7 ms·

Radicle: The Sovereign Forge

286 points by ibobev 10mo ago

endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: Newly joined protocol dev here, feel free to ask questions!
- a-french-anon 10mo ago
  Hello, I read the FAQ and didn't manage to find (perhaps my fault) if users had to store data they didn't explicitly/manually cloned; like Freenet. Is it the case?
  - endiangroup 10mo ago
    AD: You have control over what you seed, if you are a permissive node you accept all content on the network, but by default your local node will only seed what you instruct it too.
  - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
    No. Please refer to https://radicle.xyz/guides/user https://radicle.xyz/guides/user and read this to understand the concept of "policies". This should answer your question, but otherwise of course I am happy to explain further.
- Tepix 10mo ago
  This sounds pretty cool, can I do pull requests across radicle instances? gitlab recently closed a 2015 feature request https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14116 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14116 PS: What's this "AD" prefix you're using?
  - endiangroup 10mo ago
    AD: Pull requests are `patches` in radicle, when you clone a repository you create a git namespace for yourself from which you can edit to your hearts desire, you can then open patches to other repos via this mechanism.
    - nh2 10mo ago
      Are you open to rename the "patches" terminology? Apparently currently "1 patch = 1 pull request of e.g. multiple commits" in Radicle. That confusing, since in Git a patch usually refers to a single commit: * git format-patch outputs 1 ".patch" file per commit. * Its output also enshrines that, in the subject lines that appear e.g. on Linux mailing lists: "[PATCH 1/2]", meaning "one of two patches in a patch series". (That said, `git format-patch --stdout` can concatenate multiple commits into a single output, but it does not offer to write those into a single .patch file by itself.) So when reading "Patches", I was intuitively unnecessarily scared that the tool cannot handle whole branches, and flattens out all commits. Maybe "Patchsets"? That's what kernel people apparently call them: https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#What_is_a_patchset.3F https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#What_is_a_patchset... https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#Patches_are_git_commits https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#Patches_are_git_co...
      - endiangroup 10mo ago
        AD: Those are fair points, feel free to jump on our [zulip](https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#recent https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#recent) and start a discussion there!
        nh2 10mo ago
        Unfortunately I won't have time for that; I just saw Radicle for the first time from this posting and wanted to drop-contribute what I think would reduce confusion for many people. You'll have to take it from here :-)
    - happosai 10mo ago
      This sounds really, really cool. How does reviewing such patch-PR's work?
  - endiangroup 10mo ago
    AD: The prefix is my initials :) - my only HN account is a shared one with a co-op organisation I work through. I use AD to distinguish who's commenting... however my co-workers have yet to use this account ha!
    - pseudalopex 10mo ago
      Your initials form a word used as a disclaimer often. And shared HN accounts are not common.
    - nh2 10mo ago
      If you replace "AD:" by "Adrian from Endian writing:", people won't have to wonder what "AD" means, and waste their and your time on asking (you will probably get this question a lot otherwise).
    - aldonius 10mo ago
      Thanks for clarifying. Just for reference, usually folks in this situation use postfix initials rather than prefix (like how blockquotes are cited). - J.S.
wantlotsofcurry 10mo ago
Radicle, Tangled, etc are the future of forges!
- HexDecOctBin 10mo ago
  What is the revenue model for Tangled? This is why ATProto stuff worries me, the AppView is expensive to host and no one has created a paid service yet to achieve sustainability.
  - phoronixrly 10mo ago
    I don't see any revenue streams, just VC funding. Which raises all kinds of red flags.
noelwelsh 10mo ago
Can anyone describe how this differs from Tangled (https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/)? Both seem very interesting, but I'm not deep enough into either to understand how they differ.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Tangled is built on top of the AT Protocol, and "mediates" between what they call "knots". Git servers. Their strength is to use AT Protocol to make communication across multiple Git servers work smoothly. Radicle is completely peer to peer. There are no such things as servers and clients, only nodes. However, there are quite a few nodes that then act as HTTP servers to offer convenient access via the browser.
  - phoronixrly 10mo ago
    Also, Tangled is VC-funded. I cannot find information about Radicle, but considering the authorship is not advertised on their website, and that P2P is not easily monetizable, I would bet it is not VC-funded. All in all, seems like an awesome project and instantly more trustworthy and rugpull-resistant than Tangled.
    - 0x3o3 10mo ago
      yeah the Radicle protocol is fully owned and governed by a Swiss non-profit.
      - phoronixrly 10mo ago
        As per https://radicle.xyz/history https://radicle.xyz/history > The Radicle Foundation is established. A Swiss non-profit that oversees the development of the project. Thank you!
    - creativeair2049 10mo ago
      > instantly more trustworthy quite ironic, radicle seems to have raised 7m$ from "radworks", some sort of crypto foundation. that being said, why is it being not monetizable a good thing? their website says radicle has been in development for 4 years already. without more money in the bank, how would they continue to build the thing?
oldpersonintx 10mo ago
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deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
eigenspace 10mo ago
Anyone familiar with both projects that can give a comparison with the work happening on Forgejo (i.e. Forgefed protocal)?
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Radicle is peer to peer. There are no "instances" or "servers" you interact with. The process that runs on your machine to synchronize changes across the network is the same as you would run on a server somewhere else. This is the core difference in network topology. What Forgejo are working on is to have their servers/instances communicate with each other via ActivityPub (IIRC). Think about it more like GitHub : Forgejo :: Twitter : Mastodon and possibly Filesharing : BitTorrent :: Software Development : Radicle. With Forgejo, every instance has its own database of user accounts, and controls who may log in or not (and so on). This is not the case with Radicle. Since there is no such authority, user accounts are self-certifying. For repositories, since there is no "standard location" like "the server", Radicle has developed a way to abstract from the user namespaces of the maintainers of a repo, to a canonical namespace. This is how references are lifted from individuals to a project. Not by having a copy on some particular server with access control. Of course, Radicle also has access control, but it is tied to the self-certifying identities, not to some server.
woodruffw 10mo ago
I’m heartened by efforts to build new social forges. At the absolute minimum, these kind of initiatives raise the background pressure on GitHub and GitLab to improve their products. From the FAQ: > For one, [git] has no way of verifying that the repository you downloaded after a git clone is the one you asked for, which means you need to clone from a trusted source (ie. a known server). This isn’t compatible with peer-to-peer in any useful way. > Radicle solves this by assigning stable identities to repositories that can be verified locally, allowing repositories to be served by untrusted parties. What does this mean, in practice? At first glance this sounds like Radicle is turning a service trust problem into a PKI-shaped problem, which is more of a transmutation than a solution. Or more precisely: how do I know which stable repository identities to trust, and how is that trust distributed to parties in the network?
