
Sr.ht, the hacker's forge, now open for public alpha - ddevault
https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html
======
AndyKelley
Congrats on the milestone. This is a huge boon to the open source community. I
love the pricing model.

Are there any plans or ideas for a migration path from GitHub to sir.ht? I
would imagine that if there was a way to transfer issues and discussions it
would encourage more users to make the switch.

Here's one data point for you: zig programming language. Influencing factors:

* If we had syntax highlighting in the file browser, that would be a win over GitHub, which insists that there be "hundreds of GitHub repositories" before accepting a syntax highlighting pull request for a new language. I could imagine it would be reasonable to support "repository-local" highlighting configuration.

* Transferring existing content as mentioned above. It would be unwise for us to give up all the issues and discussion.

* The fact that the build service supports FreeBSD is already a win. However, to switch from Azure DevOps we would lose Windows builds. Is that ruled out due to the open source nature of sr.ht, or is that planned? Related, it would be attractive if sir.ht offered more architectures, e.g. i386, ARM, RISC-V (I believe this was mentioned but I could not find it in the docs)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
>* If we had syntax highlighting in the file browser, that would be a win over
GitHub, which insists that there be "hundreds of GitHub repositories" before
accepting a syntax highlighting pull request for a new language. I could
imagine it would be reasonable to support "repository-local" highlighting
configuration.

We use pygments, so patches to pygments would make it to sr.ht's syntax
highlighting.

>* Transferring existing content as mentioned above. It would be unwise for us
to give up all the issues and discussion.

Planned. Also planned to let you sync between both.

>* The fact that the build service supports FreeBSD is already a win. However,
to switch from Azure DevOps we would lose Windows builds. Is that ruled out
due to the open source nature of sr.ht, or is that planned? Related, it would
be attractive if sir.ht offered more architectures, e.g. i386, ARM, RISC-V (I
believe this was mentioned but I could not find it in the docs)

Eventually users will be able to add custom base images, which will permit the
use of Windows (if you can get an sshd running there, at least). As for multi-
arch, experimental support for aarch64 is there, and by the end of the year I
expect to have RISC-V builds backed by HiFive hardware.

~~~
mikepurvis
Nonetheless, it'd be nice to have some way of plugging in more of this kind of
functionality at the instance, user, and possibly repo levels. Obviously
syntax highlighting is one use case, but some others:

\- Sophisticated cross-referencing tools like Kythe and SourceGraph

\- Linking stdlib functions and imports to public documentation, like
cppreference.com, python.org, etc.

\- Linking ticket/user names to my non-srht bug tracking tool (especially
JIRA, but there are lots of possibilities).

\- Linking to public or self-hosted generated API docs (doxygen, swagger,
sphinx, etc).

\- Linking to info pages generated from metadata-type files such a PKG-INFO
(for example containing dependency tree information).

\- Propagating back information gathered from build or test runs, for example
highlighting areas missing test coverage, or which are "hot" from a perf point
of view.

Only some of these would be appropriate to go into the mainline version of the
tool, which is why it's important to support plugging in these capabilities
for the users which need/want them.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I think a lot of what you're looking for is going to be possible through
generic interfaces I plan on writing. It's not going to take the shape of "you
can write code which executes on sr.ht's servers just for your repo in
particular", but rather things like "you can POST to an API endpoint on
git.sr.ht to annotate the sources in your tree for a specific commit sha with
links to pydoc et al". builds.sr.ht would then be the place where you could
run arbitrary code to automate this.

~~~
sqs
Sourcegraph CEO here. We would love to help integrate Sourcegraph into sr.ht
for code intelligence (hovers, go-to-definition, etc.). We’re kicking this off
with GitLab next month.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Great! My email is sir@cmpwn.com. I can't guarantee a lot of cycles right now,
but get in touch and I'll keep it on my radar.

~~~
sqs
Awesome. Just filed
[https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/1027](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/1027)
on our end to track it.

------
CraftThatBlock
My feedback:

\- It's left aligned, which makes it harder to use on an ultrawide, with the
content in the first 1/3 of the page. Having a max-width on the main container
and center aligning it would be great

\- Emails are GPG signed! Even if the usefulness is small, it's a awesome
feature

\- Pricing seems good, but I would charge more. 3$, 8$, 15$, if following the
pricing scheme you have. I know I'd be happy to pay for 15$/m for a useful
service. You could also make it "pay however much you want", so it's flexible
if people want to pay 5$ or 50$, and it calculate with the tiers (if over X$,
use plan Y)

\- It feels very responsive. Great job on having the site being very light so
far

\- Maybe having something like Turbolinks could be pretty cool. SPA are great
because they feel instant, and with a few lines of optional JavaScript you
could provide an experience which is SPA-like since the server-side rendering
is so quick

\- The UI looks clean and minimalistic, which is great. Featureful isn't a bad
thing either if done right. I think you're on the right path though

Overall, this seems like a great project. I haven't tried the builds system
yet, but I definitely will. Keep up the great work Drew!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thank you for your feedback!

>It's left aligned, which makes it harder to use on an ultrawide, with the
content in the first 1/3 of the page. Having a max-width on the main container
and center aligning it would be great

[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht/112](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht/112)

>Emails are GPG signed! Even if the usefulness is small, it's a awesome
feature

Encrypted, too, if you add your PGP key to meta.sr.ht.

>Pricing seems good, but I would charge more. 3$, 8$, 15$, if following the
pricing scheme you have. I know I'd be happy to pay for 15$/m for a useful
service. You could also make it "pay however much you want", so it's flexible
if people want to pay 5$ or 50$, and it calculate with the tiers (if over X$,
use plan Y)

I may adjust the pricing later, but I want to see how this works out. If
you're interested in going above and beyond, I accept donations here:

[https://drewdevault.com/donate](https://drewdevault.com/donate)

Thanks <3

>Maybe having something like Turbolinks could be pretty cool. SPA are great
because they feel instant, and with a few lines of optional JavaScript you
could provide an experience which is SPA-like since the server-side rendering
is so quick

Not interested in this for the time being, it's pretty fast without.

Thanks so much for your support!

