Iiab: Gitea, GitLab, GitHub Classroom

[aidan-fitz]

We should consider adding one of these to the IIAB project.

• Gitea is a lightweight Git server written in Go that can run on Raspberry Pi. I recommend Gitea for the IIAB project.
• GitLab Community Edition is an open-core Git server written in Ruby. Recommended 2 cores and 8 GB of RAM (see full requirements).
• GitHub Classroom is explicitly designed for classroom use, but might require teachers and/or students to have GitHub accounts.

Packaging a Git server for use on IIAB would help enable schools to teach CS and info sci classes. It would also enable all institutions to share code that automates work-related tasks. In both cases, we would need to provide a standard suite of development tools.

[aidan-fitz]

Gitea can be installed from source or from binary.

• Install from source (requires Go)
• Install from binary

I think we should use the binary one, but it requires that we continually update the version number in the Ansible config. We could ask the maintainers to create a "latest stable" shortcut.

The Gitea maintainers provide a systemd script here.

[arky]

@aidan-fitz Interesting projects, Few years ago I had traveled with github team teaching git across East Africa. Lot has changed since then, Will check out these projects. Thanks!

[aidan-fitz]

I sent out a message to the Gitea discord asking if anyone wants to work with me on this - let's see what happens!

Update: I just asked if it's safe to build Gitea from the master branch. If so, this would dramatically simplify the installation as we would not have to scrape the latest version number (unless we want to).

Update: they responded that it's better to download the latest stable version, especially for our project.

[coolaj86]

I have a script that downloads the latest version of Gitea, creates users, installs systemd, etc if you'd like to use it as a template:

https://git.coolaj86.com/coolaj86/gitea-installer.sh

PRs welcome if it doesn't do what you need and you think your need is general enough to include. :)

Also, there's a project I'm working on, Telebit, that you some of you may find use for. It solves the problem of making Internet-connected devices behind non-pnp firewalls (or other harsh network conditions) publicly accessible. Tangential, but probably worth mentioning.

[aidan-fitz]

Ah, cool. At my work, we did some hacking with /etc/hosts behind the scenes. Not very elegant but it worked, I guess.

[tolidano]

Cool idea, a couple of questions:

• Why Gitea over Gogs itself?
• Would Gerrit + Gitolite/Gitweb do the same job?

[techknowlogick]

@tolidano

Why Gitea over Gogs itself?

https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/ and https://blog.gitea.io/2016/12/welcome-to-gitea/

(Full disclosure: I am one of the maintainers of Gitea)

[m-anish]

@aidan-fitz @holta can this be closed?

[aidan-fitz]

Would Gerrit + Gitolite/Gitweb do the same job?

@tolidano I don't want this question to fall by the wayside, so I'll respond to the best of my ability. I don't know what Gerrit's system requirements or memory and CPU footprint are. Google's documentation says:

1. A Unix-based server, including any Linux flavor, MacOS, or Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).
2. Java SE Runtime Environment version 1.8. Gerrit is not compatible with Java 9 or newer yet.

Resource efficiency is paramount for us because the software needs to be runnable on Raspberry Pi–based devices.