index.md (2309B)
1 --- 2 title: "Git is a distributed version control system" 3 date: 2024-01-14T21:12:10-08:00 4 draft: false 5 categories: 6 - Programming 7 tags: 8 - Git 9 --- 10 11 [SourceHut](https://sourcehut.org/), a hacker[^hacker]-oriented code 12 [forge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)), recently suffered a 13 couple days' downtime due to a [sustained DDoS 14 attack](https://outage.sr.ht/), and parts of it are still coming online. 15 16 I'm impressed by the way Drew and SourceHut are handling the situation, but 17 it's a good reminder that "Git is a _distributed_ version control system". 18 Code forges are useful tools---and I'm really grateful for [alternatives to 19 GitHub]({{< ref "giving-up-github" >}})---but programmers who use Git should 20 keep themselves familiar with the tooling built right into it for completely 21 distributed workflows, such as 22 [git-send-email](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-send-email)[^email] and 23 [git-request-pull](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull). Even if only 24 to stay well-prepared for situations like this one. 25 26 But we can be more proactive by mirroring other people's code; after all, 27 the writings that survive from the classical world are only around today 28 because people kept making copies of them. It's naive to think that _any_ 29 website will last forever, so those of us with our own self-hosted 30 repositories[^repos] can make our communities more resilient by hosting 31 clones of software projects that we find useful or culturally important. I 32 posted [a copy of the core Uxn 33 distribution](https://git.eamoncaddigan.net/uxn/)[^uxn], not because I think 34 my little website will necessarily be around longer than SourceHut or 35 Hundred Rabbits', but because the likelihood of all three becoming 36 unavailable is slightly smaller than that for just the latter two. 37 38 [^hacker]: In the sense used by, e.g., Levy (1984). 39 40 [^email]: <https://git-send-email.io/> is a great resource, but in an ironic 41 twist (in the Morissettian sense), the site is currently unreachable as 42 SourceHut recovers from the DDoS. 43 44 [^repos]: Even if they're simple static sites serving over [the "dumb" 45 protocol](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Transfer-Protocols). 46 47 [^uxn]: Which nudged me to return to my [December Adventure]({{< ref 48 "december-adventure" >}}) project, after taking a couple weeks off.