~~~
CraftThatBlock
Makes sense for everything! Great product, I will definitely check it out as
it grows and probably buy a subscription.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks! I hope you like it!

------
gnomewascool
This is really exciting! I particularly like the lightness of the web-pages
and the non-necessity of javascript. The support for the BSDs in the build
system (FreeBSD at the moment, OpenBSD and NetBSD planned[0]) is also nice —
as a Linux person I've far too often ignored the other Unixes and POSIX /
general Unix compatibility.

I hate being THAT guy, but would you consider trying[1] to re-license the
AGPL-3.0 bits to AGPL-3.0-or-later, unless sticking with just v3 was
deliberate (in which case fair enough)? My rationale:

i) License-incompatibility is a curse that fragments the copyleft world.

ii) Worrying about AGPL-3.0-only being incompatible with AGPL-4.0, in ten
years time, if/when the latter comes out, will be too late, as (hopefully)
sr.ht will have had hundreds or thousands of contributors, many uncontactable,
by then.

iii) Having AGPL-3.0-or-later instead of just AGPL-3.0 is unlikely to put off
any contributors.

iv) (This is subjective and might not hold for you:) I trust the FSF not to do
something sufficiently crazy with its next iteration of licenses (if such
exist), that I would prefer my code not to be compatible with such licenses.

[0] [https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
announce/%3C201808022145...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
announce/%3C20180802214500.GA5332%40homura.localdomain%3E)

[1] This obviously also depends on the other contributors, so you might not
want to bother with the effort.

~~~
ChristianBundy
> I trust the FSF not to do something sufficiently crazy

Personally, I don't trust this at all, and would recommend against the "or
later" that yields future licensing decisions to the Richard Stallman and that
FSF.

~~~
kragniz
Can you elaborate on your reasoning for that?

~~~
Twirrim
not speaking for OP, but the significant changes between GPL v2 and GPL v3
would make me absolutely paranoid, and represent a good example. A "v2-and-
later" would have subjected people to licensing changes they absolutely don't
want.

~~~
calpaterson
From GPL 2:

> either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

"At your option" means that no one is 'subjected' to changes they don't want.
They just have the option to upgrade.

~~~
akerl_
Sure, but this thread is about licensing the software as "version $x or
later", which pushes the choice to the user of the license.

------
matthewwiese
I adore the aesthetic! Absolutely smooth web design; top notch work Drew.

Just registered and hope to familiarize myself with everything. This is one of
the few "Show HN" projects I've felt compelled to actually try. Heck, I'm so
charmed by it I want to contribute.

What a lovely Thursday morning discovery.

~~~
lykr0n
Agree. Simple and not over-engineered.

~~~
andrepd
>not over-engineered

Always keep in mind that many people have an interest in ensuring their own
job remains relevant and necessary. How else can you explain e.g. google's
constant UI changes? Designer's keeping themselves busy (even though there are
no real reasons for the changes)!

~~~
sincerely
Just because we know why it happens doesn't mean we can't complain if we think
that "why" is stupid :)

------
rollulus
I love this. Everything I've read so far breathes this "made for devs"
attitude. I hope that a few years from now in a HN thread that lists
successful companies that got "launched" on HN (you know, the Dropboxes and so
on), this will be among them---and that the product is still as honest and
awesome as it looks right now!

~~~
busterarm
Well worth the $100 for the year and I even plan on self-hosting.

------
auto
Don't have an immediate use, but I signed up for the $20/yr account. Seems
like an incredible platform, and if I have this expectation that better
software be built and not tied to huge corporations beholden to investors, the
only way to do that is to support it. Looking forward to digging into all
this.

------
tarruda
> On top of that, sr.ht is one of the most lightweight websites on the
> internet, with the average page weighing less than 10 KiB, with no tracking
> and no JavaScript

At the age of Spectre/Meltdown, it is no longer safe to leave JavaScript
enabled, so thank you for this.