- iamnothere 10mo ago
  Trust would need to be established through other channels, or through careful code review, same as a repo by an unknown dev on GitHub. Once trust is established, you can look for other repos owned by the same DID if you want to see more by the same dev. If multiple versions of the same repo exist, and you want to find the “real” one, you may look for the one recommended by a trusted source or the one that is mentioned most elsewhere. Failing that you could look at development activity on the repo. Imagine a project with multiple repos on GitHub (not “forks” but someone actually uploaded it as a new repo). Similar problem. I’ve seen this before with some simple C libraries that haven’t changed in years.
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: I'll take a stab, but I am a new joiner! Each repository is governed by an identity document which is signed by a set of delegates, each delegate currently corresponds 1:1 to someones ssh-key. We are working to adjust this mechanism so you can have group identities, but its a hard problem and we're not the only ones working on it (note theres light at the end of this tunnel at this point). Seeing as you studied philosophy I'd argue what then do you mean by a solution? Aren't all solutions transmutations of prior 'things'? In the complex domain we have a word for it, exaptation - the radicle repurposing of something in a new context. That aside, how do you know which people to trust when you meet them? And how do you signal trust in those you've met? In Radicle holding stable cryptographic identities doesn't resolve the zero-to-some trust problem but it does resolve the some-to-more trust problem, I can continue trusting once I recognise and know an identity. So to answer "how is that trust distributed to parties in the network" - by stable cryptographic identities. To answer "how do I know which stable repository identities to trust" - by socialising, like you know how to trust people you meet in the world because you were introduced to them by someone else you trust.
noman-land 10mo ago
Radicle is really cool. I've been running a node for months but havent pulled the trigger to use it as primary yet. We need better forges and they need to be p2p to survive. p2p is the only viable future for the web.
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: Thank you for your contribution! I also run a permissive seed node, vote by participation!
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: Whats holding you back from using it as your primary?
  - hosh 10mo ago
    Not the original OP — I had been thinking about this for years, though my interest is in resiliency rather than a sovereignty (though they overlap): - is there a mirror adapter to push to a non-radicle node, such as Github or say, sourcehut? (Mirroring nixpkgs, for example) - is there a mechanism to control syncs so it can be used on low-bandwidth, unreliable networks, or ad-hoc bluetooth networks? - is offline seeding possible or in the works? - language package managers often can reference a git or github. Would I be able to directly reference my local radicle node and have it manage (or perhaps even discover) the correct repos? (Or maybe this is a different problem and package repos themselves could be decentralized and sovereign) On that last point, I mean that the whole build chain and supply chain can be made sovereign: I see radicle is written in Rust, which means dependencies on Cargo, the Rust toolchain, and so forth.
    - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
      > is there a mirror adapter to push to a non-radicle node, such as Github or say, sourcehut? You can just add a remote for another repository. git remote add github git@github.com:example/example.git You can also create remotes with multiple push URLs, so that with one `git push`, you push to all of them at once. Apart from that, it's possible to use e.g. systemd path units to run `git push` automatically whenever a repository gets updated by `radicle-node`. This works reasonably well. What else would the adapter have to do? > is there a mechanism to control syncs so it can be used on low-bandwidth, unreliable networks, or ad-hoc bluetooth networks? No. The data itself usually is quite small, as the common use case is to send commits. It's not optimized for unreliable networks or Bluetooth in any special way yet. It would certainly be useful. > is offline seeding possible or in the works? That's contradictory in my mind. What do you mean? Offline in the sense of "not connected to the internet"? That works just fine. Currently, you still have to connect your node to the existing network by connecting to another known node (via IP address or a DNS name that resolves locally). There are plans to integrate DNS-SD, also via mDNS. > language package managers often can reference a git or github. Would I be able to directly reference my local radicle node and have it manage (or perhaps even discover) the correct repos? For now, no. It's however reasonably simple to deploy a component called `radicle-httpd`, which will expose your repos via Git over HTTP if you like. Looks like this: https://seed.radicle.xyz/z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5.git https://seed.radicle.xyz/z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5.git > (Or maybe this is a different problem and package repos themselves could be decentralized and sovereign) Yes. Consider things like https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-12-16-trustix-announcement/ https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-12-16-trustix-announcement/
jrm4 10mo ago
Interesting. I've been critical on "decentralized" for other types of communication (e.g. ATProto/Bluesky) because it seems to forget that "forgetting is sometimes good." But this seems excellent for code, a thing that (to the extent you can or should be) is mostly apolitical.
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: We're looking ad introducing 'forgetting' as a feature, there may be a mutually beneficial way of signalling to permissive seeds when content is no longer relevant or stale or actively been flagged for removal.
hackthemack 10mo ago
I hang out with a small group of sysadmins who like to spin up the old internet stuff, like irc, gopher. And that got me to thinking about Usenet and how a ton of software (usually pirated) and images (usually pornography) were posted to it. And people often posted stupid stuff they said (usually because they were young and dare I say afflicted by a moment of dumb). I think one of the problems with p2p distributed systems is how do you handle "mistakes". Things you want deleted. What if someone accidentally posts their address and phone number? What if you post a communication system with encryption methods, but then the government passes a law that is criminal? Maybe in some regimes that puts you on a list for arrest? Look at what is happening with HAM radio operators and Belarus... https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ham-radio-operators-in-belarus-are-arrested-and-face-the-death-penalty/ https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ham-radio-operators-in-bel... To me, none of this raises above the idea that distributed p2p content should not be used. It is just that it has some issues. Also, unrelated, but I think the plethora of "How does this compare to XYZ" type comments are not very helpful. It is too easy to write that kind of post, but much harder to answer.
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: We're actively working on that issue right now, making the defaults safer. We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level. It won't be perfect, but neither is GitHub or the likes.
