8 ms·

So far, I am happy only using pure git. If you guys that use GitLab or GitHub or alike would have to switch to pure git - what is the one thing you would miss

by TekMol 7y ago

So far, I am happy only using pure git. If you guys that use GitLab or GitHub or alike would have to switch to pure git - what is the one thing you would miss most?

adito 7y ago
On the social side, that would be starring/watching cool project on the platform.
wereHamster 7y ago
I'm a happy GitHub user, these things I'd miss from pure git: - Search (across code, issues, pull requests etc) - Issue tracker (~ manage my backlog, write down potential ideas) - Pull requests, review UI around them - GitHub Apps and Actions (~ automation) and integration with third-party tools (auto-deploy changes to zeit.co / netlify / heroku etc). - Security audits (GitHub can send pull requests to bump my dependencies when security vulns are discovered in them) - Ability to contribute without having to fork/clone/push changes (I quite often contribute to projects by editing the code directly through the GitHub website).
- OJFord 7y ago
  > (I quite often contribute to projects by editing the code directly through the GitHub website) Whenever I do that I get as far as the commit message and, lacking vi and a 72 char marker, commit 'wip', pull down the changes, amend the commit, and wish I'd done the whole thing locally faster and more easily in the first place.
  - technoweenie 7y ago
    I just format the message in my text editor and paste it back into the commit message box before submitting.
  - wereHamster 7y ago
    I've never the GitHub editor/UI to submit non-trivial changes which require more than a few words to describe. I do not need vi to write "Fix a typo in the documentation". Is it you or the project owners who care about the 72 character limit? IME most projects will accept contributions regardless of formatting of the commit message. Most people are just happy about contributions, regardless of source.
    - OJFord 7y ago
      It's my own preference.
alias_neo 7y ago
Pull-requests and integrated review/comments. When you work in a team and want to be productive, pure Git just doesn't provides the tools.
- Iv 7y ago
  PRs are a necessary tool. Also comments on issues are a crucial part of the documentation for devs. "Looks like this does not work as documented" "Yes, this corner case is a bug, will be fixed soon, use this workaround in the meantime".
accatyyc 7y ago
For me, using pure git is fine when working on solo projects. The benefits of such services is when there are many developers in the same project. Gives a good overview of issue reports, what commits are linked to what issues, easy "pull request" overviews/quick reviews without checking out branches etc. It's more about the social and less about the source control for me
jononor 7y ago
Continuous Integration. Don't understand how anyone wants to run a software project without an independent and automatic test-runner. For Github this means using Travis CI, CircleCI, Appveyor etc
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  You don't need CI if you don't have any tests...
  - josteink 7y ago
    Sure you do. Lots of projects are using compiled languages, even if the developers for whatever reason have decided to not write tests (lazy? lack of competence? decided tests wont benfit the project). These projects too will benefit from a independent CI-service validating their commits.
  - tmoravec 7y ago
    Or deployment.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    You don't need anything if it doesn't matter whether the software works or not.
- masklinn 7y ago
  TBF this can be integrated to a pure-git setup e.g. Python had buildbots (on mercurial but samesies) long before it moved to github or whatever. Generally speaking you'd set up your own "synchronisation channel(s)" for such tools e.g. mailing lists.
  - Shish2k 7y ago
    "pure git has all the features you need, if you use pure git alongside all these other third party tools" The point of github / gitlab / etc is to have all the tools in one place, nicely integrated
przmk 7y ago
There is plenty of things that can make your life easier on Github/Gitlab, especially when working in a team: - Issue tracker - Merge requests that are easy to analyze - Ability to put comments during a code review on specific lines of code and discuss it from there - Embedded wiki for a project - Managing different access rights to different repos I couldn't see myself using pure git without any additional tooling for anything more that personal projects that I work on alone.
- masklinn 7y ago
  They're also convenient synchronisation points for tooling e.g. CI, linters, fixers, merge bots, …
- amelius 7y ago
  Ok, different question, but does that justify gitlab's recent valuation of 2.75B?
  - pnako 7y ago
    I don't know, but for reference GitHub was acquired for 7.5B and Atlassian has a market cap of 30B.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      > and Atlassian has a market cap of 30B. Because Atlassian manages to extract boatloads of enterprise money for a product portfolio that can be best described as an inconsistent, unintegrated mess. Everything they have was bought together and crudely integrated, with each product having totally different ways of using and administrating them. Not to mention that core features (e.g. "merging" duplicate user accounts, SAML login) are paid-for plugins of varying quality. Feature suggestions for the products end up in multi-year-old tickets that one has no way to influence. But still, enterprises are buying up that crap because the alternatives to JIRA and Confluence plainly suck even more. The only thing that has real competition is Bitbucket, with Gitlab and Github as more than viable alternatives.
