Smart Engineers Are Moving Away From Github, Here's Why...

When you visit my blog on the internet,

you're actually connecting to a

container that's running on the

Kubernetes cluster that I run at home in

my home lab. Now, what if I told you

that it's not just the container that's

running there, it's also all of the

source code, all of the CI/CD pipelines,

and everything that's needed to run this

blog is also being run on that same

Kubernetes cluster. And in this video,

I'm going to show you why I don't need

GitHub anymore in order to build and

host my blog all on my own home lab. So,

let's jump in. So, the tool I'm using

for this is called ForJo, which is a

self-hosted Git server. Now, if you're

watching this video, it's likely that

you're aware of Git and GitHub, but I

just want to make sure everyone is on

the same page. So, I'll just briefly

explain what this is all about. Now many

people don't know this but GitHub is not

the same as Git. Git is the actual

version control system which is created

by Linus Torvaltz the creator of Linux

and Git is used to manage the versioning

of files. So if you have people working

on the same files you need a way of

tracking what things have changed in

those files. Especially if you're

working on the same file with whole

teams of people, it becomes very

important that you have a good system in

place for this to make sure that all of

these changes can actually be

implemented. Right? So one of the best

examples for this is actually the Linux

source code which is on GitHub. Now a

project where you use git is usually

contained in one directory and this is

called a repository. So a git repository

is a collection of files that uses git

for version control. Now you need to

place this repository somewhere right

and in this case or many cases it is

GitHub. GitHub is basically a place to

put your Git repositories and that is

basically all that is what it does. Now

for example the Linux source code is

hosted on GitHub. You can go in and read

the code here and you can also look at

the commits. So a commit to a git repo

is when someone makes a change and then

um for example here are the changes in

the code which are being managed by git

in the version control. So here you have

a record of everything that has been

changed by whom and you can always go

back to a previous commit for example so

that you can you can you can you know

revert your changes or you can actually

know exactly what was changed and when.

So you can see in real time what is

being changed in the Linux kernel. Now

for example GitHub is then a Microsoft

owned company that provides a service

where you can put these git

repositories. Now what forjo does is it

provides you with your own GitHub. Okay,

it provides you with a place where you

can host your own self-hosted git

repositories. And that is what I did. So

for example, my blog, all of this source

code lives in a repository on my own

self-hosted git instance. So whenever I

publish a blog now, the code is actually

being committed to my own repository and

not to GitHub anymore. So why would you

even bother with this? Why does anyone

need to have their own self-hosted Git

instance? But before we continue, about

73% of my viewers aren't subscribed. So

please subscribe. It helps me put out

more honest content like this every

single week, and it's a completely free

way to support my channel. So, everybody

knows that AI models are really good at

writing code, right? That's one of the

things that they're best at. Now, where

do you think all of this code came from?

All of this code was gathered from

places like Stack Overflow, but also

GitHub. So, Microsoft, who owns GitHub,

scans all of the code that is being

published on GitHub, and then they're

taking that to train the models, etc.

And I don't think there's necessarily

anything wrong with that. However, if

there are things that I am developing

myself that I don't necessarily want to

share with others, I want to keep that

in my own git repositories. Right? So if

you're using this service, you're

basically agreeing that they can use

that data. and I I have certain

projects, private projects, for example,

my own note-taking system that I don't

want Microsoft to have and I don't want

them to scan that. So, this is the

reason why I deployed my own self-hosted

git instance. Now, let's take a look at

my git instance. So, this for example is

my blog repo. So, you can see it has a

very nice UI where I can just check out

all of the changes I made. It has these

um commit changes for example. So, if I

check the overview over here, you will

see all of the changes I've made here.

For example, I changed a an image that I

um that that went wrong. So, I had to to

change the code for this image. It has a

very nice UI for this. So, and it also

supports pull requests. So, there's the

full normal pull request workflow that

you might be used to when using GitHub.

it it really feels almost the same as

running GitHub. The second thing is that

for Jio also provides you with your own

self-hosted actions runner. In other

words, your self-hosted CI/CD pipeline.