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
    > We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level. Isn't that a solved issue? Or rather unsolvable. With ActivityPub there's just a deletion notification that's obfuscated so that you can't identify the item unless you already have a copy of it. What else can you do?
    - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
      Right. Radicle nodes out of the standard distribution would be kind enough to delete. On the technological level you cannot do more (also not really less, funnily enough). But it would be possible to patch the code and remove deletion. Often times I just take the "information theory perspective": You fundamentally cannot make something "more private". Once it's out, it's out. You cannot "untell" a secret. That's just not how it works. But then other solutions also have this problem. Once I have `git fetch`ed from GitHub, or received that e-mail containing a patch on a mailing list, I have a copy on my filesystem. It's going to be pretty darn hard to remove it from there if I don't comply. Maybe you'd have to enforce some law. In that context, it seems that people were led to believe that "removal from the server(farm)" is the same as "removal from the universe", but that's just not true. Happy for any insight on how to approach this differently.
iamnothere 10mo ago
Every time I read about an emulation or file sharing project kicked off of GitHub, I think: should have used Radicle. You can put your node behind Tor if you’re worried about demand letters, by the way.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  Is it straightforward to set up a seed node that's simultaneously available on multiple networks? For example tor, i2p, clearnet, and maybe even yggdrasil all at the same time. I ask because I recall (not git related) projects in the past that did not do well when configured in such a way.
  - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
    Tor only (SOCKS) or Tor and clearnet is easy. Yggdrasil only is also easy (just restrict access to your tun). Yggdrasil and clearnet requires you to ensure that outgoing traffic takes the correct interface, this also applies if you want to combine with Tor. I don't know about I2P.
ilaksh 10mo ago
Can radicle seeds run over IPV6? Seems like since IPV6 doesn't have NAT it should be a big advantage for p2p and as it becomes more available the need for everyone to set up port forwarding or get a VPS to seed should go down. ISPs will try to block use of IPV6 for serving content, but eventually I think users will win because ultimately it should be a right to share information.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Yes. Radicle also makes it easy to run behind Tor, see https://radicle.xyz/guides/user#4-embracing-the-onion https://radicle.xyz/guides/user#4-embracing-the-onion and there are people that use it via Yggdrasil, see https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/services.html#radicle-nodes https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/services.html#radicle-no...
k__ 10mo ago
Is Radworks/$RAD still a thing?
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  First, to make this clear: The Radicle network is not dependent on any blockchain technology, you can use it without holding any cryptocurrency/token. You do not need a wallet. You just need to generate an Ed25519 keypair for yourself. Radworks and RAD are still a thing, and the last vote (https://community.radworks.org/t/3698 https://community.radworks.org/t/3698 and https://community.radworks.org/t/3703 https://community.radworks.org/t/3703) was to fund Radworks App (https://radworks.org/app https://radworks.org/app), Drips (https://www.drips.network/ https://www.drips.network/), Radicle Garden (https://radicle.garden/ https://radicle.garden/). Radicle development is funded by the Better Internet Foundation (https://betterinternet.foundation/ https://betterinternet.foundation/), previously called "Radicle Foundation". RAD "tokenomics" are discussed here: https://community.radworks.org/t/3645/ https://community.radworks.org/t/3645/
  - k__ 10mo ago
    Thanks! We cooperated with Radicle a few years ago, when they wer big in crypto. However, suddenly I saw posts here that were well received and noticed there wasn't any mention of $RAD on the radicle page anymore.
acedTrex 10mo ago
Damn the UI feels great, actually kind of eerie
clot27 10mo ago
This seems good
jrmg 10mo ago
This certainly seems like a neat system. From the FAQ, two things I was most concerned about knowing: —— How does Radicle deal with potential abuse, illegal content sharing etc. on the network? Each node is free to choose which repositories to host (seed) using configured policies. Nodes can block specific repositories or peers exhibiting abusive behavior. Is there a way to host private repositories on Radicle? Yes, 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. https://radicle.xyz/faq https://radicle.xyz/faq
creativeair2049 10mo ago
radicle is pretty neat, i'd be quite curious to read more about the state of CI and moderation (given the P2P nature).
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  For CI, please refer to https://radicle-ci.liw.fi/ https://radicle-ci.liw.fi/ and https://radicle.xyz/2025/07/23/using-radicle-ci-for-development https://radicle.xyz/2025/07/23/using-radicle-ci-for-developm...
- 0x3o3 10mo ago
  for the state of Radicle CI read this post from the maintainers https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2026/radicle-status-quo-01/ https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2026/radicle-status-quo-01/
- iamnothere 10mo ago
  Re: moderation: Like BitTorrent, you choose which repos to mirror. If you’re crazy or you watch your server like a hawk you could just choose to automatically mirror everything. Like BitTorrent there is no way to “moderate” what another node chooses to share. They are working on tools to help permissive nodes remove repos flagged for deletion, but the protocol itself does not prevent a node from ignoring this flag.
- kitplummer 10mo ago
  I had a few different issues getting the CI broker working the way I wanted to (don't even remember what the issues were, but it had to do with catching patches) so wired up my own way but simply polling via Git - using a thing I built a while back called goa (gitops agent) for another project. The tricky part was getting the output from what ever do with the code, back into the Radicle patch. But it works. https://revolveteam.com/blog/goa-radicle-ci/ https://revolveteam.com/blog/goa-radicle-ci/ There are some caveats - mostly security related - given this is potentially executing commands on a host node.
jbstack 10mo ago
Suggestion: improve the opening summary paragraph: "Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow." From this, I can't tell how it's any different to just plain self-hosted Git. A well written introduction should tell the reader immediately what the software actually does. If it's meant to be an alternative to something like gitea / forgejo then say that, with a brief summary of features that build on top of Git.
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: Feel free to take a stab at an alternative, we're an open source project and we accept and welcome discussions but patches more so! What would read better in your opinion?
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bigbadfeline 10mo ago
    > What would read better in your opinion? You're asking someone else to describe what your project is doing? The lack of good description isn't unique, I've bee skipping more and more of those lately, but asking others to tell the developers what they've developed is new in my book.
    - __david__ 10mo ago