pnako 7y ago
On my solo projects I use Gitea because otherwise I'd miss tickets and wiki. You could replace those with TODO/FIXME comments in the code and .md files checked in git though. Fossil seems to offer the best of both worlds, but unfortunately it's too confidential and no one else seems to use it.
- brobdingnagians 7y ago
  We use it. It's great. Extremely secure too, since you can sync over ssh without having to expose a web server at all, since your wiki, tech notes, and tickets get transferred over ssh with the repo then are accessed locally using `fossil ui`. Self hosting, and it is extremely simple to setup. Backups are super simple as well.
josteink 7y ago
> If you guys that use GitLab or GitHub or alike would have to switch to pure git - what is the one thing you would miss most? Github & Gitlab do tons of things which pure Git does not: - issue-tracking - wikis / documentation - release and package-management - CI - a free of cost (and effort) "public facing website" for your project by default - notifications to collaborators I'm sure there's more I've missed which I would remember in a heart-beat if I was forced to go plain git and were suddenly without, but those are the most obvious ones I can come up with without even thinking.
dijit 7y ago
Very nice web view of source code, inline commentary on merge requests... merge requests themselves. To a one-click view of CI pipelines, that's nice too.
jka 7y ago
Source control is really only the 'hook' that brings developers into both GitHub and GitLab. Primarily they're communities which grow in value based on the number of developers and projects hosted within them. Some of the powerful resulting centralized features are: * The social / team functionality - collaborating on code review, receiving notifications on repository activity, managing access control across multiple codebases * Code discovery - the ability to find projects which use a particular library, search for (and subscribe to) issue reports/fixes, follow other developers' activity These could more-or-less be achieved by configuring individual repos and setting up your own email alerts and notifications; GitHub & GitLab just make it very convenient and bring it all together in a single place.
yogsototh 7y ago
I've made a short presentation about filling the gap between just pure git and something like gitlab. https://her.esy.fun/slides/git-project-manager.html https://her.esy.fun/slides/git-project-manager.html Mostly, project-management features.
oweiler 7y ago
GitLab CI. IMHO there is no CI platform which comes close to this (except Circle CI maybe).
- w7 7y ago
  For my personal projects I use Gitea (source code hosting) + Bazel (build system) + Drone.io (automated builds) + Harbor (container registry) + Keel (deployment to Kubernetes). At a glance of Gitlab's documentation it looks like these tools cover most of what GitLab CI/Registry does, is there anything major I'm missing that you'd describe as a killer feature?
  - oweiler 7y ago
    Sorry for the late response. The killer feature of GitLabCI is that it offers the same functionality as all the tools you've mentioned but much better integrated because they are all part of GitLab. E.g. for CI you don't need to configure webhooks to trigger a build, you just assign a runner to the project and add a .gitlabci.yml.
cmiles74 7y ago
In my opinion, I still use straight Git even though we have a GitLab server. We only do pull requests through GitLab when we have a new hire or a contractor. I don't believe that using GitLab to manage the remote repositories has impacted anyone's ability to use Git to get their work done. In terms of what I would miss if we had to move away from GitLab, it's having remote repository management and continuous integration in one spot. In the past when a new project started, an administrator had to setup the repository and link in SSH keys, that same person had to setup Jenkins for the CI workflow. With GitLab, developers can set these things up on their own. And there's one less tool to manage.
the_jeremy 7y ago
The main thing I'd miss is GitLab CI. The documentation is great, it was pretty fast to learn, and it runs on every push to remote.
pfranz 7y ago
I wanted to point out the different "levels" between your own local git repo and GitLab/GitHub. If you're by yourself, a local git repo is great. "One step up," would be a remote git repo you push/pull to (people often use this for encrypted password repos or dotfiles). After that are things like Gitea or Gogs, which add a lightweight web interface. As you move to GitLab/GitHub you start to see features like; accounts, permissions, code search, issues, wiki, pull request, CI integration, etc. You can use something like GitHub/GitLab for most all of these tasks, but it's a bit overkill on things like maintenance and hardware requirements if your needs aren't great.
babypuncher 7y ago
Gitlab isn't just a code repository, it's an entire DevOps platform. I don't use GitLab, but my equivalent (Azure DevOps) gives me things like automated builds on checkin, runs unit tests against those builds, and one-click deployments to my test and production environments. On my local machine, there's nothing stopping me from using any Git client I want, including the Git CLI..
andywenkhh 7y ago
Mostly I would miss to organise 50+ developers on one platform. GitLab offers a very good authorization mechanics. Furthermore the CI pipeline is extremely helpful. There is no need to use anything else.