So when I commit some code to my blog

here, then a set of automations are

going to take place and I'm going to

demonstrate this in a second. But these

are then going to take my code, build it

into a container image and deploy it to

my Kubernetes cluster. And all of this

is running on my own infrastructure. So

if you have an open-source project or

GitHub, it is for free. You can you can

store it for free and you can use GitHub

actions for free. However, if you have

your private repos, first of all, your

code is going to be scanned, but also

it's a bit limited what you can do with

the free GitHub actions. Okay. So I am I

have completely unlimited um CI/CD

pipelines now because I'm running them

on my own infrastructure. Now one

interesting thing is that you are

actually able to self-host your GitHub

actions on your own infrastructure. So

you can use GitHub and use those runners

on your own infrastructure. But

recently, Microsoft made a big mistake

where they announced that they were

going to charge you for the self-hosted

GitHub runners as well. They published

this on the 15th of December. They

announced the pricing changes for GitHub

actions. And uh that what this led to a

huge backlash on social media and X was

completely on fire about this. So they

wanted to charge you for running stuff

on your own infrastructure and that did

not sit well with the community and as

you see in the in the announcement now

here they're saying TLDDR we're

postponing the announced billing change

uh to take time to reevaluate the

approach. So they actually came back and

reverse that price change. So they they

lost some phase there. Um so even though

um you can still do it for free, there

are changes coming. So this is also

another catalyst. I actually had already

deployed for JO at that point but um

this was actually a catalyst for me

knowing that okay I I did the right

thing here by going the self-hosted way

and hosting my own git server. Now

another really cool feature of 4Jo is

that you can mirror git repos to your

own infrastructure. So for example there

is this UB key guide that is a public

git repo on GitHub but you can set this

up as a mirror. So every day my forjio

instance is going to check a se certain

amount of repos that I configured and

it's going to mirror those repos to my

own infrastructure. So if the owner of

this repository in in this case the the

UB key guide if the owner for some

reason decides to take that repository

down I will always have my own copy of

that repo on my own infrastructure. So I

don't know if you've experienced this

but there have been several projects

that I really liked that were taken

offline. So sometimes companies sue open

source projects and force them to take

the code down. Well, in the case that

happens, I will always have my own copy,

including all of the commit history. And

note, this includes the full commit

history. Okay? So, I have the full

history of the repository available to

me on my own self-hosted infrastructure.

So, I always have a copy of the source

code on my own infrastructure and I can

keep developing on it if I want to. Now,

when I decided to self-host my own git

server, there were a few alternatives

that I considered. One of them is

GitLab. that is actually the most

obvious one. This is a alternative to

GitHub which is used a lot in enterprise

as well and I I kind of lean towards

this one because it would also give me

um experience with GitLab and in fact I

worked with GitLab in my first DevOps

job. We were running our own self-hosted

GitLab instances. So in that sense it

made sense for me to continue with that.

But GitLab is quite advanced to host. It

involves a lot of things especially if

you're hosting it on Kubernetes and

frankly for my own use case I was a

little bit too much. It was a very much

overkill. And then the second one that

that I considered was Gy. Now, gy

there's I don't think there's anything

wrong with it. But Gy used to be an

open-source free project which was then

acquired by a company which now has

offered a SAS version of this as well.

So you can still run it for free. It's

still open source. So there's nothing

wrong with that in that sense. But there

was a huge row about this when the the

the project was acquired and actually it

was forked by a group of people who then

started forj and the reason why I then

chose for Jio is because they actually

say it's a guaranteed 100% free software

forever. So when Gy was acquired, it was

forked and a group of people went with

it and basically created an open-source

project which is completely guaranteed

100% free and open source forever and

this resonated with me and I decided I

wanted to support this project as well.

And what's really cool about this is if

you if you're aware of codeberg, which

is basically a free and open- source

alternative to GitHub, well, Codeberg is

actually being run on forj. So they're

using 4Jo to provide this Git instance.

