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You can easily mirror your repository on Gitlab or elsewhere and Gitlab even automates that for you. And all developers on a project have a backup on their loc

You can easily mirror your repository on Gitlab or elsewhere and Gitlab even automates that for you. And all developers on a project have a backup on their local computer. It might not track the master/main HEAD from Github, but in the event of a disaster you still have backups to recover from. The nature of git's descentralized nature is misunderstood and I fear the misunderstanding comes from people that did not work with CVS/Subversion. In any case you still need a source of truth from which releases are cut. And Github has been damned convenient to use as one and you can easily take your git repo and move elsewhere if you want to. Sure, you can't migrate the links, the project's stars, etc, but that's not part of git. On the bright side, given you can mirror the code, you can keep the Github repo as read-only, which afaik is what the Linux kernel has done.

asddubs 6y ago
can gitlab migrate issues? I know github allows you to export them via the API without too much difficulty, but there isn't too many tools that allow you to manage them once you've done that, from what I've found. there's some abandoned viewer projects, but that's not actually a replacement if you want to keep working on the project
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  Yes, GitLab's migration tool imports both issues and PRs.
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    It loses a lot of metadata in the process.
    - brodock 6y ago
      can you point a few examples? If there is data missing (that can be retrieved via their API) it's something we want to fix for sure.
      - richardwhiuk 6y ago
        It doesn't matter if it can be retrieved by the API or not from a user's perspective. Merge requests and comments are no longer authored by the correct user, because there's no user mapping - everything ends up getting authored by the user who performed the import. Inline review comments on MRs appear to be lost or mangled. Review summary comments on MRs appear to be lost or mangled. Dates on MRs are lost. Dates on comments are lost.
zbuf 6y ago
Don't worry, I do understand Git, and I think you've completely missed the point I was making and thus fallen for the exact trap that I'm pointing out :) The huge importance of all that data "that's not part of Git", and the workflow and skill set around it. Add to that a growing body of developers who don't actually know Git, but do know how to press the button in GitHub. I don't make any claim for the particular JDK project here, but people _are_ migrating to GitHub, not Git.

asddubs 6y ago

can gitlab migrate issues? I know github allows you to export them via the API without too much difficulty, but there isn't too many tools that allow you to manage them once you've done that, from what I've found. there's some abandoned viewer projects, but that's not actually a replacement if you want to keep working on the project

Nullabillity 6y ago
Yes, GitLab's migration tool imports both issues and PRs.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  It loses a lot of metadata in the process.
  - brodock 6y ago
    can you point a few examples? If there is data missing (that can be retrieved via their API) it's something we want to fix for sure.
    - richardwhiuk 6y ago
      It doesn't matter if it can be retrieved by the API or not from a user's perspective. Merge requests and comments are no longer authored by the correct user, because there's no user mapping - everything ends up getting authored by the user who performed the import. Inline review comments on MRs appear to be lost or mangled. Review summary comments on MRs appear to be lost or mangled. Dates on MRs are lost. Dates on comments are lost.

zbuf 6y ago

Don't worry, I do understand Git, and I think you've completely missed the point I was making and thus fallen for the exact trap that I'm pointing out :) The huge importance of all that data "that's not part of Git", and the workflow and skill set around it. Add to that a growing body of developers who don't actually know Git, but do know how to press the button in GitHub. I don't make any claim for the particular JDK project here, but people _are_ migrating to GitHub, not Git.