~~~
SheinhardtWigCo
got a source on that?

~~~
ori_b
[https://github.com/ascendr/spectre-
chrome](https://github.com/ascendr/spectre-chrome)

Then, keep in mind that new Spectre style vulnerabilities have been announced
for CPUs, and the feasibility of using GPUs in this style of attacks is being
explored now.

------
LyndsySimon
I love this, and wish it well.

I currently host my personal repositories on GitLab, as I see the monoculture
that has developed around GitHub to be dangerous for the community in the long
term. I went ahead and created an account on sr.ht, and subscribed for the $20
/ year plan. Whether or not I end up using the service (though I think I
will), I'm happy to spend $20 to support this work.

One note - the billing plans seem to be recurring right now. If you could
offer an option to make a one-time payment, that would be much appreciated. If
anyone else is interested in subscribing to support the project but doesn't
want a recurring charge on their card, you can go to
[https://meta.sr.ht/billing](https://meta.sr.ht/billing) and "cancel", which
will turn off autorenewal but leave your account active for the term for which
you've paid.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
For the sake of sustainability, I want to discourage people from using one-
time payments. For the time being charge -> cancel manually is the preferred
way to do this.

Thanks for your support!

~~~
cuddlecake
That is understandable, as long as it is not difficult to find the
cancellation button.

Gonna go and subscribe as well, probably. Looks quite promising.

------
typon
A meta comment on the HN community: People constantly decry HN's "negativity"
to Show HN posts or other tech related news, but I think when really cool
projects (like this one) show up, people respond overwhelmingly positively.
Maybe it's a good thing that HN as a community has high standards.

------
mintplant
I noticed that there's no link from, for example,
[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/man.sr.ht](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/man.sr.ht)
to
[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/man.sr.ht](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/man.sr.ht)
\- is there any way to link a project's pages together across multiple sr.ht
services? Otherwise the navigation isn't so friendly for someone just
discovering a project.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yeah, improving this is a pre-alpha todo item.

~~~
mintplant
It would be nice to be able to add custom links to whatever form this
navigation takes, also (for example, if a project uses a different solution
for code review/patch submission).

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Aye, this is planned. Thanks for the feedback!

------
mikepurvis
Looks like the CI builds are tied to a user/group account rather than being
tied to a particular repo or branch. Bravo on that— it works much better for
projects whose build is composed of assets from many small repos than the
approach of Travis (and GitLab, who cloned it) of tightly coupling those
things.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I'm glad you like this, it was a key design decision of builds.sr.ht.

------
zestyping
You mention:

> lists.sr.ht finally modernizes mailing lists

What's new that lists.sr.ht brings to the table? I only had a quick browse of
[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-dev](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
dev), but as far as I could tell it looked like a pretty normal list of topic
lines (like a typical web forum), and the e-mail conversations themselves are
just the messages concatenated into one long page (e.g.
[https://lists.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh-
dev/%3C20180916165820.144...](https://lists.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh-
dev/%3C20180916165820.14491-1-sir%40cmpwn.com%3E)).

Is there something interesting and new about the way these mailing lists work
that I'm not seeing?

~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
"Looking like a typical web forum" is a _huge_ improvement compared to what
e.g. GNU Mailman offers.

~~~
Conan_Kudo
Well, Mailman 3 with HyperKitty looks more like some web forums. But Mailman 2
is quite dated...

~~~
jordigh
I also like how DFeed looks. It's written in D and simultaneously serves
forums, mailing lists, IRC and (lol) Usenet; all on an SQLite backend. It's
also compiled to machine code, so it's pretty fast:

[https://forum.dlang.org/](https://forum.dlang.org/)

------
GordonS
> builds.sr.ht, which is easily the most capable continuous integration system
> available today

Azure DevOps pipelines are _really_ capable, with a great UI - I'd love to see
a side-by-side comparison?

~~~
Rapzid
That _is_ a __bold __claim. More capable than Team City?

------
GordonS
With a service like this, I don't understand why a lack of tracking is touted
as a feature - I don't want Google et al tracking my search history and across
3rd party websites, but I _want_ to provide usage data to services I value.

Usage data is valuable for understanding how users use your service, features
that aren't used, or simply not discovered. I'd personally prefer that
tracking was added, but as an opt-in model.

------
woodrowbarlow
this piques my interest. i've been looking for a set of project hosting and
management tools which are deeply integrated with each other and with very
minimal UIs designed as an extension of the tool's inherent abstractions,
rather than obscuring the tool behind "simple" UI abstractions which
ultimately force opinionated workflows.

the only thing that's missing for this to be useful to me is code review. re:
the UI, gerrit has always been my favorite code review platform because it
embraces git's abstractions.

drew: do you have any plans for adding a code review service?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Hiya! I do have plans on adding a code review service, driven by email on
lists.sr.ht in a similar style to how it's done in other mailing list driven
projects. Here's an example of how this works:

[https://lists.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh-
dev/%3C20180916165820.144...](https://lists.sr.ht/~emersion/mrsh-
dev/%3C20180916165820.14491-1-sir%40cmpwn.com%3E)

My plan is to parse these discussions using this library my friend made:

[https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/python-
emailthreads](https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/python-emailthreads)

