Forgejo: A self-hosted lightweight software forge
47 comments
·January 19, 2025nikodunk
The Fedora Project (Linux) is switching to this, FWIW https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-moves-towards-forgejo-a-un...
jmpavlec
The tag line isn't the most informative. It took me a scroll or two on the main page to figure out its purpose. (Self hosted GitHub alternative). I'd suggest making that clearer earlier as the word "forge" in terms of software could have a variety of interpretations.
stevekemp
"forge" has been used since "sourceforge" if not longer to describe these kind of hosting-packages.
I guess technically you could have called Redmine, and other systems at the time, forges I think the term took off after that.
baobun
Disagree. Refering to GitHub as category-defining would be antithetical to the Forgejo spirit. Forgejo stands on its own.
phantomathkg
Disagree. Unfortunately Forge is not a well known category defining term. Using it as a tagline defying the purposes to popularize Forgego.
szszrk
Yet when posts online described it as an alternative/clone of GitHub/gitlab/gitea it was alsa received with criticism and complains that "what if I don't know what gitea is".
Naming and creating descriptions is not trivial, I wish more complaints would also simply come with proposals of better taglines, so we can bash those ideas quickly in comments and cut that long feedback loop.
WhyNotHugo
Defining itself as simply an alternative to the mainstream is a not a great way to makes its own identity.
Imagine if Fedora presented itself as simply “an open source alternative to windows”.
Sure, that might be easier to understand for those less in the field, but really doesn’t help it’s own identity.
arp242
Forgejo is a GitHub clone. No one can claim with a straight face that it's somehow completely unrelated.
rapnie
And then all software revision control systems / forges have more or less the same conceptual model for their platform, and just adding their specific sauce and some tailoring to specific needs. Some more innovative and deviating platforms from this more-of-the-same approach are Sourcehut (brutal minimalism) and Gitlab (enterprise dev lifecycle, process support). And then there's the general trend for these platforms to become one-stop-shop maximized lock-in walled gardens, aiming to support the entirety of software development practices (while they seem open and gratis).
tmountain
Looks interesting but I’m not quite sure exactly what it is based on what I am seeing on the front page.
andsoitis
Q: “What is Forgego?”
A: “Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge. Easy to install and low maintenance, it just does the job.”
?
yawaramin
Without mentioning GitHub/BitBucket/GitLab/etc., how would you describe what they are?
IshKebab
I don't see why it's so critical to not mention Github. That would instantly convey what it is to basically everyone, and it doesn't mean it doesn't have its own identity or anything.
pookeh
Collaborative development platform with Git repository hosting, CI/CD, and project management features.
thayne
I.e. a software forge.
I do think it would be good to have a link or something to explain what a software forge is to people who don't know.
ang_cire
Source code hosting and version control platform?
null
eviks
By describing what they do (also, there is no rule you can't mention github)
fishgoesblub
"A platform to host your git repositories including collaboration features like issues, discussions, and a projects page to track important parts of your code base. All able to run on your server local and private."
Borealid
"Forgejo hosts source code repositories, lets you track and manage issues (and review code changes), and provides all the integrations you'd expect with CI/CD and similar tooling."
ycombinatrix
Git hosts with proprietary features
TNorthover
Their communication really is all over the place. Even the name is really awkward in English.
(And yes, not everything should be forced to be English and it's apparently supposed to be Esperanto; but nothing else on the site is so that's not how most people will parse it).
davidkellis
It sounds like this is trying to coin a new term. I hadn't heard the word forge used to mean an all-in-one git+issue tracker+project mgmt+etc. suite before.
prmoustache
It is not new. I have heard that word for more than a decade already.
I guess you need to know about the foss ecosystem to know it.
IshKebab
I also knew it but look at the number of comments saying "what is a forge?" here - it's clearly not a good description.
kookamamie
It is not new, but also not ubiquous enough to express something everyone understands.
Trying to get "forge" across as some kind of defacto term just adds noise to the product description, I think.
tarxvf
The term is decades old at this point. It doesn't seem to play well outside of the older open source communities, now that github has xeroxed.
thunderbong
The first time I heard that word was in Sourceforge, decades ago.
lfam
Ever heard of Sourceforge?
photonthug
This is a bad association even for people that recognize it. Presumably there were good years but most will probably remember the ugly endgame with awkward UX and weird ads masquerading as fake download links.
astrange
I don't remember any era of sourceforge where it had good UI.
I also don't remember anyone ever calling it a "software forge".
coolgoose
This is such an interesting thing of generational difference, since I remember sourceforge fondly before the crazy era of so many ads.
rdtsc
> Ever heard of Sourceforge?
Yup! That clears it up. It’s the site that serves lots of ads and binary packages of some old software. At least as of the last time I looked some years ago.
Ok then, not sure I would want more things like that today to self host, but to each their own.
DrawTR
can anyone share what the benefit is over using a self hosted repository host over a service like github/gitlab? obviously you get more power over the interface & such but are there truly any gains over using the larger platforms?
IshKebab
It's very useful for companies - more control, don't have to host your code externally, and you don't have to pay (well, ish; we ended up paying for Gitlab Premium, but that doesn't exist for Forgejo).
bastardoperator
Maybe privacy, outside of that, same client, so not much.
Ringz
A self hosted repository host gives you the ability to develop software projects without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
PhilipRoman
Aside from the whole self hosting ethos, if you are hosting it from a home server and you are the primary user, you will get a nice performance boost. Downloading binaries, cloning repositories will be instant. If you use CI, it will be running on an actual machine rather than 10% of some 2GHz cloud CPU.
I regularly have to upload multi GB images to a VPS and it's very annoying when it takes like 10 minutes.
seymon
Is fogejo the platform that codeberg uses?
stop50
And vice versa. Codeberg is the official host of the sourcecode
openplatypus
Yes
Kwpolska
[dead]
I’ve migrated over the years from Gogs to Gitea to Forgejo. It’s such an excellent piece of software.
90% of the time, I can get by with hosting my personal git repos on an SSH server I have. When all I’m trying to do is put my Chezmoi repo somewhere that all my computers can access it, Forgejo and friends don’t add much to it. For the 10% of the time when I want to share my code privately with some friends it’s brilliant (and free beats a GitHub paid plan). And if I’m going to have it running anyway for those 10% projects, might as well use it as my personal git repo of record for everything else, too.