129 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
129 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "So I've self-hosted my code using Forgejo"
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date = 2024-12-21T12:00:00+01:00
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+++
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The open source philosophy is often reduced to the the source code of a
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software that is available somewhere published under a permissive license. That
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somewhere is mostly [GitHub](https://github.com/), using
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[Git](https://git-scm.com/) as a source code management tool. GitHub provides a
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centralized place for everyone to contribute to open source projects. While
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this is a good boost for them, having this giant place using your code to train
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AI models or even providing [AI product that we don't need for free if you are
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an open source
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maintainer](https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/tech-companies/github-is-making-its-ai-programming-copilot-free-for-vs-code-developers/ar-AA1w9UrA),
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is not aligned with my values.
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The second problem I have with GitHub is that when I was a student at the
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university, I created an [account](https://github.com/riouj) using my former
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handle (riouj), my student e-mail and my french phone number. Years later, I
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tried to recover this account but having lost access to both recovery methods,
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GitHub support said "Nope", even if I can prove my identity and provide my
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diploma. My professional handle (jriou) is used by [someone
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else](https://github.com/jriou). So I've created an
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[account](https://github.com/jouir) using a handle that I used on some forums
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(jouir) which is not very professional if you speak french. Moving somewhere
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else will allow me to use my regular nickname, finally!
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Alright, now where should I move my code?
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There are multiple services online to store your code like
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[bitbucket.org](https://bitbucket.org/). We use Atlassian products at work so
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why not giving their online service a try on their free tier? There's also
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[gitlab.com](https://about.gitlab.com/) which is famous to be one of the
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biggest alternative to GitHub. That would also mean my code will be hosted by
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another US corporation. Then I heard about [Gitea](https://about.gitea.com/)
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that was taken over by a for-profit company and the
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[Forgejo](https://forgejo.org/) fork backed by
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[Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/), a non-profit organization based in Germany,
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in the EU. I could push my code to a service managed by an association sharing
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my values...
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Or, I could deploy the free and open source software (FOSS) directly on one of
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my homelab servers! Exposing the source code of my personal projects should not
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use that much of resources, especially bandwidth, and should not be sensitive
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to latency, right? Let's find out.
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# The setup
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My hosts rely on a home-made backup solution based on ZFS replicated to three
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locations. Everything is explained in my [Journey of a Home-based Personal
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Cloud Storage Project](https://julien.riou.xyz/socallinuxexpo2024.handout.html)
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talk and [self-hosting](https://self-hosting.riou.xyz/) blog. I've taken the
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server with the most bandwidth to host the Forgejo instance. As I use Ansible
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to manage my personal infrastructure, I've created an [Ansible
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role](https://git.riou.xyz/jriou/ansible-role-forgejo) to manage Forgejo using
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docker compose. The [official
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documentation](https://forgejo.org/docs/next/admin/installation-docker/) is
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simple and easy. In a matter of minutes, my instance was up and running!
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In order to expose the instance to the public and share my software
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contributions to the world, I have some components that are not self-hosted: a
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domain name and a virtual private server (VPS) to route the traffic to my home
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network hosting OpenVPN and Nginx. I should try
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[tailscale](https://tailscale.com/) one day but that's another topic.
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The HTTPS exposition is pretty easy with Nginx. There are plenty of
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documentations everywhere for that purpose. For SSH, which is TCP, I've used
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nginx streams:
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```
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load_module /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_stream_module.so;
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stream {
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server {
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listen 222;
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proxy_pass IP.OF.VPN.INSTANCE:222;
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}
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}
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```
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I tried to use iptables for forwarding the SSH port to the private instance but
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failed miserably. The Nginx stream solution is much easier! Don't forget to
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allow the incoming port on the VPS. After years of experience, I fell into this
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trap and spent at least one hour debugging why this damn Nginx stream
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configuration was not working.
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And the website is live, ready to receive my code!
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# Code migration
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My code is not very popular. I mostly have archived repositories. My maintained
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repositories have little to no issues. I don't use GitHub actions (yet). And I
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have less than 20 repositories. So the migration was pretty simple:
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1. Create repository on Forgejo including the description
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1. Disable what I don't use (wiki, releases, projects, actions, etc)
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1. Add "forgejo" remote on git
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1. Push everything including tags to the "forgejo" remote
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1. Rename "forgejo" git remote by origin
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1. Delete repository from GitHub
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As far as I know, there's no way to force ordering of your repositories on
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Forgejo like you could have on GitHub with pinned repositories. So if you would
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like to order your repositories when your visitors will land onto your profile
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page, you should create them from the oldest to the newest which is the default
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ordering on Forgejo. I don't care about the order personally so I took them in
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a "first seen, first migrated" fashion. The git history is respected though.
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# What's next
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The basic setup is done but there's still work to do like setting up local
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actions to ensure code quality.
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# Conclusion
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Now I have all my repositories, on my own infrastructure, [publicly
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available](https://git.riou.xyz/jriou), running entirely on FOSS, and this is
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beautiful.
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I would like to thank the Forgejo contributors and the Codeberg organization
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for their amazing work to provide an open source self-hosted alternative to
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GitHub. The best way to really thank them is to [donate
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regularly](https://donate.codeberg.org/) (which I'm proud to do).
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