And I thought this was really cool. So

Codeberg is basically a big middle

finger to GitHub and the big

corporations because they provide a

nonprofit community-led open-source

alternative to them and they are using

forjo to run this. So I think this is

very admirable and I I think they

deserve all the support they they can

get. So I actually donate money to 4JO

every single month because I think it's

such a good project. It works really

well. And also because of their

commitment to being guaranteed 100% free

and open source, I think they deserve

all of the support they can get. And

just to be clear, I am not affiliated

with them, but I just want to use my

audience and my reach to expose as many

people as possible to this wonderful

project because they deserve all of the

support that they can get. And another

interesting thing about forj and which

also influenced my choice is because the

enterprise and government world is also

showing interest in this now. So there

is a discussion here on the official

forj repo where someone working in a

Dutch government actually expressed

interest that the Dutch government is

interested in using forjo. So I think if

you are uh someone who is oriented

towards open-source software also in

your career which I think is a very good

thing to do um I think forjjo will be a

good choice to learn. So to get started

with forj is actually super easy if you

just want to quickly try it out. You

just go to the installation guide in the

documentation and here they have some

installation instructions to um install

it with docker. And this is what I

recommend you do just to get started

with it and to try it out and then when

you have when you like the thing then

you can actually start moving it towards

your server. So on my machine here I'm

I'm running podman. So the command I'm

going to run here is podman run in

detached mode name for j and then we're

going to expose port 3000 and 2222 for

the ssh connection and we're going to

give it a volume as well. So if I run

this, it's going to start the 4Jo

container. And if I then go to localhost

3000,

I'm now connected to my fresh forj

instance.

So you can just accept the default

settings here and install forj. And you

have to uncheck this box. And when you

then install forj like this, it is now

going to load up. And there we go. We

can now log in. And that's how easy it

is to get started with for JO. Now, when

you've done this, you already have your

self-hosted git instance. Like you you

literally don't need more to get

started. But let's also look at the

self-hosted actions component of this.

So I am now on the on the CLI, I have

prepared a test blog post. So if I now

run my publish command, it is actually

going to commit the changes to the repo

and then it's going to trigger the build

and watch it run. So if I go to my blog

repo now, we'll see that the a git

commit has been has appeared now and

this also triggered an action which is

now running. So as we speak, this is now

running on my own kubernetes cluster at

home. it is going to check out the repo

and it's going to take check out the

code build that code into a container

image and then git ops is going to pull

in that change into my kubernetes

cluster. So now we see it is now going

to build the image and after it is

finished building this image it's also

going to push it to my own container

registry also provided by 4j. So the

whole software pipeline from hosting the

code to building the code and I'm I'm

not currently testing this code but I

could test it. I can do everything that

I normally do in a CI/CD pipeline in

these actions and this action runner is

running on my own Kubernetes cluster. So

if I go to my home lab now and if I

open up K9s

then if I search for for 4Jo then we'll

see there is a 4J runner which is now

actually running this process as we

speak. Okay, this is now running on my

uh on my home lab cluster.

It is building the image and now it has

pushed the image. So the changes are

pulled to my cluster and if I then

refresh my blog here, we see that there

is a test post here for my demo

purposes. So this was just added as a

demo. I'm going to be deleting this

after the after I finish recording this

video. But here you see that I have

committed code to a repository running

on my own infrastructure and then I'm

building this code and then I'm serving

that container image all from my own

Kubernetes home lab. And I'm doing this

on my own complete sovereign

infrastructure. So for JJO is a great

project. I really recommend you look

into it. It's really easy to get started

with Docker. But if you are running a

Kubernetes home lab and you also want to

run forj on Kubernetes, then I have all

of the source code available here. I

have the manifest already written out.

And I spent a lot of time on this

because it's actually really tricky to

get it running with a self-hosted runner

on Kubernetes. And if you want to get

all of these manifests so you can start

running forj on your Kubernetes cluster,

you can check out the link below and get

it all for free. Now, let me know in the

comments if you're going to try out

forjo. Let me know what you think. Make

sure to subscribe and I'll see you in

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