YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab

155 points cxr 2 hours ago 97 comments

skullone 2 hours ago | parent

The readme.md still says welcome to their GitHub repository :D

steffenfrost 2 hours ago | parent

A devops friend of mine said GitHub turned into a hot mess.

valyala 2 hours ago | parent

Because of unreviewed AI code at GitHub services?

cdmckay 2 hours ago | parent

Or maybe because the use of GitHub has skyrocketed?

InsidiousWombat 22 minutes ago | parent

Because MS is at helm

outfitx 2 hours ago | parent

Why? Any specific reasons?

jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent

Do you have some time?

rlonstein 1 hour ago | parent

>> Why? Any specific reasons?

> Do you have some time?

Okay, I laughed.

tangotaylor 2 hours ago | parent

I wish they would spill some tea and articulate why they moved.

jeron 2 hours ago | parent

why? like having a dozen outages in the last couple months isn't a good enough reason why?

prologic 2 hours ago | parent

Or Microsoft/OpenAI (and others) just blatantly scraping all your codebases and violating thousands of OSS licneses?

echelon 1 hour ago | parent

We're going to need something more expansive than OSI software licenses for the future.

Something like, "if you look at us, we must be able to look at you"

abc42 1 hour ago | parent

How about "if you're not the customer, you're the product".

seanhunter 14 minutes ago | parent

At the risk of stating the obvious, that isn’t a software license.

pjmlp 1 hour ago | parent

If the repos are public, hosting location doesn't make a difference.

tinyhouse 1 hour ago | parent

No horse in this race but GitLab has been down a few times recently too.

misnome 1 hour ago | parent

GitLab is just as bad, just not as big so doesn't get the coverage. https://status.gitlab.com/pages/history/5b36dc6502d06804c083...

And of course many people self-host which changes a lot of the equation (which you can also do with GitHub, but not for free - and FWIW our self-hosted premium gitlab has about an hour a day downtime, which we've been told by the team responsible is an unavoidable side-effect of backing up gitlab).

mcrowder65 1 hour ago | parent

Weird. I’ve been on a self hosted enterprise gitlab and I think we’ve have only one or two performance degradations/outages in the past 6 years

otterley 31 minutes ago | parent

We’re talking about the SaaS version, not self-hosted.

Volundr 1 hour ago | parent

I was responsible for administering a self hosted GitLab instance for a medium sized company and our backups never required downtime. The built in backup command doesn't require downtime but also isn't a consistent point in time snapshot (specifically because the instance keeps running while the backup is being taken). If they've decided they need one for some reason, stopping GitLab is certainly the easiest way, but not the only way of accomplishing that goal, but that'll be true of any self-hosted forge, including GitHub.

icefo 1 hour ago | parent

You could stop it, do a snapshot of the storage and backup that for <1 min of downtime probably.

But at the same time, if you're not a global company, doing it at 3am is probably fine.

NewJazz 49 minutes ago | parent

It can be an issue if you are using gitlab as your container/package registry and production workloads need to pull from it, though.

esseph 20 minutes ago | parent

They should be pulling from a pull through scanning repository cache anyway, so they can be scanned before going into production.

LoganDark 46 minutes ago | parent

Doing a snapshot of the storage while it's running wouldn't be bad either, it'd be like having cut the power at the point of the snapshot, right?

gchamonlive 1 hour ago | parent

Would also like a write-up. People assume it's just because of GitHub outages, but GitHub is slightly worse in every aspect, so for big projects and organisations it compounds to being quite messy to manage and operate.

GitLab is thought-out to support larger groups with more complex pipelines, and while it's got it's own set of quirks, it doesn't begin to compare, GitHub in contrast seems like a toy forge for toy projects.

thirtyseven 1 hour ago | parent

Roku uses Gitlab internally so could just be a standardization thing.

midnightclubbed 53 minutes ago | parent

Moving changes back and forth between gitlab and github is a pain. Could indeed be as simple as standardization and reducing development pains.

otterley 30 minutes ago | parent

What makes it more complicated than doing a Git push against two remotes? Assuming that one of those is used for collaboration and the other is just a mirror.

darkstar999 17 minutes ago | parent

The CICD pipeline is not directly compatible, for one.

otterley 15 minutes ago | parent

You don’t need to run the CI/CD pipeline in both. Choose one as your collaboration space, and the other as a mirror.

neya 2 hours ago | parent

Good. I want everyone to do this. I want to see the downfall of Microsoft. Time and again they've proved that anything they touch can't be trusted nor reliable. I am tired of this. They even bully their users - on Mac OS, GitHub desktop doesn't respect the word "no". It installs all kinds of helpers and acts like borderline spyware. Someone created an issue about it on Github and the MS employees told them to fuck off in corporate[1]

I am even considering hosting my own GIT server myself. Some of our deployments got affected multiple times in the last 6 months alone we were really caught off-guard. Thankfully our clients were understanding of the GitHub outages. But, this should not be the baseline. Reliability should not be the cost of doing business.

