

Ask HN: Private Git repo hosting? - webmaven

Do you use the paid GitHub plan, the free BitBucket plan, Gitlab, something else, or self-host?<p>Update: Removed the running totals. I&#x27;ll summarize later, didn&#x27;t expect this to be quite so popular.
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robinhoodexe
I use a free BitBucket plan. The unlimited private repos are perfect for me,
since I have a lot of small projects that I'll likely never finish. Also, i
have Pass[1] set up with Git, so everything is backed up, under version
control and is pushed to my Raspberry Pi so I can access all my passwords on
my iPhone as well.

Also, I use Git for large academic projects and papers in LaTeX, so public
Github is not really ideal.

[1][http://www.zx2c4.com/projects/password-
store/](http://www.zx2c4.com/projects/password-store/)

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troels
You can put the bare repo on a server and then use ssh. Dead simple and works
great if you have a dev server where all developers have access to anyway.

~~~
drinchev
Yeah, pretty much that's what I also find the most appropriate.

GitHub seems to be the second-best option ( sometimes the first ), but when
you have unlimited non-paid private repos your mind goes also unlimited : I
serve my important configuration files, various scripts, small personal
projects, even my bank statements on a git repo, hosted on my personal server.
But if every repo costed me 2$ per month, I doubt I would do that.

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taspeotis
Atlassian Stash [1]. Gets regular updates and it plays nicely with JIRA and
Bamboo.

[1] [https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/whats-
new](https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/whats-new)

~~~
serve_yay
It works but it's not great. It's rather slow and the interface leaves some
things to be desired (for example, you can't close a pull request without
letting Stash merge it for you).

~~~
gonewest
You can decline / reject / whatever they call it in stash and it won't be
merged...

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privong
I use both github (I recently finished a PhD and so had access to the
education discount) and free bitbucket (a budding collaboration hosts their
private code there). I am the sole user for most of my repos (mostly software
for data analysis and LaTeX drafts for papers), so bitbucket's five user limit
for free accounts has not affected my workflow in any way. I do use github for
code I want to release to the public (e.g., code associated with publications,
side-projects that I want to share), as it seems like there is more of an
ecosystem there and the website seems more conducive to easily finding other
peoples projects.

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eldelshell
Paid GitHub.

It's great, not really expensive, almost every developer knows how it works.

Simply setting up your own Git repo would be more expensive than a few months
of GitHub/BitBucket subscription.

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michaelmior
I'm not arguing about GitHub being great, but it really only takes a few
minutes to spin up an EC2 instance and add a few user accounts with a shared
folder. That's really all that's required to set up a shared repo.

~~~
justincormack
Plus backups., security updates etc. OK you can not backup got as someone
probably has a copy but...

~~~
michaelmior
Plus assuming you're running an EBS-backed instance, it's already backed up.
And it's easy enough to set your instance to automatically apply security
updates. If all it's doing is hosting a few git repos, breaking things isn't
really a huge concern. I love GitHub, but I wouldn't pay for it as a way of
saving money, I'd pay for the extra features.

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logicuce
I first tried bitbucket for my personal projects and then moved my work repos
to it as well.

Bitbucket charges per user and not per repo (the github model) which scales
well while keeping cost in control.

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0x0
Started on the free bitbucket and went to the paid bitbucket when we needed
more than 5 users. With 200+ repositories, we've already exceeded what is
available for purchase on github.

~~~
logicuce
Bitbucket's no limit on number of repos is what made us take the final call as
well. You don't want to be restricted on that when you strive hard to have a
more organized code base.

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shooster
I'll try to summarize my choice depending on org size.

If it fits in BitBucket's free plan or you're solo, use that. It'll just work.

If it doesn't fit in BitBucket's free plan, pay for GitHub (sorry BitBucket).

If you need it behind your firewall and want to manage yourself, you can
afford to (and should do) an eval of solutions like GitLab.

If you need it behind your firewall and your org is already large and
complicated, then try GitHub enterprise.

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Argorak
Github private, both for my personal and my company account. Mainly because if
the ease of giving others access, as most of my peers use it as well. I don't
want to have multiple accounts at multiple services for that.

I use Stash at one client and like it, especially when integrated with JIRA.
Not that I have much love for JIRA, but if you track all details, it's the
tool to go for.

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akie
Self-hosting with gogs.io. Awesome interface, easy to install (it's just a
binary), uses minimal system resources and loads very very quick.

~~~
izacus
Yep, I'm using Gogs on my Synology NAS as well to self-host and mirror/backup
my GitHub repositories.

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nirix
I use BitBucket for small private projects. Never had any issues with it. For
larger projects I'd go with a paid GitHub plan.

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canterburry
I ended up getting an DigitalOcean $10/month box and set up GitLab (which is
awesome). I figured for almost the same price of GitHub micro plan I could get
unlimited repos by self hosting and could additionally use the box as a
private maven repo host and maybe a build box (barely though).

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ef4
A benefit of private GitHub repos is that you're still nicely integrated with
your open source dependencies on GitHub. For example, if you file an issue in
your private repo that mentions an issue in some other public repo, you'll see
your own reference when viewing the public issue.

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jibsen
Free BitBucket for private repos, free GitHub for open source projects.

I would have considered the micro plan if it weren't for the 5 repo limit -- I
am (sadly) not rich enough to pay them just for being nice if I can get the
number of private repos I need for free elsewhere.

~~~
gonewest
Same here, plus github enterprise at work and a private install of stash for a
different project at work.