      Sometimes when you’re close to something it’s very hard to describe it because you’ve been looking at it from all angles for so long that when someone else approaches it from a different direction it’s hard to see what blind spots they might have. It’s not crazy to ask people for input and it’s not crazy to say “we’re open to patches if you just want to do it yourself”. For me personally I was (and still am a bit) unclear on what being “based on git” means. Can I just rebase with abandon? Is there a concept of force push? Can I safely use lazy-git, tig, commit-patch, and other git utilities? Or is it more integrated and i have to use the rad cli to avoid corrupting the git repo? What about the issues? If I write some software and publish it with radicle, is there a way for plain git client to clone the repo without installing radicle (and without keeping a plain git mirror somewhere)?
immibis 10mo ago
Would it make sense to build this on top of Freenet Locutus?
rirze 10mo ago
Been using radicle with jj for a little bit now-- just a toy project with only myself contributing and it's neat. Hopefully it will scale well and be ergonomic for collaboration.
avaer 10mo ago
This home page really needs a prominent gateway to the underlying gossip protocol so you can easily find every public repo on the network. Might be antithetical to the cause, though I argue it isn't. Maybe this already exists but I couldn't find it. And if this isn't technically possible, someone needs to solve that. The pitch is compelling; if the project home page shows that index, I can see a world where this takes the reigns from Github. Otherwise I don't see it.
- Defelo 10mo ago
  There is https://search.radicle.xyz/ https://search.radicle.xyz/ if you want to search for public repos. But I don't know whether the home page links to it somewhere.
untech 10mo ago
I wonder how "permissive seeders" would be protected from folks pushing large binary files. Also, wouldn't storing everything about the repo make it very large? Even when cloning large git projects, it is from time to time necessary to make a "shallow clone" to avoid downloading hundreds of megabytes per repo. I imagine with all discussions it would be worse.
mistercheph 10mo ago
Awesome work! Just curious, has anyone worked on a tool for migrating github "collaborations"/ social artifacts to radicle, I'm confident this will be solved eventually as existing projects with treasured social artifacts on GH migrate, just curious about the current state.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Check https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.rhizoma.dev/rad%3Az3yQUb9HDAC7TQrUDGkQsXDsYFj9G#migrating-from-github https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.rhizoma.dev/rad%3Az3yQUb9... What's tricky here is to do it in a way that GitHub users properly map to Radicle identities. We will get there...
  - mistercheph 10mo ago
    Yeah I wouldn't hope for that to be smooth/possible, others probably have stricter needs but IMO as long something indicates what github name "said" something, the most important part is preserving the context of why decisions were made rather than who said what and if it's cryptographically verifiable that some radicle identity has/had control of a github identity that said something in the past
__MatrixMan__ 10mo ago
I believe that one day, the bad guys are gonna level up such that centralized forges can't withstand corruption and we're gonna be real glad that people have been working on things like this all along.
mxuribe 10mo ago
Is it weird that one of the features that i look for in forge is the ability to star/bookmark a repo? But, since this is decentralized, makes sense that there is no central place to "house" said bookmark...So I'd either have to bookmark a repo using my browsers native, regular bookmarks....or in the future there could be feature to share, save/store said signal like the way ActivityPub, AT proto., etc.. handle it.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  In the Radicle ecosystem, quite a few people like the idea to "seed" repos that they want to support. It means that you download the repo, and also announce to other nodes that you have it available to share. Thus, you are not only incrementing some counter in a central database, but you are actually contributing to the replication of the project on the network. The number of seeds then is a similar indicator as the number of stars. Of course, you can also just keep a list of repository IDs.
  - mxuribe 10mo ago
    Kinda like legacy git cloning, but then of course sharing back not just with a signal (e.g. star, likes, etc.), but also actual contribution via replication of said source code...I love it!
- iamnothere 10mo ago
  As alternative git forges become more common, it might make sense to build a social bookmarking site for repos that can roll up repos from Radicle, Codeberg, Sourcehut, individual Gitlab instances, etc. Maybe it could include cross-platform search, alerting, and other tools. This might address some of the trust and discovery questions posed elsewhere in the discussion.
  - mxuribe 10mo ago
    I sure hope something like said bookmarking sites come to pass! Though, if such functionality gets incorporated into existing activitypub stacks (and not as separate tools), that works too! :-)
rurban 10mo ago
> Data integrity is guaranteed by Git. > Synchronization is handled by Git. > Causal dependencies can be modeled as commit parent-child relationships. And there we have the problem. Git does not guarantee these things. Git is no CRDT. A proper replication protocol would, but git not. Git requires manual intervention to resolve coflicts. You end up with hourly conflicts, which need to be resolved manually, or not. Leading to inconsistencies all over when two people merge and resolve conflicts differently. Let not people merge, the system must handle this automatically. As in all online collaboration tools. Like Google Wave eg. If CRDT or as with databases PAXOS or single owner.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Where are you quoting from? Radicle implements so called "collaborative objects" (think: issues, patches, anything that multiple users collaborate on; except the source code itself) as CRDTs: https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol#collaborative-objects https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol#collaborative-objects
  - rurban 10mo ago
    Next paragraph. The conflicts are not resolved. Or just use the non-solution as in git (or wikis). Leave it to human manpower.
    - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
      For the source code in the repository, conflicts must be merged by users (or their tools, like `mergiraf`), just like with any other Git repo containing source code. What might confuse you is the mention that a collaborative object may opt in to ask the user to resolve a conflict. Well, in this case, strictly speaking, it's not a CRDT anymore of course. But none of the collaborative objects commonly used in Radicle use this escape hatch. It is clear that Git itself does not give you CRDTs, but Radicle implemented CRDTs on top of Git, which is entirely possible. This is also what's explained in the Protocol Guide. I don't understand what's the misunderstanding here, sorry.
stavros 10mo ago
Does anyone know if I can run this in Docker? I can't find anything either in the instructions or the internet at large, but also I don't know why it wouldn't run in Docker?
rhabarba 10mo ago
I wish it would support more VCSs.
ethersteeds 10mo ago
Here's a question: does Radicle support a http API, or is there a Radicle-to-git server bridge? I know it sounds crazy, against the whole purpose. But all I want is to patch it into ArgoCD in my homelab k8s cluster...
- Defelo 10mo ago
  Yes, there is: https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.radicle.xyz/rad:z4V1sjrXqjvFdnCUbxPFqd5p4DtH5 https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.radicle.xyz/rad:z4V1sjrXq... This is the full web app powering https://app.radicle.xyz/ https://app.radicle.xyz/ including radicle-httpd which simply serves an http api used by the radicle-explorer frontend and which can also be used as a (readonly) git remote.
toastal 9mo ago
I would be much happier if folks were trying to do with something revolutionary in terms of VCSs instead of always being yet more Git tooling.