[1] https://github.com/creativefoundrysg/desktop#an-open-letter-...

to11mtm 2 hours ago | parent

Github desktop is such a hot mess that I instead choose to continue to suffer with SourceTree. Sourcetree annoys me for reasons I still cannot articulate after a decade, but it at least tends to actually work without being too intrusive as far as updating, doesn't randomly derp out on credentials, and is super handy when trying to visualize janky branch patterns of dev teams.

latsu 2 hours ago | parent

Just use Sublime Merge, it's probably the best GUI for Git there is.

alt227 1 hour ago | parent

Here try one of the others:

https://git-scm.com/tools/guis

turtleburger 42 minutes ago | parent

GitKraken has been good in my experience with it for many years

valiant55 2 hours ago | parent

I'm hosting Forgejo for my homelab and couldn't be happier. I have everything running in containers with dind for CI/CD. Most of my workflows just worked with minimal changes. YMMV and this is far from an enterprises' needs but it's working great so far for my needs.

vips7L 39 minutes ago | parent

My friend group also moved to self hosted forgejo. Couldn’t be happier and then I don’t have LLMs training on my code.

999900000999 2 hours ago | parent

As an idea, do you think an enterprise only Git host would work.

Say annual contracts start at 100k minimum and everyone gets a dedicated support engineer.

You get your own rack. None of this degraded shared capability nonsense.

Does that seem like a solid business ?

the__alchemist 2 hours ago | parent

Is that Bitbucket?

999900000999 1 hour ago | parent

Both GitLab and Bitbucket still offer free repos for hobbyists.

What I'm thinking of is a company that exclusively caters to the enterprise.

You get a support engineer and they help on everything, migration, CI/CD, hosting, etc.

Nothing goes down without a solid 3 page write up.

pixl97 1 hour ago | parent

>Good. I want everyone to do this

Every other free service would die nearly instantly, so maybe only want useful things to move to other services.

>I am even considering hosting my own GIT server myself.

It's mostly a good idea.... but, with the current security apocalypse we seem to be under making sure your own shit doesn't get pwned is a full time job. The level of security hostility on the internet recently has reached numbers I've never seen before. RCE's dropping about every day, more targeted scans than I've ever seen in my life, swarms of AI bots breaking into services.

sedan_baklazhan 1 hour ago | parent

Running an up to date self hosted Gitea server takes like 5 minutes a week.

pixl97 1 hour ago | parent

I mean, last year, but if you're updating once a week now, that means you've had 6 days to get exploited.

sedan_baklazhan 10 minutes ago | parent

Nope. Take a look at gitea update frequency.

pixl97 7 minutes ago | parent

Missing the point completely. It doesn't matter how often they update, it matters how fast attackers find exploits.

pjmlp 1 hour ago | parent

Thanks for a good laugh, FOSS in 2026 is nothing without the money of big corporations, including Microsoft.

Everyone spent years talking against GPL, business friendly licenses like MIT and Apache were the way of the future, not viral and co.

Now we are here, most projects have their key contributors working at corporations like Microsoft, or gladly getting their acquisition money to pay the VCs, embrace your business friendly licenses.

pinkgolem 2 hours ago | parent

We did the same, quit happy

CyanLite2 2 hours ago | parent

GitLab will eventually just get overran with 24/7 agents spewing from their AI Slop Cannons

locknitpicker 1 hour ago | parent

> GitLab will eventually just get overran with 24/7 agents spewing from their AI Slop Cannons

That's fine. GitLab offers self-hosted solutions where companies run the service in their own infrastructure and limit who has access to it. The same cannot be said by GitHub, though.

slantedview 1 hour ago | parent

Wouldn't that be Github enterprise? It's been around since 2012 IIRC.

20after4 49 minutes ago | parent

Yes, though enterprise is expensive and GitLab still had a free option last time I checked.

bigstrat2003 49 minutes ago | parent

> The same cannot be said by GitHub, though.