by TekMol 7y ago

So far, I am happy only using pure git. If you guys that use GitLab or GitHub or alike would have to switch to pure git - what is the one thing you would miss most?

adito 7y ago

On the social side, that would be starring/watching cool project on the platform.

wereHamster 7y ago

I'm a happy GitHub user, these things I'd miss from pure git: - Search (across code, issues, pull requests etc) - Issue tracker (~ manage my backlog, write down potential ideas) - Pull requests, review UI around them - GitHub Apps and Actions (~ automation) and integration with third-party tools (auto-deploy changes to zeit.co / netlify / heroku etc). - Security audits (GitHub can send pull requests to bump my dependencies when security vulns are discovered in them) - Ability to contribute without having to fork/clone/push changes (I quite often contribute to projects by editing the code directly through the GitHub website).

OJFord 7y ago
> (I quite often contribute to projects by editing the code directly through the GitHub website) Whenever I do that I get as far as the commit message and, lacking vi and a 72 char marker, commit 'wip', pull down the changes, amend the commit, and wish I'd done the whole thing locally faster and more easily in the first place.
- technoweenie 7y ago
  I just format the message in my text editor and paste it back into the commit message box before submitting.
- wereHamster 7y ago
  I've never the GitHub editor/UI to submit non-trivial changes which require more than a few words to describe. I do not need vi to write "Fix a typo in the documentation". Is it you or the project owners who care about the 72 character limit? IME most projects will accept contributions regardless of formatting of the commit message. Most people are just happy about contributions, regardless of source.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    It's my own preference.

alias_neo 7y ago

Pull-requests and integrated review/comments. When you work in a team and want to be productive, pure Git just doesn't provides the tools.

Iv 7y ago
PRs are a necessary tool. Also comments on issues are a crucial part of the documentation for devs. "Looks like this does not work as documented" "Yes, this corner case is a bug, will be fixed soon, use this workaround in the meantime".

accatyyc 7y ago

For me, using pure git is fine when working on solo projects. The benefits of such services is when there are many developers in the same project. Gives a good overview of issue reports, what commits are linked to what issues, easy "pull request" overviews/quick reviews without checking out branches etc. It's more about the social and less about the source control for me

jononor 7y ago

Continuous Integration. Don't understand how anyone wants to run a software project without an independent and automatic test-runner. For Github this means using Travis CI, CircleCI, Appveyor etc

bayesian_horse 7y ago
You don't need CI if you don't have any tests...
- josteink 7y ago
  Sure you do. Lots of projects are using compiled languages, even if the developers for whatever reason have decided to not write tests (lazy? lack of competence? decided tests wont benfit the project). These projects too will benefit from a independent CI-service validating their commits.
- tmoravec 7y ago
  Or deployment.
- pjc50 7y ago
  You don't need anything if it doesn't matter whether the software works or not.
masklinn 7y ago
TBF this can be integrated to a pure-git setup e.g. Python had buildbots (on mercurial but samesies) long before it moved to github or whatever. Generally speaking you'd set up your own "synchronisation channel(s)" for such tools e.g. mailing lists.
- Shish2k 7y ago
  "pure git has all the features you need, if you use pure git alongside all these other third party tools" The point of github / gitlab / etc is to have all the tools in one place, nicely integrated

przmk 7y ago

There is plenty of things that can make your life easier on Github/Gitlab, especially when working in a team: - Issue tracker - Merge requests that are easy to analyze - Ability to put comments during a code review on specific lines of code and discuss it from there - Embedded wiki for a project - Managing different access rights to different repos I couldn't see myself using pure git without any additional tooling for anything more that personal projects that I work on alone.

masklinn 7y ago
They're also convenient synchronisation points for tooling e.g. CI, linters, fixers, merge bots, …
amelius 7y ago
Ok, different question, but does that justify gitlab's recent valuation of 2.75B?
- pnako 7y ago
  I don't know, but for reference GitHub was acquired for 7.5B and Atlassian has a market cap of 30B.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    > and Atlassian has a market cap of 30B. Because Atlassian manages to extract boatloads of enterprise money for a product portfolio that can be best described as an inconsistent, unintegrated mess. Everything they have was bought together and crudely integrated, with each product having totally different ways of using and administrating them. Not to mention that core features (e.g. "merging" duplicate user accounts, SAML login) are paid-for plugins of varying quality. Feature suggestions for the products end up in multi-year-old tickets that one has no way to influence. But still, enterprises are buying up that crap because the alternatives to JIRA and Confluence plainly suck even more. The only thing that has real competition is Bitbucket, with Gitlab and Github as more than viable alternatives.