286 points by ibobev 10mo ago

endiangroup 10mo ago

AD: Newly joined protocol dev here, feel free to ask questions!

a-french-anon 10mo ago
Hello, I read the FAQ and didn't manage to find (perhaps my fault) if users had to store data they didn't explicitly/manually cloned; like Freenet. Is it the case?
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: You have control over what you seed, if you are a permissive node you accept all content on the network, but by default your local node will only seed what you instruct it too.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  No. Please refer to https://radicle.xyz/guides/user https://radicle.xyz/guides/user and read this to understand the concept of "policies". This should answer your question, but otherwise of course I am happy to explain further.
Tepix 10mo ago
This sounds pretty cool, can I do pull requests across radicle instances? gitlab recently closed a 2015 feature request https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14116 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/14116 PS: What's this "AD" prefix you're using?
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: Pull requests are `patches` in radicle, when you clone a repository you create a git namespace for yourself from which you can edit to your hearts desire, you can then open patches to other repos via this mechanism.
  - nh2 10mo ago
    Are you open to rename the "patches" terminology? Apparently currently "1 patch = 1 pull request of e.g. multiple commits" in Radicle. That confusing, since in Git a patch usually refers to a single commit: * git format-patch outputs 1 ".patch" file per commit. * Its output also enshrines that, in the subject lines that appear e.g. on Linux mailing lists: "[PATCH 1/2]", meaning "one of two patches in a patch series". (That said, `git format-patch --stdout` can concatenate multiple commits into a single output, but it does not offer to write those into a single .patch file by itself.) So when reading "Patches", I was intuitively unnecessarily scared that the tool cannot handle whole branches, and flattens out all commits. Maybe "Patchsets"? That's what kernel people apparently call them: https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#What_is_a_patchset.3F https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#What_is_a_patchset... https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#Patches_are_git_commits https://kernelnewbies.org/PatchPhilosophy#Patches_are_git_co...
    - endiangroup 10mo ago
      AD: Those are fair points, feel free to jump on our [zulip](https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#recent https://radicle.zulipchat.com/#recent) and start a discussion there!
      - nh2 10mo ago
        Unfortunately I won't have time for that; I just saw Radicle for the first time from this posting and wanted to drop-contribute what I think would reduce confusion for many people. You'll have to take it from here :-)
  - happosai 10mo ago
    This sounds really, really cool. How does reviewing such patch-PR's work?
- endiangroup 10mo ago
  AD: The prefix is my initials :) - my only HN account is a shared one with a co-op organisation I work through. I use AD to distinguish who's commenting... however my co-workers have yet to use this account ha!
  - pseudalopex 10mo ago
    Your initials form a word used as a disclaimer often. And shared HN accounts are not common.
  - nh2 10mo ago
    If you replace "AD:" by "Adrian from Endian writing:", people won't have to wonder what "AD" means, and waste their and your time on asking (you will probably get this question a lot otherwise).
  - aldonius 10mo ago
    Thanks for clarifying. Just for reference, usually folks in this situation use postfix initials rather than prefix (like how blockquotes are cited). - J.S.

wantlotsofcurry 10mo ago

Radicle, Tangled, etc are the future of forges!

HexDecOctBin 10mo ago
What is the revenue model for Tangled? This is why ATProto stuff worries me, the AppView is expensive to host and no one has created a paid service yet to achieve sustainability.
- phoronixrly 10mo ago
  I don't see any revenue streams, just VC funding. Which raises all kinds of red flags.

noelwelsh 10mo ago

Can anyone describe how this differs from Tangled (https://tangled.org/ https://tangled.org/)? Both seem very interesting, but I'm not deep enough into either to understand how they differ.

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
Tangled is built on top of the AT Protocol, and "mediates" between what they call "knots". Git servers. Their strength is to use AT Protocol to make communication across multiple Git servers work smoothly. Radicle is completely peer to peer. There are no such things as servers and clients, only nodes. However, there are quite a few nodes that then act as HTTP servers to offer convenient access via the browser.
- phoronixrly 10mo ago
  Also, Tangled is VC-funded. I cannot find information about Radicle, but considering the authorship is not advertised on their website, and that P2P is not easily monetizable, I would bet it is not VC-funded. All in all, seems like an awesome project and instantly more trustworthy and rugpull-resistant than Tangled.
  - 0x3o3 10mo ago
    yeah the Radicle protocol is fully owned and governed by a Swiss non-profit.
    - phoronixrly 10mo ago
      As per https://radicle.xyz/history https://radicle.xyz/history > The Radicle Foundation is established. A Swiss non-profit that oversees the development of the project. Thank you!
  - creativeair2049 10mo ago
    > instantly more trustworthy quite ironic, radicle seems to have raised 7m$ from "radworks", some sort of crypto foundation. that being said, why is it being not monetizable a good thing? their website says radicle has been in development for 4 years already. without more money in the bank, how would they continue to build the thing?

oldpersonintx 10mo ago

[dead]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

eigenspace 10mo ago

Anyone familiar with both projects that can give a comparison with the work happening on Forgejo (i.e. Forgefed protocal)?

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
Radicle is peer to peer. There are no "instances" or "servers" you interact with. The process that runs on your machine to synchronize changes across the network is the same as you would run on a server somewhere else. This is the core difference in network topology. What Forgejo are working on is to have their servers/instances communicate with each other via ActivityPub (IIRC). Think about it more like GitHub : Forgejo :: Twitter : Mastodon and possibly Filesharing : BitTorrent :: Software Development : Radicle. With Forgejo, every instance has its own database of user accounts, and controls who may log in or not (and so on). This is not the case with Radicle. Since there is no such authority, user accounts are self-certifying. For repositories, since there is no "standard location" like "the server", Radicle has developed a way to abstract from the user namespaces of the maintainers of a repo, to a canonical namespace. This is how references are lifted from individuals to a project. Not by having a copy on some particular server with access control. Of course, Radicle also has access control, but it is tied to the self-certifying identities, not to some server.

woodruffw 10mo ago

I’m heartened by efforts to build new social forges. At the absolute minimum, these kind of initiatives raise the background pressure on GitHub and GitLab to improve their products. From the FAQ: > For one, [git] has no way of verifying that the repository you downloaded after a git clone is the one you asked for, which means you need to clone from a trusted source (ie. a known server). This isn’t compatible with peer-to-peer in any useful way. > Radicle solves this by assigning stable identities to repositories that can be verified locally, allowing repositories to be served by untrusted parties. What does this mean, in practice? At first glance this sounds like Radicle is turning a service trust problem into a PKI-shaped problem, which is more of a transmutation than a solution. Or more precisely: how do I know which stable repository identities to trust, and how is that trust distributed to parties in the network?