That isn't true. Self hosted Github exists, and has for years now. From what I hear (from a friend who had to administer his company's instance) it's not a good product by any means, but it does exist.

esseph 18 minutes ago | parent

It's a paid enterprise offering vs GitLab Open Source

kannanvijayan 34 minutes ago | parent

I moved my projects over to GitLab about a year ago.

GitLab's model is different - at least it was when I moved over to it. They charged for public repositories and gave you a free private ones as a sampler for trying out the platform. That approach is far less prone to getting overrun by millions of slopositories.

GitLab never tried to be the social media of software development. Theirs is a much simpler, classical model - one of the reasons I switched to them: you pay them money, they provide you services for that money.

otterley 27 minutes ago | parent

It already is. (source: we use it as our primary forge)

0xbadcafebee 9 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

prologic 2 hours ago | parent

Did this back in ~2021 for my own repos :D https://prologic.blog/posts/2021-07-11-why-i-no-longer-trust...

robinhood 1 hour ago | parent

So they replaced a tool from an evil corporation by another one disguised as an open source project.

sidcool 1 hour ago | parent

This logic baffles me. This would mean no one gets any work done and we go in a perennial cycle of victimhood

verandaguy 1 hour ago | parent

    > disguised as an open source project
A software project either is or isn't open source. Gitlab CE is source-available (here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab) with an MIT license, which is a permissive open-source license.

Gitlab CE is open-source. There exist versions of Gitlab with features that require payment. This does not mean that Gitlab (the product) is not open-source; it means that Gitlab (the company) has a core product which is open-source, and then sustains its development through the sale of licenses to product tiers beyond that.

BatchJob 1 hour ago | parent

I always found it wierd that people flocked to github. The app sucks, if I have to use it for work it infuriates me at nearly every turn with its sad excuse for UI. People like free sh*.

As for gitlab...yuck. But whatever. Most of the dev tool space is really just "sh* we have to put up with now", none of it is any good, all of it is dated from the early aughts, and taken as a whole is even worse because none of it works together.

While software development itself got better in the last ten years these tools stayed the same or got worse (enshittification). And this is part of why folks are self hosting.

The other part is that AI is destroying the Internet and its time to pack your bags anyway. The smart people already have.

carlosjobim 1 hour ago | parent

Well you're a developer. Why don't you make something better instead of complaining?

CodesInChaos 1 hour ago | parent

> I always found it weird that people flocked to github.

Same reason we ended up with git. Their predecessors were significantly worse, and then they had enough momentum to keep going.

locknitpicker 1 hour ago | parent

> I always found (...)

You broadcasted your negative feedback but it seems you had no positive remarks to give. If you feel everything is so bad, would you mind sharing what tolerable alternatives are there to GitHub and GitLab?

20after4 39 minutes ago | parent

> mind sharing what tolerable alternatives are there to GitHub and GitLab?

Not the op, and while your criticism of their negativity may be somewhat justified, the ask is kind of silly. There are a bunch of well known alternatives:

Self-hosted free software:

Gerrit <https://www.gerritcodereview.com> Phorge <https://we.phorge.it>

SaaSsy:

Codeberg <https://codeberg.org> SourceHut <https://sr.ht/>

There are a lot more, of course, these are just the ones I have experience with.

rr808 1 hour ago | parent

Worth mentioning that Roku is being acquired by Fox so in the virtue battle with Microsoft neither are clean

verdverm 1 hour ago | parent

it seems like all the media companies are being bought up by a select few people

does not portend good things for the future

robertfw 1 hour ago | parent

for the future? this has already been happening for years and is a major reason we're in the predicament we're in

cwbriscoe 1 hour ago | parent

What predicament are we in?

verdverm 1 hour ago | parent

the greatest wealth concentration and inequity in american history, blatant corruption and nepotism

an out of control, bipartisan oligarchy

The majority of HN has been on the winning side of this equation, benefiting greatly from the rise of the computer, internet, and now Ai. This is not most people, we forget about them, we tell them it's their own fault when it is not. The game is not fair, it's rigged for most humans.

