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Phabricator[0] is a more mature alternative if anyone is interested in an open source and free substitute for GitHub. I think the only thing GitLab might have o

by VeilEm 11y ago

Phabricator[0] is a more mature alternative if anyone is interested in an open source and free substitute for GitHub. I think the only thing GitLab might have over Phabricator is a familiar GitHub like UI. Phabricator was an internal Facebook project that was open sourced. It's actually far more than just a substitute for GitHub. It has a much better system for managing issues, and better code review tools as well as other powerful features. My favorite feature is the herald system[1]. [0] http://phabricator.org/ http://phabricator.org/ [1] https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/herald/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/hera...

cmrx64 11y ago
I'm also a phan, but phabricator is more complex than GitLab and doesn't have (to my knowledge) a free, hosted version like gitlab.com. It also isn't quite as appropriate for open source projects, in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with it. I really do love differential though, and its UI is very cohesive.
- electrum 11y ago
  Facebook uses it for some open source projects: https://reviews.facebook.net/ https://reviews.facebook.net/
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- eeZi 11y ago
  It's much better suited for open source projects than GitHub, not only due to the powerful issue tracker and other community features. An incomplete list of projects using it, some of them VERY large: - Blender (https://developer.blender.org/ https://developer.blender.org/) - LLVM (http://reviews.llvm.org/ http://reviews.llvm.org/) - Haskell (https://phabricator.haskell.org https://phabricator.haskell.org) - Wikimedia (after lots of discussion and a lengthy selection process, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/) - FreeBSD (https://reviews.freebsd.org/ https://reviews.freebsd.org/) - Fedora (in some places, for example: https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/ https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/) - Khan Academy (https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/ https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/) - Enlightenment (https://phab.enlightenment.org/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/) - KDE (https://phabricator.kde.org/ https://phabricator.kde.org/) - Freedesktop (https://phabricator.freedesktop.org https://phabricator.freedesktop.org) - lighttpd (https://review.lighttpd.net https://review.lighttpd.net) - Kolab (https://git.kolab.org/ https://git.kolab.org/) - ... Wikimedia hat lots of content about their choice and the migration process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ Phabricator has been in use as a production tool for years and it shows. It is much more sophisticated in terms of workflow and real-world use than alternatives.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    It's interesting to see which projects have experience with naming servers (anyone who didn't include "phab" in the name)
  - mineo 11y ago
    Note that not all of those use Phabricator as a bug tracker (KDE, lighttpd, LLVM, Haskell, I imagine a lot of bugs for Wikimedia are reported through project chat pages on the wikis themselves).
jxm262 11y ago
I've never actually heard of this, thanks for the links. We use gitlab at work but I took quick browse of this site and it seems pretty cool. Does phabricator have a CI server out of the box that's easy to use? One of the major draws to gitlab recently (at least for me), is a CI server available to the projects for free.
- dominotw 11y ago
  Setting up jenkins takes like 10 minutes :\
  - zeckalpha 11y ago
    Initially.
- eeZi 11y ago
  Yes, it does. It's called Harbormaster.
angerman 11y ago
Phabricator is a very good tool! But calling it a substitute for GitHub seems a bit off. GitHub (and GitLab) revolve around repositories. As the name implies they are focused on git and git workflows. As a user you are using `git` most of the time when interacting with the systems. Phabricator on the other can supports `git`, but that's just one of the supported storage systems for phabricator. As a user you are using `arc`, phabricators command line tool. I've seen many people having issues with using `arc`, having used, say github, prior to that. This got better recently when the `arc land` workflow was improved.
- eeZi 11y ago
  It's a fine substitute for GitHub. Both are source code and project management tools. Just because they have different user interfaces doesn't meant that they don't solve the same problem. Phabricator is much more flexible and that comes with a small cost in complexity, but the result is a system which provides a superior workflow, especially in enterprise environments: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-Phabricator-has-over-GitHub-for-a-startup-company https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-Phabricator-ha... http://cramer.io/2014/05/03/on-pull-requests/ http://cramer.io/2014/05/03/on-pull-requests/
dham 11y ago
I just can't get into Phabricator. Babel switched to it for issues. I find it hard finding anything. I kind of wish they would mirror the issues on to Github. When I see Phabricator I just don't see anything. I just see a blob of text dumped to the screen. Maybe it's because I'm so use to Github.
- sdesol 11y ago
  No it's not just you. I find it hard to explain but GitHub does have the right amount of white/empty space to make consumption of information easier. I've always hated the simplicity of GitHub's layout, but after studying their commits and branches pages for my product, I've grown to appreciate their simplicity. It's the little things that GitHub does, that I've found makes the difference. Take GitLab's branches page here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/branches https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/branches vs https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/branches https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/branches By limiting the number of branches shown and by creating strong visual breaks/barriers, they make it way easier for the user to focus. Seeing a wall of branches is okay ... when that's what you want, but as a default, by organizing it the way that GitHub does, they make their branches page significantly easier to consume. I also find the buttons too be a little too big in GitLab and they don't have enough definition to them, to help you focus on them. Creating merge requests and comparing branches is the focal point of the branches page, and they should make it easier for your eyes to lock onto them. Like I said, it's the little things that I can't explain that I've come to respect and I don't think it's just because we are familar with GitHub.
  - jibberia 11y ago
    Agreed. I just signed up to try out GitLab and went to browse GitLab's own source code to see what they were using. First thing: Rails, clearly. Second thing: Holy crap, I have to scroll this much on my laptop to browse their project? The amount of whitespace is bonkers. A bit of googling tells me that they made this change a few months ago with GitLab 8.0, but the bug report about the whitespace seems to have been ignored. I really like what GitLab is doing, but I also really like a powerful web-based repository browser (search tool included). Hopefully they just went a bit wild with the UI and they'll rein it in. (I also checked Preferences and they have a switch for fixed vs. fluid layout, so maybe they've been responsive to UI-change revolt in the past?)
Grue3 11y ago
>a more mature alternative Both were first released in 2011.
- sytse 11y ago
  I assume Phabricator was in development way before that inside Facebook but I'm not sure.
sandGorgon 11y ago
+1 just because of this https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/tone/#removing-flavor https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/tone... If you don't like a piece of flavor because it's a joke that you don't get or don't find particularly funny, but it doesn't impact your ability to understand or use the software, we're less likely to remove it. We find all our jokes very very funny and cherish each of them dearly. (If you're committed to removing flavor on grounds of taste, we might be willing to accept changes which replace our objectively very very funny jokes with even better ones.) Question: has anybody used hosted Phabricator for hosting their git repos (as well as bugs, etc.) ? How would you compare against github and bitbucket. Really seriously considering it because we can move to our own install very easily. But not sure what people think about it. I'm particularly interested in triggers and hooks (e.g. sending an email after commit, posting to bitbucket,etc.).
- marrs 11y ago
  I like the "next step" at the end of the documentation. Continue by ignoring this document and complaining about a joke that you don't think is very funny with Contributing Bug Reports.
joshmn 11y ago
> Phabricator includes applications for: .... counting down to HL3; > If you prefer a more straightforward tone, you can disable most of the flavor by turning on the phabricator.serious-business setting in the Config application. Development done right.