iamnothere 10mo ago
Trust would need to be established through other channels, or through careful code review, same as a repo by an unknown dev on GitHub. Once trust is established, you can look for other repos owned by the same DID if you want to see more by the same dev. If multiple versions of the same repo exist, and you want to find the “real” one, you may look for the one recommended by a trusted source or the one that is mentioned most elsewhere. Failing that you could look at development activity on the repo. Imagine a project with multiple repos on GitHub (not “forks” but someone actually uploaded it as a new repo). Similar problem. I’ve seen this before with some simple C libraries that haven’t changed in years.
endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: I'll take a stab, but I am a new joiner! Each repository is governed by an identity document which is signed by a set of delegates, each delegate currently corresponds 1:1 to someones ssh-key. We are working to adjust this mechanism so you can have group identities, but its a hard problem and we're not the only ones working on it (note theres light at the end of this tunnel at this point). Seeing as you studied philosophy I'd argue what then do you mean by a solution? Aren't all solutions transmutations of prior 'things'? In the complex domain we have a word for it, exaptation - the radicle repurposing of something in a new context. That aside, how do you know which people to trust when you meet them? And how do you signal trust in those you've met? In Radicle holding stable cryptographic identities doesn't resolve the zero-to-some trust problem but it does resolve the some-to-more trust problem, I can continue trusting once I recognise and know an identity. So to answer "how is that trust distributed to parties in the network" - by stable cryptographic identities. To answer "how do I know which stable repository identities to trust" - by socialising, like you know how to trust people you meet in the world because you were introduced to them by someone else you trust.

noman-land 10mo ago

Radicle is really cool. I've been running a node for months but havent pulled the trigger to use it as primary yet. We need better forges and they need to be p2p to survive. p2p is the only viable future for the web.

endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: Thank you for your contribution! I also run a permissive seed node, vote by participation!
endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: Whats holding you back from using it as your primary?
- hosh 10mo ago
  Not the original OP — I had been thinking about this for years, though my interest is in resiliency rather than a sovereignty (though they overlap): - is there a mirror adapter to push to a non-radicle node, such as Github or say, sourcehut? (Mirroring nixpkgs, for example) - is there a mechanism to control syncs so it can be used on low-bandwidth, unreliable networks, or ad-hoc bluetooth networks? - is offline seeding possible or in the works? - language package managers often can reference a git or github. Would I be able to directly reference my local radicle node and have it manage (or perhaps even discover) the correct repos? (Or maybe this is a different problem and package repos themselves could be decentralized and sovereign) On that last point, I mean that the whole build chain and supply chain can be made sovereign: I see radicle is written in Rust, which means dependencies on Cargo, the Rust toolchain, and so forth.
  - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
    > is there a mirror adapter to push to a non-radicle node, such as Github or say, sourcehut? You can just add a remote for another repository. git remote add github git@github.com:example/example.git You can also create remotes with multiple push URLs, so that with one `git push`, you push to all of them at once. Apart from that, it's possible to use e.g. systemd path units to run `git push` automatically whenever a repository gets updated by `radicle-node`. This works reasonably well. What else would the adapter have to do? > is there a mechanism to control syncs so it can be used on low-bandwidth, unreliable networks, or ad-hoc bluetooth networks? No. The data itself usually is quite small, as the common use case is to send commits. It's not optimized for unreliable networks or Bluetooth in any special way yet. It would certainly be useful. > is offline seeding possible or in the works? That's contradictory in my mind. What do you mean? Offline in the sense of "not connected to the internet"? That works just fine. Currently, you still have to connect your node to the existing network by connecting to another known node (via IP address or a DNS name that resolves locally). There are plans to integrate DNS-SD, also via mDNS. > language package managers often can reference a git or github. Would I be able to directly reference my local radicle node and have it manage (or perhaps even discover) the correct repos? For now, no. It's however reasonably simple to deploy a component called `radicle-httpd`, which will expose your repos via Git over HTTP if you like. Looks like this: https://seed.radicle.xyz/z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5.git https://seed.radicle.xyz/z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5.git > (Or maybe this is a different problem and package repos themselves could be decentralized and sovereign) Yes. Consider things like https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-12-16-trustix-announcement/ https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-12-16-trustix-announcement/

jrm4 10mo ago

Interesting. I've been critical on "decentralized" for other types of communication (e.g. ATProto/Bluesky) because it seems to forget that "forgetting is sometimes good." But this seems excellent for code, a thing that (to the extent you can or should be) is mostly apolitical.

endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: We're looking ad introducing 'forgetting' as a feature, there may be a mutually beneficial way of signalling to permissive seeds when content is no longer relevant or stale or actively been flagged for removal.

hackthemack 10mo ago

I hang out with a small group of sysadmins who like to spin up the old internet stuff, like irc, gopher. And that got me to thinking about Usenet and how a ton of software (usually pirated) and images (usually pornography) were posted to it. And people often posted stupid stuff they said (usually because they were young and dare I say afflicted by a moment of dumb). I think one of the problems with p2p distributed systems is how do you handle "mistakes". Things you want deleted. What if someone accidentally posts their address and phone number? What if you post a communication system with encryption methods, but then the government passes a law that is criminal? Maybe in some regimes that puts you on a list for arrest? Look at what is happening with HAM radio operators and Belarus... https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ham-radio-operators-in-belarus-are-arrested-and-face-the-death-penalty/ https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ham-radio-operators-in-bel... To me, none of this raises above the idea that distributed p2p content should not be used. It is just that it has some issues. Also, unrelated, but I think the plethora of "How does this compare to XYZ" type comments are not very helpful. It is too easy to write that kind of post, but much harder to answer.

endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: We're actively working on that issue right now, making the defaults safer. We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level. It won't be perfect, but neither is GitHub or the likes.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago
  > We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level. Isn't that a solved issue? Or rather unsolvable. With ActivityPub there's just a deletion notification that's obfuscated so that you can't identify the item unless you already have a copy of it. What else can you do?
  - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
    Right. Radicle nodes out of the standard distribution would be kind enough to delete. On the technological level you cannot do more (also not really less, funnily enough). But it would be possible to patch the code and remove deletion. Often times I just take the "information theory perspective": You fundamentally cannot make something "more private". Once it's out, it's out. You cannot "untell" a secret. That's just not how it works. But then other solutions also have this problem. Once I have `git fetch`ed from GitHub, or received that e-mail containing a patch on a mailing list, I have a copy on my filesystem. It's going to be pretty darn hard to remove it from there if I don't comply. Maybe you'd have to enforce some law. In that context, it seems that people were led to believe that "removal from the server(farm)" is the same as "removal from the universe", but that's just not true. Happy for any insight on how to approach this differently.