Then provide a UI similar to Gerrit, but driven by emails underneath.

~~~
woodrowbarlow
wow, that's such a natural interaction model. i will be eagerly following
sr.ht's development. :)

actually, i bet you have a list for high-level development updates. can you
point me to it?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I do!

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
announce](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-announce)

------
explainplease
Forgive me if this is covered elsewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

One of the things that I _do_ like about GitHub is actually the
community/social aspect. For example, I follow projects I am interested in,
and I can see notifications from all of them on one page--without filling up
my email inbox. I also follow users who have similar interests, and I often
discover new projects when I see in my feed (which I read via RSS) that
they've starred a project that sounds interesting.

I think it's great that you're supporting email as a first-class way to
interact with the services, but will there also be anything like GitHub's
"Notifications" page?

Another feature I enjoy on GitHub is the ability to view issues and PRs across
all of my repos from a single search page (e.g. search for "user:repo-owner-
username is:issue"). Will sr.ht have anything like this?

Thanks for your work and for sharing it freely.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for your feedback and questions!

>One of the things that I do like about GitHub is actually the
community/social aspect. For example, I follow projects I am interested in,
and I can see notifications from all of them on one page--without filling up
my email inbox. I also follow users who have similar interests, and I often
discover new projects when I see in my feed (which I read via RSS) that
they've starred a project that sounds interesting.

For the moment I've explicitly decided _against_ this. I want sr.ht to be a
professional tool more so than a social network. This may change to varying
degrees in the future.

>will there also be anything like GitHub's "Notifications" page?

There will be a feed of events, which you can use for a similar reason. At the
moment, there are feeds like this, but they aren't global - they're scoped to
each sub-site, like lists.sr.ht. Here's what my lists.sr.ht page looks like:

[https://sr.ht/SbLu.png](https://sr.ht/SbLu.png)

>Another feature I enjoy on GitHub is the ability to view issues and PRs
across all of my repos from a single search page (e.g. search for "user:repo-
owner-username is:issue"). Will sr.ht have anything like this?

Maybe!

~~~
grumpydba
Hi, and congratulations, it looks awesome and has that old school unix feel I
like, so you have a subscriber here.

Regarding the social/professional divide, a way to follow releases/security
patches/API breakages on the projects I follow might make me more productive.
I don't care about who stars who, but a way to link projects brings something.

Following releases of dependencies and use this information to improve CI/CD
and try to explain breakage or trigger new builds could be very useful.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I recommend setting up a mailing list, project-announce or project-security,
on lists.sr.ht for that purpose.

>Following releases of dependencies and use this information to improve CI/CD
and try to explain breakage or trigger new builds could be very useful.

This should be quite possible, perhaps even automatable through
dispatch.sr.ht.

~~~
grumpydba
> I recommend setting up a mailing list, project-announce or project-security,
> on lists.sr.ht for that purpose.

Indeed looks like it covers my needs. Thanks!

------
verall
One of the coolest projects I've seen in a while! Really excited to see where
this goes.

Some quick feedback: viewing messages on lists.sr.ht on mobile gives the
"<code> block experience" of moving a horizontal a scroller for every line.

This might be intentional (wrapping can wreck formatting/alignment) but it
might be worth wrapping for it to be less painful to read from a mobile
browser.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yeah, this is deliberate. I don't want to wreck the formatting of anyone's
emails. That being said, there are solutions to this... but they're a bit
obscure and will require some effort.

~~~
Hello71
a button for toggling the font?

------
rpdillon
This has all the hallmarks of high-quality, well-designed software. I will
definitely be checking it out. Thanks for all the work you've put into it!

~~~
napsterbr
+1. This is the kind of software that makes me genuinely happy.

------
geokon
This looks really nice and it's working incredibly quick for me.

I have a couple of maybe stupid question.. I'm having trouble understanding
the workflow. When I open something like
[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/)

This is the issue page for a user, right?

And then when I go to

[https://todo.sr.ht/%7Esircmpwn/sr.ht](https://todo.sr.ht/%7Esircmpwn/sr.ht)

(oh, the tilde copy-and-pastes weird into the comment window.. not sure what
that's about)

This is the "issue page" (in Github speak) for one of a user's repositories.
But how do I navigate from there to the actual repository? The 'git' button at
the top takes me to generic landing page? I found this link through the
announcement page : [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn)
but I dont get how to navigate to there naturally.

Or how to go from the git back to the todo. I get they're decoupled features,
but surely there must be a way to go back and forth.

Also when I open up the 'tree' section, each line starts with file permissions
in the style of 'ls -la'. Is this b/c the system is fundamentally tied to
POSIX? (I've used git with no problem on Windows before - so I don't see why
it would be)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
>Also when I open up the 'tree' section, each line starts with file
permissions in the style of 'ls -la'. Is this b/c the system is fundamentally
tied to POSIX? (I've used git with no problem on Windows before - so I don't
see why it would be)

Because the file mode is stored in git. The tree view is a representation of
the git tree, and the mode is a property stored in the tree.

~~~
geokon
Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time to explain :)

------
aktau
I remember a discussion with Drew on HN a while ago. I held that the GitHub
model was more inviting to small contributions given the overhead of figuring
out how to get said small contribution integrated was paid for every new
project outside of GitHub(-likes), but only once for GitHub and friends [1]
(see discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17803588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17803588)).

sr.ht takes a very good stab at that problem, while maintaining that old-style
approach. (For example through predictable mailing list names, should the
project choose to use lists.sr.ht, which is likely.)

Kudos, Drew.

One intriguing thing about sr.ht is the way builds.sr.ht is described:
amazingly powerful [2]. It's been a while since I configured myself a Travis
workflow, but remember it was YAML based as well and one could do quite a
number of things with it. What I'm missing is a description of exactly how
builds.sr.ht towers above all the rest.