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nsfmc
if you already have a tiny vps running somewhere, take a look at gitolite.
it's free, it supports multiple users, allows for complex access control, but
has a tiny bit of a learning curve attached to it.

on the upside, you learn a bunch about ssh in the process!

~~~
rokche123
+1 for Gitolite. It is not that hard, more like an afternoon spent figuring
things out. Great access control. It has no interface and no pull requests but
that is not what git is about after all.

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lini
Self-hosted Gitlab. We have more than 20 projects in it but only a few of them
can be called large.

~~~
yalue
We also use self-hosted Gitlab. Its workflow is generally very sensible, the
web interface is great, and it was easy to integrate with a homemade CI server
(unfortunately their provided CI server wasn't nearly as easy to set up as
Gitlab itself).

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talkingtab
I use my own git repo. I have a very small digitalocean server as well as a
mac. I rsync the repos for backup. I have used github a bit but in my
admittedly limited experience I see no benefit and therefore no need for
anything else. Really it just seems trivial.

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giancarlostoro
As a student if you have a .edu email you can get unlimited repos on BitBucket
as well. I use BitBucket for projects I don't want to publish, and if it ever
becomes something I wouldn't mind sharing I go public on GitHub and BitBucket.

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rhspeer
Had to switch from BitBucket to GitHub because BitBucket has performance
issues dev team in Nepal.

The 24 hour dev cycle is upon us and it's important to make sure these tools
work on both sides of the planet.

~~~
Artemis2
Experienced that to in France. Since we also use Bitbucket for code review, I
just put a box with a good network connection as a secondary git server that
synced code at each push.

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webmaven
Oops. Guess the ability to edit your OP times out sooner than I remembered.

Current summary stats for _private_ repos:

* Paid GitHub: 9

* Free+Paid BitBucket: 14

* Hosted+Self-hosted GitLab: 8

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jacquesm
Paid github. And that's because I feel that when I pay for a service such as
this they _need_ to take my money in order to continue to survive. Anything
else will sooner or later disappear.

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rswail
gitlab... easy to set up and easy to use.

~~~
drinchev
I had a gitlab instance on one of my computers that is online 24/7\. It is a
good solution, but my system was compromised by exploiting ruby / gitshell .
Also it took way too much system resources to operate.

Of course it's my responsibility to patch software I'm using, but after
considering how much time I would need to run gitlab on my own host ( incl.
server upgrade, security configuration, may be kernel + docker installation,
etc. ) I decided to go to a paid repo at GitHub.

~~~
webmaven
Had you considered GitLab's free hosting?

~~~
drinchev
I didn't consider hosting from GitLab at all. The thing I considered was that
GitLab is an open-source project, so I can modify it the way I want ( I
actually contributed a super small patch (
[https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-ci-
runner/pull/16](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-ci-runner/pull/16) ) .

Anyway free hosting for me for a platform that you can install on your server
has always been a no-option, because I want to control the content.

~~~
webmaven
So instead you'd rather choose a paid hosting account for a solution where you
_don 't_ have that self-hosting option?

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wlk
For private/small projects free BitBucket is enough. For larger projects I
have used self-hosted Gitlab which was running very well on relatively low
spec server.

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pritambaral
Github Education for college projects, Github open source for class projects
(these benefit from sharing publicly), Bitbucket for private and freelance
projects.

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ishener
There's really no disadvantage to using BitBucket...

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Veratyr
Github costs money, Bitbucket gives me the same thing for free. Usually I use
Bitbucket for private and if I open source something move it to Github.

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istoselidas
For public repos and company's private repos I am using github. For personal
private projects I use bitbucket.

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ryanmacg
I used to use github but I’ve moved towards gitlab in the past while as my
need for private repos dropped in scale

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gbraad
Bitbucket (free) and self-hosted without a fancy interface (linode, synced to
digital ocean, dreamhost)

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_1009
Free Bitbucket, works just fine.

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IgorPartola
My private repos go on a NAS share over SSH. git supports this perfectly.

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nilved
Host your own server. It's easy, cheap and offers more features.

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modinfo
I use my own git repos with web cgit, on my dedicated ovh server.

~~~
bruo
i'm with you! i can't be happier with cgit!

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Shorel
I use Gogs.

Fast, very low resource usage, easy to install.

~~~
moepstar
I've set up a small-ish Gogs server on a RPi and i beg to differ on the "easy
to install" \- this might be true if you can just get the packages and install
it, but once you try to manually set it up you'll see that the docs are
lacking, big time.

And even if you've got it all set up: how are you supposed to update your
install? IIRC, i've read somewhere that you're supposed to wipe & reinstall
the whole thing (take this with a grain of salt, haven't used my install that
much as Gogs is still way buggier than, say, GitLab).

~~~
Shorel
I just updated from 4.2 to 5.2.

No wipe, just overwrite some files and that's it.

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noselasd
Self hosted repos accessed with ssh on a vSphere CentOS VM

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marchenkoigor
Phabricator has a nice set for privet repo

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shvar
+1 for bitbucket

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hackerboos
Gitlab on Digital Ocean using their image.

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Outlaw11A
Paid Github through the student license

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edoceo
2x paid github, one for each company.

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drakmail
Free GitLab account on gitlab.com

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ja27
+1 for free BitBucket plan

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segmondy
github for public stuff, bitbucket for private.

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selamtux
i use amazon s3 for git repositories

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je42
bitbucket for free private repos.

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theGREENsuit
free private bitbucket repos

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mindcrime
We use paid GitHub.

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kcthota
Bitbucket

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neom
gitlab on digitalocean.

