Another “Differences in Linux” question :)
I often wonder, what exactly is the difference between this services?
I understand, that:
- github.com is a company, where as gitlab and forgejo are (softwares)?
- They all “manage/wrap/interface with” git?
Questions:
- what software does github.com use?
- whats the difference between them (pros/cons)?
- what about self-hosting? Possibilities/Preferences?
As always, thanks beforehand :)
Just adding that GitLab self-host is an absolute nightmare, if anything goes wrong you are done. They include database in their ‘package’, so you have limited options.
Also GitHub is usually used to distribute dependencies, so if your package gets downloaded 1M+ times, you don’t have to pay for the traffic.
Alternative experience here: I have managed 7 GitLab installs for the past 12 years, two of these having ~300 users and ~1000 repositories, and I update monthly on average. I have only had one update break in all that time, and it was because of starting another upgrade step without waiting for all of the background migrations to complete. GitLab support got us sorted out within a couple of hours. A great experience overall.
There is a complexity floor, however. I use GitLab personally because of its CI/CD implementation. Upgrading it requires some care because it’s a large and complex project. You have to read the errata and use the upgrade planner.
For small installations with a few users, and if there is no CI/CD preference, Forejo is probably the better choice for maintenance simplicity.
Found upgrades mildly annoying with GitLab, big reason I moved to Forgejo for my personal stuff. Far easier to setup and maintain for me, seems to be happy with caddy and runners are really easy to setup.
I’m not hosting for an entire org though, it’s just me and I keep all my selfhost stuff local only, so obviously YMMV.