[1]: By approximation, some projects hosted on GitHub have more specific rules
and will not consider those who deviate.

[2]: [https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availabilit...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availability.html)

------
wkoszek
Congratulations from an early tester. I'm happy you're making such a good
progress on this.

Also happy to see more aliens here appreciating brutalist aesthetics :-)

------
ontouchstart
Just signed up. I like the old fashioned user URL, reminds me the age of
public_html

[https://lists.sr.ht/~ontouchstart](https://lists.sr.ht/~ontouchstart)

BTW, please add a nice 404 so people won't see that you're running
nginx/1.14.0 :-)

[https://sr.ht/~ontouchstart](https://sr.ht/~ontouchstart)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for the feedback!
[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht/113](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht/113)

~~~
ontouchstart
Following link listed on the man page [https://man.sr.ht](https://man.sr.ht)

[https://man.sr.ht/root](https://man.sr.ht/root)

also gives a 404, but in a little better format. :)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
That's a git clone URL, not a web-facing URL :)

~~~
ontouchstart
I have not tried to clone it myself. But if it is not a web-facing URL, you
should list it in clear CLI command and remove the <a> tag. People will click
if you make it clickable.

------
tptacek
How does this compare to Trac, which is _also_ a 100% free, open source
"software forge" (also built on Python)?

~~~
yellowapple
One immediate difference is that sr.ht has a publicly-hosted version; I'm
having trouble finding that for Trac.

Trac is also not JS-free, so for those who prefer to not rely on arbitrary
Turing-complete code running locally without explicit permission, sr.ht has an
edge there.

That said, Trac feels a lot more polished (unsurprisingly, given that it has a
significant headstart in terms of development resource and time).

~~~
tptacek
Right, Trac has an extreme head start; it was, before Github, practically the
de facto standard answer to this "software forge" problem. But it also
continues to work just great, and has a pretty decent ecosystem.

------
beagle3
I like everything.

Well, almost everything: The "View raw message" feature exposes way too much
information about your contributors - including their email, smtp client, ip,
and a bunch of other things. I understand and appreciate the usefulness, but
as a contributor I don't usually expect my details to become that public.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
The IP is the IP of your mail server, which is a lot less private (you can
derive that just by doing a DNS lookup on your hostname). The email address is
explicitly exposed, your email is not private in git repos either, and it's
important that people are able to get in touch with you. It's a mailing list!

I'm glad that you like everything else :)

~~~
beagle3
Many email servers report the IP of the incoming SMTP connection when you use
a client (e.g. mutt, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or Outlook) as an "X-Client-IP"
or similar raw header; often also the envelope "from", which may be different
than the message "from" which is the only one usually shown.

It's not that IPs are very private - sending an email to someone often tells a
lot about you. But having all that info publicly scrapable seems unexpected to
me.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
That seems fair. I can probably strip unnecessary headers from incoming
emails.

[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/lists.sr.ht/60](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/lists.sr.ht/60)

------
sliem
Looks fantastic, I just signed up to try it out.

Small ux thing; the nav bar on top are different for every subdomain. Probably
easier to navigate if the elements are in fixed positions.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for signing up!

They're ordered by the time you accessed each last. I agree that this is, in
retrospect, unintuitive and poorly designed. Will be reverting it soon enough.

~~~
hobofan
+1

Was very confused by the changing order.

------
nezirus
You are my hero Sir! I've recently switched from i3 to sway beta, and now
this, do you ever sleep?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
8 hours a night! I get lots of help from my friends. Thanks for your kind
words :)

------
xur17
Very impressive! The [https://builds.sr.ht](https://builds.sr.ht) service
looks especially interesting - any chance there's a way to use it without
fully moving over to sr.ht? It would be nice to be able to try out the build
system without having to fully commit to moving to to sr.ht, especially for
projects with a large history on other platforms.

I went ahead and registered and signed up for a plan. If this is the kind of
project you like to see, I encourage you to consider signing up to contribute.

Feature request: I'd love to see U2F support added.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for signing up!

>any chance there's a way to use it without fully moving over to sr.ht?

Yep. I currently use builds.sr.ht in combination with GitHub, for example, to
build sway & wlroots:

[https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/1377](https://github.com/swaywm/wlroots/pull/1377)

You can wire this up at [https://dispatch.sr.ht](https://dispatch.sr.ht)

The API is also pretty simple:
[https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/api.md](https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/api.md)

postmarketOS uses the API, for example, in combination with some custom
tooling around their package manager.

>Feature request: I'd love to see U2F support added.

[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/meta.sr.ht/62](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/meta.sr.ht/62)

This has been discussed before, I would accept a patch but can't work on it
myself until my browser (qutebrowser) grows U2F support.

------
diimdeep
Is this orthogonal approach to GitHub, etc ?

On GitHub you navigate to project(repo), then drill down to sub section
provides specific piece of functionality (repo, commits, issues, wiki..)

