It’s called git. It’s been distributed from day 1. GitHub was an attempt to centralize it.
Yeah… does git have issue tracking? actions? C’mon: it’s not like github & co. are just git.
It doesn’t have discussions, it doesn’t offer pull request management with commented/annotated code reviews, it doesn’t have built-in ssh and key management features, no workflows, no authorization tools of any kind…
In short I find the “just use git itself lmao” to be an exceedingly weird thing to say and I find it even weirder that it gets said as often as it does and it gets upvoted so much. Git by itself is not very useful at all if there are more than one a half people working on the same code.
A server hosting a copy of the repo, git send-email, a mailing list and a bugzilla instance is all that an open source project really needs.
The advantage of github/gitlab et al. is that it merges all of the above functionality to one place, however it’s not absolutely essential. Git itself is extremely versatile and can be as useful as you are want it to be if you put in the time to learn it.
Again, like OP said, those are typically distinct functionality: issue tracking, source control, deployment etc. GitHub bringing everything into one platform is atypical and obviously done for the goal of centralization. The more stuff you add to a platform the harder it makes it to leave or replicate.
But no, technically speaking you don’t need to have all of it in one place. There’s no reason for which you must manage everything together.
I don’t even understand why people like GitHub so much, its source management sucks. The fact it still doesn’t have a decent history visualization to this day is mind-boggling.
Look for ways to do things separately and you will find much better tools. GitHub’s “one size fits all” approach is terrible and only holds because people are too lazy to look for any alternative.
I don’t even understand why people like GitHub so much, its source management sucks.
I agree with this part.
GitHub bringing everything into one platform is atypical and obviously done for the goal of centralization.
Perhaps this is part of the answer to why people like github. Unlike you, most people love all-in-one tools. I once suggested a bunch of offline tools to use with git, with much better user experience than github. The other person was like, “Yeah, no! I don’t want to learn that many tools”.
Look for ways to do things separately and you will find much better tools.
The advantage of a centralized app is that all the services you mentioned are integrated well with each other. The distinct and often offline tools often have poor integration with each other. This is harder to achieve in such tools, compared to centralized hosts. The minimum you need to start with is a bunch of standards for all these tools to follow, so that interoperability is possible later.
What combination would you recommend to replace most common GitHub functionality?
I don’t even understand why people like GitHub so much, its source management sucks.
It’s not that complicated… people use it because everyone has an account there and so your project gets more visibility (and your profile too, for those who plan to flex it when they look for the next job) and more contributions. Even a lot of projects that aren’t on github have some sort of mirror there for visibility.
Suppose you wanna contribute to gnu grep (or whatever)… do you happen to know off the top of your head where the source repo and bug tracker are? And do you know what’s the procedure to submit your patch?
If you are a company doing closed source, I agree that I don’t see why you would choose github over the myriad alternatives (including the self hosted ones).
Look for ways to do things separately and you will find much better tools
That’s a great way to spend your resources developing yet-another-source-forge-thingie instead of whatever your actual project/product is supposed to be :)
