Re: Mirrors and code hosting

[Oliver Kiddle <opk@xxxxxxx>]

Clinton Bunch wrote:
> I know I'm not a major contributor but in working on updating our website, I've
> had some thoughts that I want to bring up for discussion, apparently again.
> Distribution: We have 3 mirrors plus the main site. They are all located in
> Europe failing one of the main reasons for having mirrors, avoiding
> intercontinental lag. SourceForge has a global network of mirrors using a
> "broker" to choose the nearest on a single URL. But SourceForge is not command

For the website, I would suggest that you plan on merging the content
from zsh.sourceforge.net with that at www.zsh.org and hosting the end
result on zsh.org. We can leave old documentation on sourceforge so that
we don't break old links. zsh.org is curl/wget friendly. Avoid any
change that would break old URLs for the list archives.

Being in the EU and mostly only using git anyway, I don't get to
experience slow zsh downloads. A zsh tarball is not really so large as
to be a concern these days. I think there's value in keeping a few
mirrors in existence along with a list but the mirror list currently
gets too much prominence. Another approach would be to use something
like Mirrorbits - https://github.com/etix/mirrorbits
For that to be useful, we'd need to ensure there are a few mirrors and
monitor them. Is zsh.org slow from elsewhere?

> The first alternative that probably comes to most of our minds is GitHub.
> Lately they have begun forcing AI on their users without opt-out capability.

Other than the outward impression it gives there's not much broken with
sourceforge for git hosting.

My main reason for avoiding Github for an established project like zsh
would be to avoid encouraging the mono-culture.

> Other alternatives are GitLab or Codeberg. GitLab is commercial but has a
> generous free-tier for FOSS projects. Codeberg is a co-op type of hosting
> service for FOSS projects.  Both have world-wide mirror networks, taking
> managing that off our hands.

We used to have a mirror in Gitlab and then they moved that feature out
of their free offering. I looked at the form they wanted filled in to
validate us as a FOSS project. It was essentially impossible to fill in
without lying. You need to either be a purely single-person project or
have an organisation or foundation. So we don't have a Gitlab mirror
anymore and I tend to avoid them. 

Codeberg seems to be a good and popular choice these days. Someone
registered "zsh" on it not long ago. Would be good to know if that was
someone here or if we've lost the chance to use that.

In terms of hosting, the biggest concern is the mailing lists: the
current arrangement continues to work but is not a long-term solution.
Sourcehut could be an interesting choice because they provide lists and
use them rather than a pull request style development model.

Finally, we could self-host a basic git server (or perhaps
gitea/forgejo).

Oliver