Here you navigate to app then drill down to project..

~~~
gbear605
According to comments elsewhere on this post, this functionality is in the
works.

------
endgame
This is excellent. I've started moving projects over, and I'm looking forward
to shifting from fosspay donations to actually paying directly for this.
Excelsior!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thank you!

------
webXL

      All features work without JavaScript
    

I'm not sure why this is a selling point. Yes, there are many upsides to this,
particularly from the maintainer's standpoint, but I think it might just be a
side-benefit that only certain users really care about. Eventually, there
might be advantages to removing that "feature", and you might turn off users
who joined largely because of it.

~~~
intertextuality
I see it as a reflection of the website's overall design stance: no frills, no
stupid material design, no js junk scripts. Just a fast-loading website that
loads what it needs to. This kind of website is quite refreshing in 2018.

Maybe one day it will have a tiny amount of JS, but let's cross that bridge
when it comes. That's still better than the vast majority of modern websites
built today.

~~~
gbear605
It does already have some JS. On the builds page, when it is running a build,
it refreshes every second to show new output.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
This is accomplished without JavaScript.

~~~
gbear605
There’s a script tag on the builds page that reloads the page every second,
according to the page source. How is that not JavaScript?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
The key to doing it without JavaScript is this:

<meta id="refresh" http-equiv="refresh" content="5">

The script you found removes it and does it a different way so it can scroll
to the bottom. Optional progressive enhancement.

~~~
gbear605
Ah, optional JavaScript. Makes sense

------
rambojazz
You should make a more thorough comparison with other "100% open source"
forges. Your main arguments against GitHub and the like are the license,
tracking, and ads. Instead, you make no good arguments for why this tool is so
"special" compared to other equivalently free tools. I'm not trying to be a
jerk here, but the post looked like a hard sell to me.

------
landhar
I see for now there's only package repositories for Alpine and Arch
([https://man.sr.ht/packages.md](https://man.sr.ht/packages.md)), any plans to
expand this list any time soon?

(Fantastic job by the way, as other commenters are pointing out this is the
type of project hosting suite that I've been looking for)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I do intend to expand this list, probably with at least Debian packages. This
isn't a high priority at the moment, though, I have limited bandwidth for
sr.ht until it's profitable and have to focus on other features. This is
definitely an area where an interested Debian user could contribute packages,
though, especially if nicely integrated with builds.sr.ht like the other
packages are.

------
2trill2spill
I love that you are able to support FreeBSD but Travis CI couldn't even be
bothered. Is there support for Windows as well?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
No, for the time being I'm only adding free (as in freedom) operating systems.
In the future you'll be able to upload custom build images.

------
dustfinger
Have you considered adding a docker image repository similar to Dockerhub to
the ecosystem?

Alternatively, have you considered contacting the folks at dockerhub and
request integration similar to GitHub [1]?

[1][https://docs.docker.com/docker-
hub/github/](https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/github/)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
This was discussed here: [https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
discuss/%3CFA9122A8-8BD1...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
discuss/%3CFA9122A8-8BD1-41C4-88AF-661AF8241CA2%40nderjung.net%3E)

~~~
dustfinger
Thank you!

------
settler4
This sounds too good to be true. Who's funding this project?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Hi, I made sr.ht. The users are funding it! There's some information about
this here:

[https://man.sr.ht/billing-faq.md](https://man.sr.ht/billing-faq.md)

~~~
settler4
Thanks, I also found this information in the site:
[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
discuss/%3C2018071822544...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
discuss/%3C20180718225440.GA4503%40homura.localdomain%3E)

It seems a fresh revenue model after so much the-user-is-the-product models.
Here's is to your success!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thank you!

------
AngeloAnolin
This is impressive. The level of thinking that you’ve put into this project is
totally amazing. Kudos.

------
buoyantair
This is amazing! Just what I was looking for! I love this project, thanks a
lot for this!!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I'm glad that you like it! Please don't hesitate to send me feedback.

~~~
Y_Y
I like look of it too, but I'm not sure how to pronounce the name. "Shirt"?
"Shart"?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
As mentioned in the article, I pronounce it "sir hat", but you can pronounce
it any way you like.

------
OkGoDoIt
Browsing from mobile so not easily able to poke around, hence pardon my
ignorance, but what is meant by “software forge”? Is this common terminology?
I haven’t heard it before. Initially I assumed this was some sort of web-based
IDE, but I guess it’s more of a source control, continuous integration,
devops, and deployment system? Is it like Github meets Jenkins meets Jira? It
might be valuable to have a more clear overview message on the site.

Edit: The actual project homepage has a much better overview of what this is,
sorry for my initial cluelessness. The more I look into it, the more
impressive it looks, thanks for the great open source contribution!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's a catch-all term for projects which fill the same niche as SourceForge,
including GitHub, BitBucket, Gitlab, gogs & gitea, and so on.

>The more I look into it, the more impressive it looks, thanks for the great
open source contribution!