iamnothere 10mo ago

Every time I read about an emulation or file sharing project kicked off of GitHub, I think: should have used Radicle. You can put your node behind Tor if you’re worried about demand letters, by the way.

fc417fc802 10mo ago
Is it straightforward to set up a seed node that's simultaneously available on multiple networks? For example tor, i2p, clearnet, and maybe even yggdrasil all at the same time. I ask because I recall (not git related) projects in the past that did not do well when configured in such a way.
- lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
  Tor only (SOCKS) or Tor and clearnet is easy. Yggdrasil only is also easy (just restrict access to your tun). Yggdrasil and clearnet requires you to ensure that outgoing traffic takes the correct interface, this also applies if you want to combine with Tor. I don't know about I2P.

ilaksh 10mo ago

Can radicle seeds run over IPV6? Seems like since IPV6 doesn't have NAT it should be a big advantage for p2p and as it becomes more available the need for everyone to set up port forwarding or get a VPS to seed should go down. ISPs will try to block use of IPV6 for serving content, but eventually I think users will win because ultimately it should be a right to share information.

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
Yes. Radicle also makes it easy to run behind Tor, see https://radicle.xyz/guides/user#4-embracing-the-onion https://radicle.xyz/guides/user#4-embracing-the-onion and there are people that use it via Yggdrasil, see https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/services.html#radicle-nodes https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/services.html#radicle-no...

k__ 10mo ago

Is Radworks/$RAD still a thing?

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
First, to make this clear: The Radicle network is not dependent on any blockchain technology, you can use it without holding any cryptocurrency/token. You do not need a wallet. You just need to generate an Ed25519 keypair for yourself. Radworks and RAD are still a thing, and the last vote (https://community.radworks.org/t/3698 https://community.radworks.org/t/3698 and https://community.radworks.org/t/3703 https://community.radworks.org/t/3703) was to fund Radworks App (https://radworks.org/app https://radworks.org/app), Drips (https://www.drips.network/ https://www.drips.network/), Radicle Garden (https://radicle.garden/ https://radicle.garden/). Radicle development is funded by the Better Internet Foundation (https://betterinternet.foundation/ https://betterinternet.foundation/), previously called "Radicle Foundation". RAD "tokenomics" are discussed here: https://community.radworks.org/t/3645/ https://community.radworks.org/t/3645/
- k__ 10mo ago
  Thanks! We cooperated with Radicle a few years ago, when they wer big in crypto. However, suddenly I saw posts here that were well received and noticed there wasn't any mention of $RAD on the radicle page anymore.

acedTrex 10mo ago

Damn the UI feels great, actually kind of eerie

clot27 10mo ago

This seems good

jrmg 10mo ago

This certainly seems like a neat system. From the FAQ, two things I was most concerned about knowing: —— How does Radicle deal with potential abuse, illegal content sharing etc. on the network? Each node is free to choose which repositories to host (seed) using configured policies. Nodes can block specific repositories or peers exhibiting abusive behavior. Is there a way to host private repositories on Radicle? Yes, 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. https://radicle.xyz/faq https://radicle.xyz/faq

creativeair2049 10mo ago

radicle is pretty neat, i'd be quite curious to read more about the state of CI and moderation (given the P2P nature).

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
For CI, please refer to https://radicle-ci.liw.fi/ https://radicle-ci.liw.fi/ and https://radicle.xyz/2025/07/23/using-radicle-ci-for-development https://radicle.xyz/2025/07/23/using-radicle-ci-for-developm...
0x3o3 10mo ago
for the state of Radicle CI read this post from the maintainers https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2026/radicle-status-quo-01/ https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2026/radicle-status-quo-01/
iamnothere 10mo ago
Re: moderation: Like BitTorrent, you choose which repos to mirror. If you’re crazy or you watch your server like a hawk you could just choose to automatically mirror everything. Like BitTorrent there is no way to “moderate” what another node chooses to share. They are working on tools to help permissive nodes remove repos flagged for deletion, but the protocol itself does not prevent a node from ignoring this flag.
kitplummer 10mo ago
I had a few different issues getting the CI broker working the way I wanted to (don't even remember what the issues were, but it had to do with catching patches) so wired up my own way but simply polling via Git - using a thing I built a while back called goa (gitops agent) for another project. The tricky part was getting the output from what ever do with the code, back into the Radicle patch. But it works. https://revolveteam.com/blog/goa-radicle-ci/ https://revolveteam.com/blog/goa-radicle-ci/ There are some caveats - mostly security related - given this is potentially executing commands on a host node.

jbstack 10mo ago

Suggestion: improve the opening summary paragraph: "Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git. Unlike centralized code hosting platforms, there is no single entity controlling the network. Repositories are replicated across peers in a decentralized manner, and users are in full control of their data and workflow." From this, I can't tell how it's any different to just plain self-hosted Git. A well written introduction should tell the reader immediately what the software actually does. If it's meant to be an alternative to something like gitea / forgejo then say that, with a brief summary of features that build on top of Git.

endiangroup 10mo ago
AD: Feel free to take a stab at an alternative, we're an open source project and we accept and welcome discussions but patches more so! What would read better in your opinion?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- bigbadfeline 10mo ago
  > What would read better in your opinion? You're asking someone else to describe what your project is doing? The lack of good description isn't unique, I've bee skipping more and more of those lately, but asking others to tell the developers what they've developed is new in my book.
  - __david__ 10mo ago
    Sometimes when you’re close to something it’s very hard to describe it because you’ve been looking at it from all angles for so long that when someone else approaches it from a different direction it’s hard to see what blind spots they might have. It’s not crazy to ask people for input and it’s not crazy to say “we’re open to patches if you just want to do it yourself”. For me personally I was (and still am a bit) unclear on what being “based on git” means. Can I just rebase with abandon? Is there a concept of force push? Can I safely use lazy-git, tig, commit-patch, and other git utilities? Or is it more integrated and i have to use the rad cli to avoid corrupting the git repo? What about the issues? If I write some software and publish it with radicle, is there a way for plain git client to clone the repo without installing radicle (and without keeping a plain git mirror somewhere)?

immibis 10mo ago

Would it make sense to build this on top of Freenet Locutus?

rirze 10mo ago

Been using radicle with jj for a little bit now-- just a toy project with only myself contributing and it's neat. Hopefully it will scale well and be ergonomic for collaboration.

avaer 10mo ago

This home page really needs a prominent gateway to the underlying gossip protocol so you can easily find every public repo on the network. Might be antithetical to the cause, though I argue it isn't. Maybe this already exists but I couldn't find it. And if this isn't technically possible, someone needs to solve that. The pitch is compelling; if the project home page shows that index, I can see a world where this takes the reigns from Github. Otherwise I don't see it.

