I’ve started building a small decentralized, non commercial app with a Rust backend + Node.js frontend running on k8s. I would have my own dedicated server for this. Just mentioning the setup because it might grow and for git there seem to be only GitHub and GitLab around and I prefer GitLab.
I care a lot about security and was wondering if it makes sense to self-host GitLab. I‘m not afraid of doing it, but after setup it shouldn’t take more than 1-2 hours per week for me to maintain it in the long run and I’m wondering if that’s realistic.
Would love to hear about the experience of people who did what I’m planning to do.
Gitlab uses a ton of resources and is a pain to setup. Once you get it going, it’s fine.
Going to echo what others have said: Use Gitea or Forgejo instead if you can. Both have runners you can setup like gitlab, but they instead mimic github actions instead of gitlab ci/cd.
I run a semi-private gitea instance, and have not had any problems past the initial setup in 2+ years.
I have been maintaining several self-hosted GitLab instances over the past 5 years, and it rarely takes me longer than 20minutes per update.
Their upgrade paths are clearly marked and well thought out. Their packaging methods are of great quality.
You will not regret going with GitLab.
For self hosting there is also https://forgejo.org/ which is a fork of https://about.gitea.com/ , the latter of which started to shift to a corporate model.
I’d also like to add that Forgejo is working on federation along with GitLab. I think Forgejo will do it first though.
Another upvote for forgeo. So easy to get set up and running. Can run it in docker itself. I tried to host gitlab and got so frustrated with the pages and pages of ruby configs. Forgejo is so much cleaner.
Previous Gitea user and now Forgejo, and yeah it’s a great git server. Simple, lightweight but still very capable.
I did an inplace upgrade of gitea to forgejo. No issues.
I’ve been self hosting this for 2 or 3 years now.
There has been zero maintenance other than the occasional update button
I use it for my docker compose files that portainer pulls from with the click of the button to update my containers when needed.
I edit the files in VS code with the git plugin and it works without issue
The is also Codeberg
technically the same as forgejo, codeberg is the main forgejo contributor/the org owning it
Oh! Is it?
Well, living and learning haha
Quick question: forgejo is the git program that you can install self host a git server, while codeberg is probably the biggest forgejo-kind git server that is open to the public, right?
I dont have a home server to host forgejo (yet?), so I’m thinking of making an account on codeberg, is that correct reasoning?
If you own a domain, hosting Forgejo on a $5 Debian cloud server works perfectly for your personal use case. My site admin panel shows it’s using 75MB of actual RAM (not allocated/virtual), it’s truly very lightweight. Disk use is very low, just however big your git repos actually are is the key.
The internal SQlite database option is just fine, don’t need to bother with PostgreSQL if you’re only doing it for yourself (the DB only holds referential info, the actual git data is stored on disk in normal git directories). There’s a built in backup command so you can build a simple shell script to run the dump command periodically and back up the entire thing to a tarball.
re: Codeberg, the only “downside” (not really) is they are for FOSS licensed projects only and frown upon using their service for your personal private non FOSS needs (they’re not draconian about it, but it’s part of the ethos the service is for FOSS licensed projects to use).
Oh thank you for the detailed answer😄
I think codeberg is for me in my case. (Btw, I barely know git, I’m gonna read a guide today.) I really like foss, so I will probably create foss stuff.
I really want to make a nas in the future, so I might host my own forgejo instance locally and possibly keep a backup on a cloud storage provider (bought 2tb lifetime on filen). I have somewhat big plans for my nas, but I don’t know what I’ll eventually do😆
So far I barely use git, so I probably dont need to rent a cloud server. Thanks again though:)
Suggestion: start learning git by using your
$HOMEconfig files as the first thing you learn how to manage; mentally easy to understand, low friction and just basic git commands needed. One of the most popular repo names we all use isdotfilesso you have plenty of examples to learn from: https://codeberg.org/explore/repos?q=dotfilesYeah, (among others) I really want to learn git to sync dotfiles and the nixos configs
(Hopefully I’ll probably have tranitioned to nixos in a few months. If I get good enough and somehow build a nas, I might use nixos instead of debian in the server too.)
Pretty much yes, codeberg integrates some additional services and branding on top (such as codeberg-pages for static page hosting or forgejo-runners for CI) but you can integrate those yourself as well, it’s just extra work.
If you’re looking for an open alternative to github/gitlab codeberg is imo definitely the way to go
Yo thank youu:)
I tried hosting Gitlab for a while, but configuration and upgrades were difficult, and your really have to stay on top of updates due to vulnerabilities. It also used a lot of resources and wasn’t super responsive.
I moved to Forgejo (a hard fork of Gitea), and haven’t looked back; I cant recommend it enough. It’s fast, doesn’t take a lot of resources, actively developed, and has all the features I need.
Codeberg is a public instance of Forgejo if you want to try it out first.
It’s not fully selfhosted but I did setup my own runner that integrates with their site.
I remember Gitlab requiring quite a large amount of resources, so if you’re talking about a solo project, I’d skip it and go with something a lot leaner like Gitea, personally.
I’ve never had any security issues with GitHub in the past though, and extended features are free for open source projects, so it’s kind of hard to ignore.
What are the features you need from your host? If it’s just remote syncing, why not just make a small Debian system and install git on it? You can manage security on the box itself. Do you need the overhead of gitlab at all?
I say this because I did try out hosting my own GitLab, GitTea, Cogs, etc and I just found I never needed any of the features. The whole point was to have a single remote that can be backed up and redeployed easily in disaster situations but otherwise all my local work just needed simple tracking. I wrote a couple scripts so my local machine can create new repos remotely and I also setup ssh key on the remote machine.
I don’t have a complicated setup, maybe you do, not sure. But I didn’t need the integrated features and overhead for solo self hosting.
For example, one of my local machine scripts just executes a couple commands on the remote to create a new folder, cd into it, and then run
git init —barethen I can just clone the new project folder on the local machine and get started.I am selfhosting my Gitlab and it’s one of the less troubling services I run.
I followed their documentation for setup and update gitlab biyearly, as far as I remembered I never had to revert to a backup, even after I skipped updates for a little over a year.
I run GitLab with docker compose and watchtower, all the updates are automated and have never caused any issues for me.
That being said my setup uses about 7-8gb of ram.
First question is why do you want a forge ? Knowing the feature you need out of it is what should drive your decision.
Personally I would question the benefit of allocating ~5% of your work time to anything that isn’t core building your product but that’s up to you.
Yea a surprisingly small number of people don’t know a git remote can literally be any folder outside of your tree, over almost any kind of connection.
I thought about doing a forge but realized that if I was the only one working on this stuff then I could do the same thing by setting my remote to a folder on my NAS.
Yup, for a solo project that you don’t want to share I would even argue that a forge is close to pointless.
Any ssh remote will work as a backup, you can run the ci/cd task on your own computer just fine (very likely faster even), you obviously don’t need to send PR and request code review to yourself and if a TODO.md isn’t enough to keep track of tasks there’s a billions lightweight task/note tracker.
I use github because I’m a lazy and it works fine as a backup but I don’t need 99% of the features for my pet projects.