I'm glad you like it :)

------
Jenz
Im intrigued by the choice to enforce all lowercase usernames, why is it like
this?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Usernames must be valid Unix usernames. This is a forward-looking design
decision for some interesting features down the road...

~~~
Jenz
:o

Thanks for sr.ht!

------
sxldier
Wow. I've only glimpsed at some parts, but I'm really liking what I'm seeing!
I also love the look and feel.

I look forward to doing deep dive the next few days and looking to contribute
anyway I can.

------
sodaplayer
Hey, this is pretty neat!

One quick bit of feedback: In the audit log, I noticed oauth tokens being
issued even though I didn't recall granting any. I had a moment of pause
worrying I was breached until I realized it was the various sr.ht services
requesting the tokens. It would be cool if there was something to map the
client ids to the names of the different services in the audit log.

Anyway, thanks for building this service. Like other's have already said, it's
cool to see a useful dev-focused tool from within the community.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks! I should hide internal oauth tokens from the audit log. I'm glad you
like sr.ht!

------
johnmaguire2013
This is a very cool project, and I'm interested in using it for some of my
private repos.

Some thoughts:

* Thanks for adding support for 2FA via OTPs, this is a requirement for me

* Access control is a little weird. I start without any users having access, but I can push to the repository. I can then add myself as "ro", and still push. I know this is an edge case but wanted to raise it

* I keep getting logged out while navigating through pages, though I'm guessing this is related to the 502's I'm getting occasionally (HN Effect)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
>I can then add myself as "ro", and still push. I know this is an edge case
but wanted to raise it

Thanks:
[https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/128](https://todo.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/128)

>I keep getting logged out while navigating through pages, though I'm guessing
this is related to the 502's I'm getting occasionally (HN Effect)

The 502's are a bug, rather than a scaling issue. git.sr.ht seems to have a
memory leak, which I'm investigating. Are you logged out as you browse between
different subdomains? There's a ticket for logging you into everything at
once, but for now you have to click "login" on every sub-site.

~~~
johnmaguire2013
> Are you logged out as you browse between different subdomains?

This is probably it. Clicking "login" logs me right back in. The move between
the subdomains is very smooth, so I did not even notice. Thanks!

------
jtl999
I still prefer the GitLab UI for viewing project files, cgit style seems a bit
"old-fashioned" to me.

Other then that I'm quite interested how this is going to look long term.

------
carapace
> average page weighing less than 10 KiB, with no tracking and no JavaScript.

Good Lord, I had a _visceral_ reaction to that. (It was like the opposite of
the urge to throw up.)

------
simlevesque
This is great ! I just subscribed for a year. Just what I needed to keep track
of my current project.

All I wish for is a budget software built in :)

It reminds me of NearlyFreeSpeech.net in a good way !

------
multani
It looks great and the minimalistic UI is a welcome breath :)

Could you share any details on how you implemented the build system? Are you
running of different public cloud providers or are you using something
different? Your announcement speaks about KVM so it looks like you implemented
something yourself but I guess the cost and performance could easily become
difficult to manage, so I'm curious how do you back this system :)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I built it all from scratch, and I host it on dedicated machines colocated in
Philadelphia, with backup facilities in SF. It's pricy for the current scale,
but as it scales will become very price effective.

------
adem
As someone who fell in love with Sway a month ago, this is the best
opportunity for me to support the work you've been doing. Thanks Drew!

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for your kind words :) I'm glad you're enjoying sway!

------
charlesdaniels
This looks fantastic! One feature I would like to see in a service like this
would be support for custom domains. Personally, I would be willing to pay
extra for such a feature. It’s nice to have control of the domain for personal
work, but self hosting for a handful of personal projects is a big ask - I
would rather pay for someone to do it the right way.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for your feedback! This is definitely something I'm interested in
adding in the future. I don't think I can prioritize it right now, because I
have limited time to spend on sr.ht (I still have a day job), but I want to
tackle it post-alpha.

~~~
charlesdaniels
Thanks for the response! I would definitely imagine a feature like this coming
later on. Just signed up at $20/yr, and I hope everyone reading this does
too... sr.ht is something that desperately needs to exist!

Drew, please keep doing phenomenal work.

Other stuff I'd love to see once sr.ht is more mature would be nice, clean,
UNIX-ey alternatives to GitHub Pages and github.io. I'll be looking forward to
OpenBSD support, especially for running CI jobs on as well.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Great, thanks for your support! I definitely intend to implement something
similar to GitHub pages, but even more powerful - how about using any static
site generator you want? OpenBSD support is also coming soon!

~~~
charlesdaniels
> how about using any static site generator you want?

That would be excellent. I have my own solution[1]... being able to have
everything built with a CI job on one platform would be great!

1 - [http://cdaniels.net//2017-11-22_make-static-
site.html](http://cdaniels.net//2017-11-22_make-static-site.html)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Awesome! Check out how I currently deploy my blog:

[https://builds.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com](https://builds.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com)

[https://builds.sr.ht/api/jobs/10416/manifest](https://builds.sr.ht/api/jobs/10416/manifest)

If you already have a server to host the static content on, you can use this
today.

------
noahdesu
This is the type of project announcement that gets me excited to work on my
own open-source efforts. Congrats Drew, this is great.

