this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023

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GitLab plans support for ActivityPub (gitlab.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Several years in the making, GitLab is now very actively implementing ActivityPub! 🙌

The end-goal is to support AP for merge requests (aka pull requests), meaning git.alice.dev can send a merge request to gitlab.com/Bob/project.git

In the most expansive version of this vision, anyone running an AP-enabled git instance (with one or more repos) can send MRs to another instance’s repo, without having to sign up there.

For starters this will be GitLab-specific, but that’s already huge for self-hosters of GitLab who currently don’t benefit from the internal interop of the GitLab.com network.

First bite-sized todo on the implementation path there is ‘subscribe to project releases’. And yes, they are aware of ForgeFed and will likely make use of that spec for the advanced features of this epic.

Smart move by GitLab; through ActivityPub they’re getting a distributed version of GitHub’s social layer.

Hugely impactful as a way around GitHub’s moat as the de-facto social network of open source development. I follow hundreds of developers on GitHub, though mainly just to keep track of who I’ve interacted with, effectively adding them to a dev-specific address book.

I have a much harder time keeping track of non-GitHub devs on alt platforms, but if I could follow them on the fediverse that’s actually preferable over GitHub’s proprietary follow list.

Cross-posted to Mastodon: https://writing.exchange/@erlend/110949168258462158

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm so making an instance to hide my bad reputation from that 1 abandoned PR

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

AHAHAH 😂 You worry about one abandoned MR? Imagine who abandoned, say, 200 MR?

[+] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not really following. Can you explain why it would be better? I've never had an issue using GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago

GitHub is a great platform, which has championed open-source for decades, now. I don't think anybody has anything to blame them for (except people not liking the idea that AI is trained on their code, like sibling mentioned), it's more about fears it may go bad. Because basically, it's where most of the code of the world is hosted, it's a single point of failure. People also have questioned the pertinence of having all open-source code hosted on a proprietary platform. And the acquisition by Microsoft also had a chilling effect on those of us who remember Internet Explorer 6's Microsoft more than VSCode's Microsoft.

For those reasons, it is desirable for those who love the idea of decentralization to look up for alternatives. But even there, it's perfectly fine to stay on GitHub, "decentralizing" doesn't require everybody to leave. :) Plus, even when using an other forge, it's still good to keep publishing mirrors on GitHub for visibility and discoverability, currently.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I know a big sticking point for many people is that all code on GitHub feeds into CoPilot.

I don't understand how this would help anyone who's still stuck on GitHub for whatever reason to be able to escape GitHub. GitHub likely won't support this. I guess it depends on why someone is 'forced' to use GitHub still. I've seen different reasons mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's freaking rad!
I hope federation becomes the new standard for interoperability all over the Internet

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's lots of talk about "web 3" as regarding some crypto nonsense, but I think activitypub is the next step of the web, where different platforms communicate and you can have your home and you reach out to everywhere you want to be, and it's all integrated at your home.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There’s lots of talk about “web 3” as regarding some crypto nonsense, but I think activitypub is the next step of the web, where different platforms communicate and you can have your home and you reach out to everywhere you want to be, and it’s all integrated at your home.

Exactly. The real web 3 is decentralization, with the conveniences of web 2, but with the decentralization of web 1.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YES! We really need to change the mindset of "Web3 = Blockchain/Crypto/NFT" to "Web3 = decentralized"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

To make it clearer we suggest a renaming of the crypto Web3 to Web3.0, and the decentralization version Web3.1.

No, wait, that's too confusing, let's make that Web3.0 gen 1 and Web3.0 gen 2, respectively.

Kind regards, the USB Implementers Forum.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Web3.0 2x2 SuperSpeed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Wake me when we're at Web3.11 For Workgroups.

[–] neutron 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just pull a Capcom and name it World Wide Web 3 ~ Internet Federation ~ ActivityPub Edition Advanced Super ULTRA

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, pull a Sega and make it Web 3 & Knuckles and you have to snap your existing browser underneath it for the full experience.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Or a Valve and, err, okay maybe that doesn't work so well.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fingers crossed it's going to be compatible with what ForgeFed is working hard for years 🤞.

Gitea/Forgejo/Codeberg have ongoing work implementing this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'd be unsurprised if they're using ForgeFed proper

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Codeberg uses gitea

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

As soon as Forgejo and Gitlab are able to share issue tracking between them, Github is so doomed in the open-source community

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

MORE FEDERATION!!!! MORRRREEEEEEEE!!!!!!!1!1!1!1!1!!1!!!!1!!!!!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

This feels like such a great step in the right direction. I Selfhost gitea, which also has this planned and is working on it, but it's taking a lot of time. I might consider switching to git lab if they are faster.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is a great idea. Gitlab has too many features (bloated) for the average self hoster IMO. I hope forgero/gitea also follow the gitlab to enable activitypub

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is amazing! Honestly a no brainer feature. Having to create an account just to contribute on one project's instance is not a great experience currently and the reason I mainly stick to Github.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

This is so based!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Looking at their epic and list of tickets, they look serious about it.

This is awesome.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is there a clone of Lemmy on GitLab or Codeberg?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't the official repo for Lemmy on GitHub?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Autocorrect got me 😭

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, well, I don't think there's any officially hosted versions on GitLab. I guess it depends on why they chose GitHub, but maybe some attempts can be made to have them migrate if given enough reason that they agree with. So any clones on those other sites would need to pull in from GitHub on their own accord. And unfortunately any MRs into them would need to be replicated on GitHub which I'm assuming is the reason you ask and therefore likely won't be happy with the answer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm happy with your answer, just not the content of it 😂

You're spot on, but it would be nice to see all of the Fediverse software move over something that supports ActivityPub. Though, I prefer the UI of Codeberg over GitLab.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

gitlab is allowed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's a great use case that they've defined. Super keen to see how it turns out for them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Would've taken source control and social 'engineering' (sure I should be using a better term) to be disparate, why is this good ?

[+] [email protected] -11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kind of lame that they’re wasting time on gimmicky features like this rather than stuff people have been asking for (like Conan registry support)

I self host Gitlab because I want to be in control of my private repos. If I wanted to release open source projects and collaborate with people, I would use the SaaS version. Public instances that encourage contributions like Gnome have open registration, but activating federation seems like it would just add a new layer of moderation headaches for very little real benefit.

Am I missing something? Besides marketing for Gitlab, what real benefits could this bring to users?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

its very much wanted, I dont want to have to create new accounts on every gitlab instance for all different projects like KDE, GNOME and others when I want to report a bug or something

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you can't be bothered to spend 1 minute to create an account, then you probably can't be bothered to create an actionable bug report or a merge-able PR.

I'm not against federation in general, but gitlab isn't twitter or reddit. It's a utility for doing work, and I don't see how it will do anything but grow the mountain of bloat on which gitlab is sitting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

its not me not being bothered, its just annoying having to create an account for 1 issue I'll probably never use again so its a waste of time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Disagree. I self host three gitlab instances, and use gitlab.com as well as another gitlab. I have bothered to create accounts on all of those, created meaningful bug reports and Mrs on all of them, and I'd like to see this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What is Conan registry

Edit https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/conan_repository/