Heipei

Just as I wanted to start writing this article I noticed that github is no longer beta. So, you might as well just go there and try it for yourself.

Now, about github. github is a public git-hosting-site. Put short, it’s like repo.or.cz, just with a shiny interface and a few special features. To be honest, I am not the perfect candidate for a service like this, since I don’t have any public repositories, I don’t know any people I’d like to cooperate with and I have my own account on a server where I run my private git repos. Also I often react allergic when I see something that already looks like another one of those Web2.0-mint-colors-big-font websites that offer some kind of paid plans just so that you can have a textbox in your webbrowser which others can edit too…

Since I spent way too much time writing full text in my last article I’m just gonna do some lists now :P

The good

• It uses git and ssh. I know, i know. Let’s just say I’m happy that more and more people (like the Rails-crowd) are coming to their minds and use git.
• It has a free plan for public repositories which is 100mb (which is a lot for a bare git-repo).
• For beginners it’s probably a lot easier than repo.or.cz or setting up of an own server.
• It has private repositories, which repo.or.cz does not offer.
• It is built like a social network, which means it supports sending mails, pull-request and the like directly inline.

The bad

• Right now it’s pretty slow.
• It still feels like it’s missing some features (which I can’t really pin down since I haven’t used it extensively)
• When giving instructions to connect to their server they didn’t mention the fingerprint of their SSH-key anywhere.

The ugly

• The theme (which atm can’t be changed) sucks to high heavens. The important things (i.e. the list of files and the commit messages) are barely readable right now, and even less so under worse lighting conditions.
• It still need some options to view the history and search it with some live-search-box

To sum it up: It’s a step in the right direction. It enables people to have their git-repositories quite fast and without hassle. Maybe the web-ui features aren’t even that important since with git you always get the full repository and can perform all history-related queries (like diffing) on your own machine with the weapon of your choice anyway. I’m really interested in how many people take advantage of the paid plans and if there will be more sites switching to/support git hosting. Having said that, I don’t think I will use it very much for the reasons mentioned before. Unless I start some public project… ;)