the writing was on the wall years ago actually, but also: there aren't any really good ways to backup a github repo with complete metadata anyways. there's an unmaintained python script that collects JSON API responses into a bunch of files, which works correctly and can probably run in cron too (making it "above average") but viewing the results? you're fucked if you want that
something that i'm concerned about and which may prove itself to be true is that it's economically impossible to run a git forge offering free CI runners. it's obvious that github's are subsidized in much the same way early uber subsidized rider costs, which is concerning because they'll crank down restirctions, yes, but also because it might just not be a ... serviceable offer
@whitequark@mastodon.social if they're offering us more than a nominal amount of free servers it has to either be unsustainably subsidized or a shady "you're the product" type thing (and I'm not trying to say this as a "you should've known" gotcha, I'm just reasoning myself through it)
There's also the fact that it gets abused for crypto mining etc, and a big org will have more resources to police for that
I think the only viable model is where you pay for it, which sucks in a lot of ways too
was i aware that i'm relying on subsidized and potentially unsustainable CI infrastructure while investing a lot of effort into that infrastructure? yes, fully, for a good number of years
i just think that testing your software today and tomorrow is important even if five years from now you'll stop being able to test it entirely
i expect it'll be snowing in hell long before any OSS-focused forge will offer windows and macos runners, for example
@whitequark@mastodon.social I think it is completely reasonable to make Windows and macOS support a proprietary feature and charge for it.
@whitequark@mastodon.social
It's even more annoying. We're using Cirrus CI for a bunch of things, because they're more flexible than GitHub Actions: longer timeouts, bigger disks, and support for FreeBSD. Oh, and AArc64, so we can build dev containers for Arm and x86 systems. But they provide only GitHub integration.
I'm also concerned about their sustainability. They can manage compute for you if you buy compute credits from them, but they also let you use a cloud account that they will deploy things on directly. We're doing the latter because it's around 10% of the cost of giving them money. If it were 50% the cost, I'd just throw money at them.
✧✦Catherine✦✧
