>...
> Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2017 13:18:08 -0400
> From: Richard Hipp <d...@sqlite.org>
>...
> Subject: [fossil-users] GitLab v. Fossil. Was: Eric Raymond (a.k.a.
> ESR) has published an SCM
> Message-ID:
> <CALwJ=mzcv8enqvpnadxtnme68jlfuxfkonneamjlyhbmnt0...@mail.gmail.com>
>...
> What can Fossil and/or GitLab do to make it easier for newbies to set
> up new project instances on their own private servers? (See
> https://www.fossil-scm.org/fossil/doc/trunk/www/server.wiki for the
> documentation on how to create a server instance for Fossil.)
>...
I can't speak for others, but as a person/freelancer, who
has created my own PHP-webapp for hosting/semi-hiding
client project specific Fossil repositories, along my
open source project repositories,
some pre-made wrapper that allows the Fossil
to be used at cheap PHP-hosting sites might be very practical.
Link to my webapp that I wrote only for
my personal use (me + my clients)
and which is currently too big of a mess to be shared:
http://business.softf1.com/flaws/en/
(The semi-hiding part is based on hard-to-guess, long, URLs.
For demo, please compare redirection URLs
of projects with the project IDs:
silktorrent {my open, non-hidden, repo}
testrepo_1 {tests the semi-hiding feature}
The few-second-delay is a security related,
intentional, sleep call at my PHP code.
)
My current version, at my site, which I have been using for years,
uses some hack that uses some mixture of PHP, CGI, but
I remember that once upon a time I made some experiment, where
a plain PHP-program executed "a console program"(fossil binary)
and then dumped the output of that "console program"
as the reply to the query that the PHP program received.
However, I haven't tested that PHP-wrapper extensively
and as nobody really asked for it, I postponed that task, because it
takes some effort to document it and package it all properly.
I remember that a thing that I needed to test and that
I left untested was that the PHP interpreter has a parameter
which determines the maximum upload size of a file and
I wanted to find out, whether the chunks that the Fossil
uses for uploading files greater than the PHP upload limit
are kept, or at least can be configured to be kept,
"small enough" to be below the upload limits of the PHP interpreter.
I offer my clients, without any extra charge,
an opportunity to download their project's repository.
The idea behind the wrapper is that the PHP-wrapper
was supposed to simplify A CHEAP re-hosting of that repository.
For example, in Estonia there's even a web hosting service
that offers a PHP based hosting service for a price
that is literally about 1EUR/month:
https://www.planet.ee/
(It targets only Estonian market, so their web page
does not even have English texts, but in practice
literally all of the younger generation of Estonians
speaks/reads/writes English, so anybody can send
an e-mail in English to any Estonian company,
even, when the use of English is not advertised.)
As a matter of fact, the main reason, why I ended
up using Fossil at all, is that I wished to host/create
private repositories CHEAPLY for every client,
without being dependent on any American or
Western-European hosting providers.
The possibility to give to a client everything,
the wiki, the bug-reports, all of the project history,
in one easily re-hostable file PERFECTLY matches my use case.
I also love the idea that the Fossil is created CAREFULLY,
WITH CARE, not slammed together sloppily and forgotten to bitrot.
(Read: I like the development/work discipline of the Fossil developers,
specially that of the Richard Hipp)
The background story, why I want to host the repositories myself,
instead of using a paid private repository hosting service like GitHub,
consists of mainly 2 points:
x) 5$/month for every GitHub-or-alike private repository
for years for a micro-project that
only has a whole stage-1 budget of 300$ is absurdly expensive.
x) I want my client repositories to be outside of the
grasp of American style censorship.
(Privacy is currently missing, because I'm buying the hosting
service and the hosting service provider has access to the
repository files and internet traffic.)
A few words about the American/Wester-European style censorship:
Hosting service quality, at least according to my
very subjective view, includes
the upload/download speeds, HDD-speeds and UPTIME.
The UPTIME literally APPROACHES ZERO,
if the hosting service provider
TAKES THE HOSTED MATERIAL/PROCESSES/VirtualAppliances OFFLINE.
All those fancy redundant power supplies and
redundant internet connections that the hosting provider
has at its data center become TOTALLY USELESS,
if the hosting provider takes its clients' material offline,
including the cases, where the hosting provider does it
due to Censorship. For example, one American
vendor (I do not remember the name any more)
took my things offline with the following 2 excuses:
x) I was running Tor.
x) I used their Virtual appliance with close
to 100% CPU utilization. (I thought and still think
that the possibility to use one's virtual appliance
at 100% utility was/is, why people wanted/want to
rent those things at first place.)
Then, years later, I heard that one other,
Estonian (I remember the name, but I intentionally
leave it out of my current letter )
had his servers shut down at one German
hosting provider, while his clients were
paying to him for offering services through those
servers and all of that while
those servers were the only ones that he used
for serving those clients. I can say that
the service in question was not related to
porn at all, neither did I host anything related
to porn. I did not host any movies or wares either.
It's just like the Tor case: WHAM! and end of story.
So, from that point onwards I decided that I will only
use hosting service providers, who reside/host
within some state that is part of the European Union,
but at the same time is a former Soviet Union state,
because the people at the West have not
experienced the censorship of the Soviet Union
(I'm born in 1981, so I am old enough to remember
it from my childhood) and therefore do not
seem to take the censorship issues seriously enough.
And, yes, the attitudes of most, unfortunately not all,
Estonian hosting service providers has so far been
very different from what I've experienced with the
Western hosting service providers.
I'm aware of the huge length of my current letter and
that a contemplation about culture seem to be out of topic,
but the culture related censorship is, at least
according to my very subjective, a very relevant topic.
For example, what would happen, if You wanted to
publicly host a repository of some
"direct democracy" application at some
Chinese hosting provider's server, while the
Chinese Wall censors blog posts that talk about democracy?
How about hosting torturing robot software at GitHub?
(I'm against any use of torture, but
somebody will definitely automate it. It will
definitely NOT be me, despite the fact that I do not
mind developing weapons systems, but
it will be somebody, somewhere, sometime. )
How about hosting a repository for gay dating service
software that specializes to serve Arab nationals,
who live in Arab states?
How about hosting a repository for a computer game
that is a "sex simulator", may be child porn or
something else that is generally considered disgusting?
May be a child sex robot software for pedophiles?
How about a repository that is includes source for
a website, where the pedophiles
exchange the scripts/software of their robots?
Software for zoo-phile sex robots?
May be someone comes up with the idea to create
tele-dildonics for pets, may be dogs?
(I'm not sure, which culture that hits, but may be
the animal rights people will find that it's OK
to mate dogs/horses/cats by choosing a sex
partner for the breeding, but not OK to offer
a pet something artificial. Should be controversial enough
to get at least the media's attention.)
How about a repository that lists all the
murder investigation materials of some murder that
havs been left unsolved for 20 years? (Disgusting pictures included.)
On the other hand, real Sherlock Holmes should actually
be able to host private repositories of ongoing
investigation materials, with all crime scene pictures included.
My point is: a hammer can be used
to hit both, nails and heads, and what is a head
and what is a nail is a matter of culture and
cultures differ, are even at conflict, meaning
that there exists a culture induced need for
hosting one's own repositories.
That makes private repository hosting
possibilities quite important, even for
people, who are not necessarily software developers.
(The Sherlock Holmes case.)
Thank You for reading my letter.
P.S. The summary of my current letter:
"Ready-to-use PHP-wrapper for non-IT-people for
cases, where the chiselapp.com is not
usable due to culture related issues."
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