by VeilEm 11y ago

cmrx64 11y ago

I'm also a phan, but phabricator is more complex than GitLab and doesn't have (to my knowledge) a free, hosted version like gitlab.com. It also isn't quite as appropriate for open source projects, in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with it. I really do love differential though, and its UI is very cohesive.

electrum 11y ago
Facebook uses it for some open source projects: https://reviews.facebook.net/ https://reviews.facebook.net/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
eeZi 11y ago
It's much better suited for open source projects than GitHub, not only due to the powerful issue tracker and other community features. An incomplete list of projects using it, some of them VERY large: - Blender (https://developer.blender.org/ https://developer.blender.org/) - LLVM (http://reviews.llvm.org/ http://reviews.llvm.org/) - Haskell (https://phabricator.haskell.org https://phabricator.haskell.org) - Wikimedia (after lots of discussion and a lengthy selection process, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/) - FreeBSD (https://reviews.freebsd.org/ https://reviews.freebsd.org/) - Fedora (in some places, for example: https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/ https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/) - Khan Academy (https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/ https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/) - Enlightenment (https://phab.enlightenment.org/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/) - KDE (https://phabricator.kde.org/ https://phabricator.kde.org/) - Freedesktop (https://phabricator.freedesktop.org https://phabricator.freedesktop.org) - lighttpd (https://review.lighttpd.net https://review.lighttpd.net) - Kolab (https://git.kolab.org/ https://git.kolab.org/) - ... Wikimedia hat lots of content about their choice and the migration process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ Phabricator has been in use as a production tool for years and it shows. It is much more sophisticated in terms of workflow and real-world use than alternatives.
- viraptor 11y ago
  It's interesting to see which projects have experience with naming servers (anyone who didn't include "phab" in the name)
- mineo 11y ago
  Note that not all of those use Phabricator as a bug tracker (KDE, lighttpd, LLVM, Haskell, I imagine a lot of bugs for Wikimedia are reported through project chat pages on the wikis themselves).

