People have apparently started believing that in order to use git, you'd have to also have to host the project on Github or Gitlab: * A few weeks ago, a friend told me that he keeps [his `pass` password repository](https://www.passwordstore.org/) on Github. * [Beej wrote a guide on git](https://beej.us/guide/bggit/) and the Github workflow is very prominent in it * I came home from FOSDEM with a Github and a Gitlab sticker, but not with one for `git send-email` or cgit. I feel that is is underreported that **you can easily host Git repos on a normal Unix account**. I use this all the time myself for my personal projects -- I maintain far more repositories locally over SSH than I expose on hosted platforms. This is not visible on the public internet, but maybe that makes it especially mention-worthy. ## How it's done All you need is an account on a Unix/Linux machine, which you can reach over SSH. 1. On the remote side, set up the repo: ``` mkdir -p ~/repos/foobar.git cd ~/repos/foobar.git git init --bare ``` 2. On the local side, set up the remote: ``` git remote add foobar user@hostname:repos/foobar.git git push --set-upstream foobar main ``` There is not much more to it. Now you can push and pull. A more detailed description that also covers SSH keys can be found in the [Git Book](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Setting-Up-the-Server). ## What if I need more? The approach scales and extends to bigger endeavors as well. * **Web UI:** You can set up [cgit](https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/about/) on a web server to render your repositories. * **Code review:** Some projects do code reviews over [`git send-email`](https://git-send-email.io/). The Linux kernel is known for this and scales up to thousands of developers. If a project grows and you want to work with people who can't wrap their heads around this, you can still fall back to a hosted platform after the fact and push your repository there later.