Michael Sandel explains it better than I can yet

extraextra 37 minutes ago | parent

Funny how within 4 comments we've went from mundane tech news to communist political philosophers

ezst 20 minutes ago | parent

What about OP's comment rings communistic, or even political to you? Or is it the link between information control and wealth consolidation that you find controversial?

extraextra 13 minutes ago | parent

I have clearly never claimed that OP is a communist, you're misinterpreting

He did, however, recommend an author at the end of his comment, and that's whom I was referring to when I said "communist political philosopher"

ozgrakkurt 1 hour ago | parent

what is a predicament?

edoceo 48 minutes ago | parent

Consolidated and Sanitized media controlled by a few brands, that coordinate propaganda messaging.

lotsofpulp 4 minutes ago | parent

In my almost 4 decades of life, today is the least amount of control over information that leaders have had, whether political or business.

When I was younger, the only way information, and especially video/audio was spread is via a select few outlets.

Today, anyone can upload anything to a variety of servers and spread the information within seconds.

alt227 1 hour ago | parent

Especially judging by whats happening in the gaming industry right now. Mass layoffs everywhere from once leading lights in the industry, now acquired by big business and having to succumb to broad budget cuts.

verdverm 57 minutes ago | parent

I hope for more indie, in games and software - more lifestyle & small businesses - where creativity and uniqueness can flourish

20after4 54 minutes ago | parent

Abandon all hope, yee who enter.

veryfancy 1 hour ago | parent

“virtue battle”! like it

cramer4next 1 hour ago | parent

For one that deal hasn't closed and secondly not sure what the connection is between Roku leaving Github and FOX. Please expand on relevance.

otterley 32 minutes ago | parent

What virtue battle?

robswc 1 hour ago | parent

GitHub is such a mess. They seem to be doing everything and nothing. GitLab is 100x better, in terms of DX. While I still have a soft spot for GH, its frustrating to use it when GL exists.

CodesInChaos 1 hour ago | parent

Downtime aside, what do prefer about GitLab?

locknitpicker 51 minutes ago | parent

GitLab has a top of the class CICD system that is leaps and bounds over GitHub Actions. That alone makes it worth using GitLab.

otterley 26 minutes ago | parent

What’s so much better about it? I use both and I don’t see significant differences, but I’m happy to be enlightened.

esseph 13 minutes ago | parent

Parent child pipelines

Shared pipelines across multiple projects

rules: have far more flexibility than githubs if:

GitLab is very easy to fan out CI/CD runners on your own k8s infra.

abc42 1 hour ago | parent

Why is this important news?

zulban 1 hour ago | parent

A major software project is changing from one major software tool to another major software tool. How is it not important? Or at least notable for HN?

brightball 1 hour ago | parent

I saw a big write up on using Dagger for CI no matter your git host and I was curious if there were any real benefits?

verdverm 54 minutes ago | parent

Yes, I use Dagger, it's much more than building containers

- Container based workflows are the same in CI and locally (you can run containers too), they become one-liners

- Remote caching out of the box without extra steps

- Multiple language SDKs, unlocks the DAG in BuildKit and containers, real reuse

- Obfuscates secrets from your logs and agents. I've built an agent environment on Dagger, which also includes forking and time travel)

tl;dr - Dagger gives you SDK access to BuildKit and container based DAGs for building or anything else.

v1-beta just released yesterday: https://dagger.io/blog/dagger-10-beta/

---

edit: they are replacing BuildKit (for good reasons) and that is already out https://dagger.io/changelog/theseus/

zrail 24 minutes ago | parent

Have you written or posted publicly about your agent environment? It sounds really interesting.

0xbadcafebee 16 minutes ago | parent

I haven't used Dagger but it looks like a fundamentally different design from traditional CI engines, so some people might have issues moving to it.

I recommend Drone.io or WoodpeckerCI for hosting your own CI. It's a very good design; very simple, easy to run, easy to use, integrates with most systems you'd want to, abstracts away components rather than tightly integrating them, and you don't need to be a programmer to use it. So basically the opposite of Dagger.

PedroBatista 31 minutes ago | parent

Gitlab, for all it's flaws fits so much better in "regular" company/organization projects. It's more in line on what people involved in software dev and all the tasks around it have as a mental model and less of a "open source dev social network" like Github tried to be almost from the start and lately got Microsofted. An lets not even bring the CI / Github Actions topic..

ivanjermakov 19 minutes ago | parent

> fits so much better in "regular" company/organization projects

How so? I used both at work and they're functionally the same.

IshKebab 17 minutes ago | parent

Yeah I agree. There are only very minor differences.

koolala 10 minutes ago | parent

Isn't being able to self host it on your company network a big important feature? Like for all the non-public branches and projects you keep internal. Gives you the same UX for everything.

This sounds pretty annoying though: https://docs.gitlab.com/administration/license_usage/