Defelo 10mo ago
There is https://search.radicle.xyz/ https://search.radicle.xyz/ if you want to search for public repos. But I don't know whether the home page links to it somewhere.

untech 10mo ago

I wonder how "permissive seeders" would be protected from folks pushing large binary files. Also, wouldn't storing everything about the repo make it very large? Even when cloning large git projects, it is from time to time necessary to make a "shallow clone" to avoid downloading hundreds of megabytes per repo. I imagine with all discussions it would be worse.

mistercheph 10mo ago

Awesome work! Just curious, has anyone worked on a tool for migrating github "collaborations"/ social artifacts to radicle, I'm confident this will be solved eventually as existing projects with treasured social artifacts on GH migrate, just curious about the current state.

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
Check https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.rhizoma.dev/rad%3Az3yQUb9HDAC7TQrUDGkQsXDsYFj9G#migrating-from-github https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.rhizoma.dev/rad%3Az3yQUb9... What's tricky here is to do it in a way that GitHub users properly map to Radicle identities. We will get there...
- mistercheph 10mo ago
  Yeah I wouldn't hope for that to be smooth/possible, others probably have stricter needs but IMO as long something indicates what github name "said" something, the most important part is preserving the context of why decisions were made rather than who said what and if it's cryptographically verifiable that some radicle identity has/had control of a github identity that said something in the past

__MatrixMan__ 10mo ago

I believe that one day, the bad guys are gonna level up such that centralized forges can't withstand corruption and we're gonna be real glad that people have been working on things like this all along.

mxuribe 10mo ago

Is it weird that one of the features that i look for in forge is the ability to star/bookmark a repo? But, since this is decentralized, makes sense that there is no central place to "house" said bookmark...So I'd either have to bookmark a repo using my browsers native, regular bookmarks....or in the future there could be feature to share, save/store said signal like the way ActivityPub, AT proto., etc.. handle it.

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
In the Radicle ecosystem, quite a few people like the idea to "seed" repos that they want to support. It means that you download the repo, and also announce to other nodes that you have it available to share. Thus, you are not only incrementing some counter in a central database, but you are actually contributing to the replication of the project on the network. The number of seeds then is a similar indicator as the number of stars. Of course, you can also just keep a list of repository IDs.
- mxuribe 10mo ago
  Kinda like legacy git cloning, but then of course sharing back not just with a signal (e.g. star, likes, etc.), but also actual contribution via replication of said source code...I love it!
iamnothere 10mo ago
As alternative git forges become more common, it might make sense to build a social bookmarking site for repos that can roll up repos from Radicle, Codeberg, Sourcehut, individual Gitlab instances, etc. Maybe it could include cross-platform search, alerting, and other tools. This might address some of the trust and discovery questions posed elsewhere in the discussion.
- mxuribe 10mo ago
  I sure hope something like said bookmarking sites come to pass! Though, if such functionality gets incorporated into existing activitypub stacks (and not as separate tools), that works too! :-)

rurban 10mo ago

> Data integrity is guaranteed by Git. > Synchronization is handled by Git. > Causal dependencies can be modeled as commit parent-child relationships. And there we have the problem. Git does not guarantee these things. Git is no CRDT. A proper replication protocol would, but git not. Git requires manual intervention to resolve coflicts. You end up with hourly conflicts, which need to be resolved manually, or not. Leading to inconsistencies all over when two people merge and resolve conflicts differently. Let not people merge, the system must handle this automatically. As in all online collaboration tools. Like Google Wave eg. If CRDT or as with databases PAXOS or single owner.

lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
Where are you quoting from? Radicle implements so called "collaborative objects" (think: issues, patches, anything that multiple users collaborate on; except the source code itself) as CRDTs: https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol#collaborative-objects https://radicle.xyz/guides/protocol#collaborative-objects
- rurban 10mo ago
  Next paragraph. The conflicts are not resolved. Or just use the non-solution as in git (or wikis). Leave it to human manpower.
  - lorenzleutgeb 10mo ago
    For the source code in the repository, conflicts must be merged by users (or their tools, like `mergiraf`), just like with any other Git repo containing source code. What might confuse you is the mention that a collaborative object may opt in to ask the user to resolve a conflict. Well, in this case, strictly speaking, it's not a CRDT anymore of course. But none of the collaborative objects commonly used in Radicle use this escape hatch. It is clear that Git itself does not give you CRDTs, but Radicle implemented CRDTs on top of Git, which is entirely possible. This is also what's explained in the Protocol Guide. I don't understand what's the misunderstanding here, sorry.

stavros 10mo ago

Does anyone know if I can run this in Docker? I can't find anything either in the instructions or the internet at large, but also I don't know why it wouldn't run in Docker?

rhabarba 10mo ago

I wish it would support more VCSs.

ethersteeds 10mo ago

Here's a question: does Radicle support a http API, or is there a Radicle-to-git server bridge? I know it sounds crazy, against the whole purpose. But all I want is to patch it into ArgoCD in my homelab k8s cluster...

Defelo 10mo ago
Yes, there is: https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.radicle.xyz/rad:z4V1sjrXqjvFdnCUbxPFqd5p4DtH5 https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.radicle.xyz/rad:z4V1sjrXq... This is the full web app powering https://app.radicle.xyz/ https://app.radicle.xyz/ including radicle-httpd which simply serves an http api used by the radicle-explorer frontend and which can also be used as a (readonly) git remote.

toastal 9mo ago

I would be much happier if folks were trying to do with something revolutionary in terms of VCSs instead of always being yet more Git tooling.