Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub
I've been experiencing consistent downtime with GitHub over the last few months, and I'm wondering if it makes sense to switch to alternative platforms. Has anyone else faced this issue and found a reliable replacement?
DSCI - http://deadsimpleci.sparrowhub.io - lightweight (single binary written on golang) - ci runner embedded (podman / docker) - pipelines are written on general programming languages - no YAML craziness - Perl/Python/Bash/Raku/Powershell/Php/Golang support - code editor
You might want to consider checking out GitLab and Gitee.
- plqbfbv
To all of those proposing self-hosted GitLab: we did it for 6+ years in my company, and it's not always a smooth sailing. We had our own runners and we made it auto-upgrade across docker images daily before business start. It mostly worked really well, except those few times were a Docker upgrade had to be rolled back, or that one time the bundled pg_shared_buffers was set at 1MB by default, making schema upgrades impossible for bigger instances, or a version major would break pipeline expectations forcing to upgrade 200+ repos at a time (we pinned to major afterwards). Lately I was also receiving an almost weekly "critical patch" newsletter due to critical/high vulnerabilities, which I can only imagine are due to LLM running over the code and identifying bugs.
That said, I wish we hadn't migrated to GH, our self-hosted instance had WAY less downtime despite being perhaps a bit slower (mgmt saving money) and required a bit more toil: GH is nowhere near Enterprise-ready and it feels a downgrade across the board. GL has better access granularity, better docs, better integrations, and you can clearly see the UI received a lot of attention (although it does take 10m with a new account to pin the proper items in the maze of sub-menus that is the sidebar). You can also look at the code and help out if needed, and/or simply provide a patched version to your image via a docker mount.
If you're really looking at self-hosting GitLab for a smallish team (up to 50-100 ppl), prepare at th […]
- rhdunn
It depends on what you are after?
1. Do you want something that works and feels like GitHub? -- Forgejo and Gitea are good for this.
2. Do you want a place to host git repositories with minimal hassle? -- GitLab, CodeBerg, and others are available.
3. Do you have your own hosting infrastructure? You could use gitolite and CGit/GitWeb on that hosting platform or local hardware.
4. Do you just want to host repositories? -- Gitolite can be used to help with SSH/auth/repository creation, and CGit or GitWeb for the frontend.
5. Do you need something like GitHub Actions? -- GitLab, Forgejo, and Gitea offer CI, or use external CI infrastructure.
6. Do you need issue tracking and management? -- GitLab, Forgejo, and Gitea provide these. There are alternatives from Jira to Kanban (including Trello) to Markdown (Obsidian and others) and more.
- icy
https://tangled.org! Founder/CEO here. We're a new forge building things from the ground up, and are fully federated -- you can host your git repos on your own infra, along with the CI runners. We've also got a pretty neat set of features (if I may say so myself): stacked PRs, Nix-based CI (if you want it), and a fully open protocol (https://atproto.com) to for you and your agents.
Happy to answer any questions.
- polycaster
- shofetim
If you are frustrated with Github being down again, and just want an alternative, the other options listed are better fits. If you have the time to look at doing more than that, then check out fossil https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki
- It isn't git
- Works best with smaller teams
- You need to be ok self hosting (single binary, easy to do)
The first point is really the killer. It is revision control, it is as good as git (maybe better), but it is different. Git = branches are easy, was built to support Linux's lieutenant development model, and a massive, loosely connected team. Fossil = branches are intentionally hard, built to support a small, tight knit team (SQLite).
Most teams I've been on are closer in size to SQLite than they are to Linux, but everyone already knows git at a gut deep level. YMMV.
- mariocesar
I answered this in another thread, if you're already running a large GitHub organization, GitLab is the closest alternative in terms of features
A big plus is that it also has an open-source Community Edition that you can self-host
- axegon_
I migrated everything to codeberg several months ago (and created an annual donation schedule). I was never a big fan of github but what ultimately pushed me to ditch it was the way github was shoving copilot/chatgpt in my face without me ever asking. Codeberg has a clear stance on that and it's a stance I can totally get behind.
In addition I spun up forgejo at a server at home for very critical stuff and it's awesome.
- quaintdev
- ryuuseijin
Forgejo is great to self host. I have an easy to use template for setting it up on fly.io with backups here: https://forgejo-fly.fly.dev/forgejo-admin/forgejo-fly
- ukd1
I've used gitlab and gitea; gitea is faster, and easier to manage and does everything I actually need though, is less feature complete.