pnako 7y ago

On my solo projects I use Gitea because otherwise I'd miss tickets and wiki. You could replace those with TODO/FIXME comments in the code and .md files checked in git though. Fossil seems to offer the best of both worlds, but unfortunately it's too confidential and no one else seems to use it.

brobdingnagians 7y ago
We use it. It's great. Extremely secure too, since you can sync over ssh without having to expose a web server at all, since your wiki, tech notes, and tickets get transferred over ssh with the repo then are accessed locally using `fossil ui`. Self hosting, and it is extremely simple to setup. Backups are super simple as well.

josteink 7y ago

> If you guys that use GitLab or GitHub or alike would have to switch to pure git - what is the one thing you would miss most? Github & Gitlab do tons of things which pure Git does not: - issue-tracking - wikis / documentation - release and package-management - CI - a free of cost (and effort) "public facing website" for your project by default - notifications to collaborators I'm sure there's more I've missed which I would remember in a heart-beat if I was forced to go plain git and were suddenly without, but those are the most obvious ones I can come up with without even thinking.

dijit 7y ago

Very nice web view of source code, inline commentary on merge requests... merge requests themselves. To a one-click view of CI pipelines, that's nice too.

jka 7y ago

Source control is really only the 'hook' that brings developers into both GitHub and GitLab. Primarily they're communities which grow in value based on the number of developers and projects hosted within them. Some of the powerful resulting centralized features are: * The social / team functionality - collaborating on code review, receiving notifications on repository activity, managing access control across multiple codebases * Code discovery - the ability to find projects which use a particular library, search for (and subscribe to) issue reports/fixes, follow other developers' activity These could more-or-less be achieved by configuring individual repos and setting up your own email alerts and notifications; GitHub & GitLab just make it very convenient and bring it all together in a single place.

yogsototh 7y ago

I've made a short presentation about filling the gap between just pure git and something like gitlab. https://her.esy.fun/slides/git-project-manager.html https://her.esy.fun/slides/git-project-manager.html Mostly, project-management features.

oweiler 7y ago

GitLab CI. IMHO there is no CI platform which comes close to this (except Circle CI maybe).

w7 7y ago
For my personal projects I use Gitea (source code hosting) + Bazel (build system) + Drone.io (automated builds) + Harbor (container registry) + Keel (deployment to Kubernetes). At a glance of Gitlab's documentation it looks like these tools cover most of what GitLab CI/Registry does, is there anything major I'm missing that you'd describe as a killer feature?
- oweiler 7y ago
  Sorry for the late response. The killer feature of GitLabCI is that it offers the same functionality as all the tools you've mentioned but much better integrated because they are all part of GitLab. E.g. for CI you don't need to configure webhooks to trigger a build, you just assign a runner to the project and add a .gitlabci.yml.

cmiles74 7y ago

In my opinion, I still use straight Git even though we have a GitLab server. We only do pull requests through GitLab when we have a new hire or a contractor. I don't believe that using GitLab to manage the remote repositories has impacted anyone's ability to use Git to get their work done. In terms of what I would miss if we had to move away from GitLab, it's having remote repository management and continuous integration in one spot. In the past when a new project started, an administrator had to setup the repository and link in SSH keys, that same person had to setup Jenkins for the CI workflow. With GitLab, developers can set these things up on their own. And there's one less tool to manage.

the_jeremy 7y ago

The main thing I'd miss is GitLab CI. The documentation is great, it was pretty fast to learn, and it runs on every push to remote.

pfranz 7y ago

I wanted to point out the different "levels" between your own local git repo and GitLab/GitHub. If you're by yourself, a local git repo is great. "One step up," would be a remote git repo you push/pull to (people often use this for encrypted password repos or dotfiles). After that are things like Gitea or Gogs, which add a lightweight web interface. As you move to GitLab/GitHub you start to see features like; accounts, permissions, code search, issues, wiki, pull request, CI integration, etc. You can use something like GitHub/GitLab for most all of these tasks, but it's a bit overkill on things like maintenance and hardware requirements if your needs aren't great.

babypuncher 7y ago

Gitlab isn't just a code repository, it's an entire DevOps platform. I don't use GitLab, but my equivalent (Azure DevOps) gives me things like automated builds on checkin, runs unit tests against those builds, and one-click deployments to my test and production environments. On my local machine, there's nothing stopping me from using any Git client I want, including the Git CLI..

andywenkhh 7y ago

Mostly I would miss to organise 50+ developers on one platform. GitLab offers a very good authorization mechanics. Furthermore the CI pipeline is extremely helpful. There is no need to use anything else.