jxm262 11y ago

I've never actually heard of this, thanks for the links. We use gitlab at work but I took quick browse of this site and it seems pretty cool. Does phabricator have a CI server out of the box that's easy to use? One of the major draws to gitlab recently (at least for me), is a CI server available to the projects for free.

dominotw 11y ago
Setting up jenkins takes like 10 minutes :\
- zeckalpha 11y ago
  Initially.
eeZi 11y ago
Yes, it does. It's called Harbormaster.

angerman 11y ago

Phabricator is a very good tool! But calling it a substitute for GitHub seems a bit off. GitHub (and GitLab) revolve around repositories. As the name implies they are focused on git and git workflows. As a user you are using `git` most of the time when interacting with the systems. Phabricator on the other can supports `git`, but that's just one of the supported storage systems for phabricator. As a user you are using `arc`, phabricators command line tool. I've seen many people having issues with using `arc`, having used, say github, prior to that. This got better recently when the `arc land` workflow was improved.

eeZi 11y ago
It's a fine substitute for GitHub. Both are source code and project management tools. Just because they have different user interfaces doesn't meant that they don't solve the same problem. Phabricator is much more flexible and that comes with a small cost in complexity, but the result is a system which provides a superior workflow, especially in enterprise environments: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-Phabricator-has-over-GitHub-for-a-startup-company https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-Phabricator-ha... http://cramer.io/2014/05/03/on-pull-requests/ http://cramer.io/2014/05/03/on-pull-requests/

dham 11y ago

I just can't get into Phabricator. Babel switched to it for issues. I find it hard finding anything. I kind of wish they would mirror the issues on to Github. When I see Phabricator I just don't see anything. I just see a blob of text dumped to the screen. Maybe it's because I'm so use to Github.

sdesol 11y ago
No it's not just you. I find it hard to explain but GitHub does have the right amount of white/empty space to make consumption of information easier. I've always hated the simplicity of GitHub's layout, but after studying their commits and branches pages for my product, I've grown to appreciate their simplicity. It's the little things that GitHub does, that I've found makes the difference. Take GitLab's branches page here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/branches https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/branches vs https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/branches https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/branches By limiting the number of branches shown and by creating strong visual breaks/barriers, they make it way easier for the user to focus. Seeing a wall of branches is okay ... when that's what you want, but as a default, by organizing it the way that GitHub does, they make their branches page significantly easier to consume. I also find the buttons too be a little too big in GitLab and they don't have enough definition to them, to help you focus on them. Creating merge requests and comparing branches is the focal point of the branches page, and they should make it easier for your eyes to lock onto them. Like I said, it's the little things that I can't explain that I've come to respect and I don't think it's just because we are familar with GitHub.
- jibberia 11y ago
  Agreed. I just signed up to try out GitLab and went to browse GitLab's own source code to see what they were using. First thing: Rails, clearly. Second thing: Holy crap, I have to scroll this much on my laptop to browse their project? The amount of whitespace is bonkers. A bit of googling tells me that they made this change a few months ago with GitLab 8.0, but the bug report about the whitespace seems to have been ignored. I really like what GitLab is doing, but I also really like a powerful web-based repository browser (search tool included). Hopefully they just went a bit wild with the UI and they'll rein it in. (I also checked Preferences and they have a switch for fixed vs. fluid layout, so maybe they've been responsive to UI-change revolt in the past?)

Grue3 11y ago

>a more mature alternative Both were first released in 2011.

sytse 11y ago
I assume Phabricator was in development way before that inside Facebook but I'm not sure.

sandGorgon 11y ago

+1 just because of this https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/tone/#removing-flavor https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/tone... If you don't like a piece of flavor because it's a joke that you don't get or don't find particularly funny, but it doesn't impact your ability to understand or use the software, we're less likely to remove it. We find all our jokes very very funny and cherish each of them dearly. (If you're committed to removing flavor on grounds of taste, we might be willing to accept changes which replace our objectively very very funny jokes with even better ones.) Question: has anybody used hosted Phabricator for hosting their git repos (as well as bugs, etc.) ? How would you compare against github and bitbucket. Really seriously considering it because we can move to our own install very easily. But not sure what people think about it. I'm particularly interested in triggers and hooks (e.g. sending an email after commit, posting to bitbucket,etc.).

marrs 11y ago
I like the "next step" at the end of the documentation. Continue by ignoring this document and complaining about a joke that you don't think is very funny with Contributing Bug Reports.

joshmn 11y ago

> Phabricator includes applications for: .... counting down to HL3; > If you prefer a more straightforward tone, you can disable most of the flavor by turning on the phabricator.serious-business setting in the Config application. Development done right.