strange if radicle didn't mention git. They both wrap git.
If you're not familiar with the distinction between git and github it could be even more confusing.
As soon as I hear decentralized I have lots of questions about the underlying protocols. Their protocol page helps a little but also uses terms I'm not familiar with like "gossip protocol".
It would be nice for there to be a page that motivates the project a bit more, ie. explaining the technical problems they are attempting to solve before enumerating the components of the complex system they've built.
Notice how each additional sentence makes the previous sentence worse, like a turducken of solutions looking for problems, or a nesting doll where every layer is a different kind of sadness. This, I presume, is what happens when you have a hammer and a screwdriver and a chainsaw, and you decide that every problem would be better solved by using all three simultaneously while riding a unicycle.
But seeing as it already does exist, it's pretty awesome.