GitHub: Difference between revisions

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GitHub is a specialized content hosting silo for code, issues, comments, and static content that has some aspects of a commons, and through free domain mapping, a content hosting service as well.

• See github-pages for how to setup a static Github pages site!

Features

• star a repo: serves as a personal bookmark and ranking the popularity of the repo
• watch a repo: receive notifications of updates to the repo
• issue posts
• . . .

POSSE to GitHub

For POSSEing source code to github, see git.

While git is inherently distributed, all the extra functionality (issues, pull requests, etc.) that GitHub adds on top is not. GitHub has a nice API for interacting with repositories, which makes it pretty easy to POSSE issues, comments on issues, stars, and maybe more.

POSSE note to GitHub

Plain text notes can be POSSEd to GitHub as a gist.

No known examples of anyone doing this yet.

Be the first and add your permalinks here!

POSSE an issue

An issue post that is in reply to a particular GitHub repo can (and should) be POSSEd to GitHub as a new issue on that GitHub repo.

See examples of POSSEing issues to GitHub:

• issue#IndieWeb_Examples

POSSE reply to repo

A reply to a GitHub repo path, may make sense to be POSSEd as a comment on that path, e.g. if it is a gist. If the reply is an issue, see above POSSE an issue.

POSSE reply to issue

A reply to a specific GitHub issue can (and should) be POSSEd as a new comment on that issue.

Backfeed from

If you POSSE to GitHub in any of the above ways, you should backfeed any replies on your post's GitHub POSSE copy back to your own post so that you can:

• keep a copy of people's comments on your post
• view follow-ups to your post on your post, instead of having to visit GitHub's site
• reply to follow-ups to your post, from your site, instead of using GitHub's UI

IndieWeb Examples

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki is manually POSSEing comments on GitHub issues from his own site to GitHub. E.g.:

• http://aaronparecki.com/replies/2013/08/14/6/mailpile (original)
  • https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/issues/48#issuecomment-22682787 (POSSE copy on GitHub)

Colin Tedford

Colin Tedford manually POSSEs Github issues, and manually POSSEs and backfeeds comments on GitHub issues (it's just occasional bug reports, so not as onerous as it might be if he were a developer).

• http://colintedford.com/2015/02/02.0338-easy-syntax-not-working/ (original, w/ comments)
  • https://github.com/glensc/dokuwiki-plugin-pageredirect/issues/18 (POSSE copy on Github)

Bridgy Publish

There is no current support in Bridgy Publish to POSSE to Github. Feature request:

• https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/333
  • for all variations of note->gist, reply -> repo | issue

Bridgy Backfeed

There is no current support in Bridgy to backfeed responses to your GitHub POSSE copies back to your original posts. Feature request:

• https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy/issues/333 (part of, likely to be split into a separate issue).

Silopub

• silo.pub supports creating issues, commenting on issues and pull requests, and starring repositories since 2016-04-22

Porting to the IndieWeb

Example github activity Atom feed whereby you can export or PESOS your activities from:

• https://github.com/tantek.atom (for account name "tantek")

If you want a feed of activity by others on your repositories, it looks like you can get it through your "Personal News Feed". "Your personal News Feed shows activity—other than your own!—on repositories you watch. […] To subscribe to your personal News Feed in your favorite RSS reader, click Subscribe to News Feed under your list of repositories." https://help.github.com/articles/news-feed/

Self-hosted alternatives

There are some self-hosted alternatives to GitHub. Gitlab and Gogs support issue tracking and project management as well.

• GitLab: full-featured GitHub replacement
• Gogs: full-featured GitHub replacement
• Gitolite: web interface for managing repositories, with fine-grained access controls
• Gitweb: simple web interface for browsing git repositories
• Formerly Gitorious (acquired by GitLab in March 2015)
• Formerly Gitosis (deprecated long ago in favor of gitolite)

Criticism

DMCA harassment

You can lose your data due to unjustified DMCA takedowns:

• Takedown and Apology
• Github has since improved this process by defining how they are handled better, specifically allowing for the owner to make needed corrections or to move hosts. https://github.com/blog/1908-a-better-dmca-process

DDoS collateral damage

Github is sometimes the target of DDoS attacks, apparently targeted at specific projects. While GitHub seems to be handling the attacks in such a way as to keep access working, this is a vulnerability of any centralized service, that it attracts attacks unrelated to your use of it, that jeopardize your use of it (collateral damage). Most recent first

• 2016-10-21 DDos attack on DYN affects Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, GitHub, effectively taking them all offline.

• 2015-03-26 DDoS attack [1] via unsuspecting browsers executing scripts from (MitM) faked Baidu requests[2].

March 2017 Terms of Service Update

In March 2017, GitHub updated their terms of service. Several people are upset about the change, which may affect GPL and similarly licensed software.

• http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/removing_everything_from_github/
• https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10_e20170301-tg.htm#e20170301-tg_wlog-10
• Discussion thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13766933

Downtime

Occassionally GitHub fails to handle requests:

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See Also

• github-pages
• code
• issue tracker
• issue
• commons
• Getting Started
• silo