------
westmeal
Having an OAuth error. I'll check back later because maybe you're messing
around with it at the moment. Cool project.

~~~
stevenhuang
I was about to say the same. I'm able to login at meta but not the others.
Admittedly I haven't paid yet so I thought that might have been the culprit.

------
palerdot
This service looks promising, but it is unfortunate that we have to go as
barebones as 'no javscript' to convince people that they are not doing any
malicious tracking. Javascript is becoming inevitable and some service/company
that helps us trust a site's javascript will be most welcome in the future.

------
Ivoah
Is the old file hosting service that was once on sr.ht still accessible to
people that had an account?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yes, but it will eventually only be accessible via the old API.

------
johnchristopher
Sweet, I was complaining about how I'd like to have a bundle like that some
days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18423984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18423984)

------
0xcoffee
My feedback:

Don't change the order of the header for each page

    
    
        dispatch
        lists
        git
        builds
        todo
        man
        meta
    
    

Currently the active page is moved to the left. Just make it bold and retain
its position.

------
edwinyzh
Trying to register, and got a 403: Forbidden You don't have the permission to
access the requested resource. It is either read-protected or not readable by
the server.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Can you try again now?

~~~
PuercoPop
Ftw I got the same error if I tried to log from the signup page. But when I
tried to sign up from the form in the sidebar it worked

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Ah, thanks, that explains it! The fix is being deployed now.

------
umurgdk
I've always wished this to be open sourced. Oh man I'm glad there is no
javascript nonsense, overall design is great. Thank you so much for opening
this beauty :)

------
buoyantair
Will we be able to selfhost it on our own infra?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yep.

[https://man.sr.ht/installation.md](https://man.sr.ht/installation.md)

~~~
stock_toaster
I didn't happen to see install instructions for dispatch on that page. Is that
an oversight or is dispatch a component of builds.sr.ht?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
dispatch is the newest sr.ht service and docs are scant. They'll come
eventually... but it's pretty similar to the rest of sr.ht, you could probably
figure it out if you gave it a shot.

~~~
stock_toaster
Very cool. Thanks!

------
tekknolagi
Hi Drew -- awesome job! I want to migrate my projects there. Do you plan on
supporting static sites a la GitHub pages?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yep! This is planned and partially working through builds.sr.ht. I deploy my
blog, drewdevault.com, through builds.sr.ht:
[https://builds.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com](https://builds.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/drewdevault.com)
This is built with Jekyll and used to be on GitHub pages. The plan is to have
a place where you can dump static content, then you can use any site generator
you want with builds.sr.ht.

~~~
tekknolagi
Wow. Excellent. What serves drewdevault.com -- sr.ht itself?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's just running on my personal infrastructure. In the future there will be a
place to host it on sr.ht.

------
celestialcheese
Man I love this idea - signed up. But I've been getting 502s consistently, HN
"Hug of Death"?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
It's a memory leak in git.sr.ht, rather than an issue of scale, thankfully.
I'm working on it. After a few refreshes you should get through, and the
problem is isolated to git.sr.ht in particular.

------
foobarbecue
Got a 502 just now on my first attempt to log in to git.sr.ht after signup.
Second attempt was fine.

------
mackross
It would be nice if you could tap the red header text and move to a different
module.

------
Majora320
Does the mailing-list PR model show you at a glance which PRs have been
merged?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
No, but eventually it will.

------
loa-in-backup
That's something I'll bookmark. Do you plan on including 2FA?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
TOTP is supported.

------
Communitivity
Looks great, nice work! Registered my account, bill_barnhill.

------
pabs3
Feature request for the lists: cross-list Message-ID search.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Definitely going to add this.

------
jaycolson
for self hosting, does it support LDAP/AD/etc?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Not presently, no, but I'm not opposed to adding it.

------
deevus
This looks fantastic. Well done!

How well does it work with teams?

------
kkarakk
no github like social features=how is this a hacker's tool?

hackers always collab frequently with anons

------
swinghu
great work,thanks for you to open source

------
aaaaaaaaaab
>On top of that, sr.ht is one of the most lightweight websites on the
internet, with the average page weighing less than 10 KiB, with no tracking
and no JavaScript.

You have my attention!

~~~
devwastaken
Server side html rendering will always be less efficient, but I can see the
application of using curl to request and parse pages.

~~~
calcifer
You mean _more_ efficient, right? Because the single page "applications" that
download UI and data with javascript take a three-digit number of requests and
multiple seconds to render everything and be "done".

~~~
devwastaken
No, because once you download the js you don't redownload it on every page
request. When you want to update contents you get the new data to be
displayed. This is how any other gui application does server communication.

The traditional page based responses re-send all the html content over again.
If the client can cache it then it doesn't have to be, but caching something
like a git frontend does not work with page based responses due to the amount
of new data.

Just because Facebook and Google abuse js to the nth degree does not mean it's
automatically bad. It's how you use it, and you can infact do things without
react and Vue.

~~~
kungtotte
When most of the web looks like this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17655316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17655316)

I'm happy about Drew's decision to not include JS.

~~~
devwastaken
As I just stated, you don't need to have 1MB of JS to do things, it's that
software companies typically do it because they're about actually providing a
service and solving problems than worrying about non-issues such as 1 second
more of initial download time.

This is 2018. You don't have a 56K modem, I don't have one. Those that do will
benefit from smaller data requests after the initial download. Holding back
the real issues the web can solve over an arbitrary problem like that is
damaging to what can be achieved.

The web is a software platform, and unless you want to equally complain about
applications in C that go over 1MB, you're making mountains out of mole hills.

------
glibgil
The word “distributed” does not appear in the announcement telling me
everything I need to know about not using it

