Why

Why? Why self-host all your own infrastructure?

We tried not to, at the very beginning of the project. We agreed that Github-style code review wasn't really fit for our kind of project, and wanted to use Gerrit for code review. We started setting up Gerrithub for a repo hosted on Github, and we ran into so many problems with that approach that it was actually easier to just self-host Gerrit instead (for starters, some members could not log in at all).

Then there was little reason to use GitHub, since none of us are really happy with Github direction lately anyway, and Forgejo + GitHub-enabled SSO mean that contributors shouldn't have to jump through too many hoops to help out.

So now we have a fully independent and open source infrastructure stack, with (hopefully) a good onboarding path as well. And we're also in our own critical path: we run into Nix's papercuts and gashes alike every day, so we better fix it!

Here is our thought process from back then:

The Lix CI is broken though!

Yes, our buildbot is a high maintenance service and it is janky. Multiple members of the Lix team have plans about writing entirely new Nix CI systems, but they are otherwise busy with another major project in the form of Lix. This is the matrix of extant alternatives:


Revision #5
Created 9 April 2024 06:54:22 by Qyriad
Updated 9 April 2024 07:41:11 by jade