commit 1436af443e50eabaac95b1bf2b2c417b7ab3d1d3
parent 6dc56d3afa536e3ccce4eb3ae768d49db43a6725
Author: Eamon Caddigan <eamon.caddigan@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2024 21:13:41 -0800
Post about distributed Git
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 48 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/posts/git-distributed/index.md b/content/posts/git-distributed/index.md
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+---
+title: "Git is a distributed version control system"
+date: 2024-01-14T21:12:10-08:00
+draft: false
+categories:
+- Programming
+tags:
+- Git
+---
+
+[SourceHut](https://sourcehut.org/), a hacker[^hacker]-oriented code
+[forge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)), recently suffered a
+couple days' downtime due to a [sustained DDoS
+attack](https://outage.sr.ht/), and parts of it are still coming online.
+
+I'm impressed by the way Drew and SourceHut are handling the situation, but
+it's a good reminder that "Git is a _distributed_ version control system".
+Code forges are useful tools---and I'm really grateful for [alternatives to
+GitHub]({{< ref "giving-up-github" >}})---but programmers who use Git should
+keep themselves familiar with the tooling built right into it for completely
+distributed workflows, such as
+[git-send-email](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email)[^email] and
+[git-request-pull](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull). Even if only
+to stay well-prepared for situations like this one.
+
+But we can be more proactive by mirroring other people's code; after all,
+the writings that survive from the classical world are only around today
+because people kept making copies of them. It's naive to think that _any_
+website will last forever, so those of us with our own self-hosted
+repositories[^repos] can make our communities more resilient by hosting
+clones of software projects that we find useful or culturally important. I
+posted [a copy of the core Uxn
+distribution](https://git.eamoncaddigan.net/uxn/)[^uxn], not because I think
+my little website will necessarily be around longer than SourceHut or
+Hundred Rabbits', but because the likelihood of all three becoming
+unavailable is slightly smaller than that for just the latter two.
+
+[^hacker]: In the sense used by, e.g., Levy (1984).
+
+[^email]: <https://git-send-email.io/> is a great resource, but in an ironic
+ twist (in the Morissettian sense), the site is currently unreachable as
+ SourceHut recovers from the DDoS.
+
+[^repos]: Even if they're simple static sites serving over [the "dumb"
+ protocol](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Transfer-Protocols).
+
+[^uxn]: Which nudged me to return to my [December Adventure]({{< ref
+ "december-adventure" >}}) project, after taking a couple weeks off.
