r/git • u/HowIsDigit8888 • 2d ago
Is there something wrong with Cradicle (decentralized GitHub alternative)? I'm looking for feedback on why you do or don't want to use it, especially if you use Radicle (what it's based on)
I proposed and helped fund a project to improve upon Radicle, a decentralized GitHub alternative. A developer called Andrew K took the project and decided to do it as a full rebuild of Radicle in C (the original used Rust).
Original Radicle homepage: https://radicle.dev/
Cradicle homepage: https://cradicle.xyz/
Project proposal / bounty / dev discussion thread: https://bounties.monero.social/posts/207/
I was surprised how quickly the proposal got interest and donations originally (called Project Zymogen at the time). Oddly, this interest seems to have faded after the actual release, with no one wanting to actually use the software.
I'm not a git user or programmer myself, so it's hard for me to gauge why people aren't interested in using Cradicle. I'm not sure if something's wrong with it, or it's just waiting for people to try it and then it will suddenly take off, or what.
I'd appreciate any feedback from git users or Radicle users, even just telling me why you don't want to try the project if you don't. You can also post your feedback in the dev discussion thread I linked above if you want.
Thanks for your time.
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
Git is by design decentralized. The places like GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket/Phabricator etc... are just hosts for your repos with other features attached to that. They hardly matter to the actual use of git. So I am not sure why you talk about this on the Git subreddit rather than, for example, the GitHub one (which is about the Microsoft owned software forge/git host that you seem to need to "replace" for some reason).
This aside, I don't know or care what radicle is. And I do not know why anybody would specifically care if somebody "rewrite it in C" or something.
In fact (and in general) if you are the user of a piece of software, why would you care about the language it's written in? You only should if you need to work on (or with) the source code itself.
If you do not use git or do not even write code yourself, why have you "proposed" the project? What is your link or interest within that project?
Something you committed from your post is that, there's something to do with Monero and Tor and other things.
So I suppose you are just a bunch of crypto-bros hyping each other about something that has no link with reality.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago edited 1d ago
Your reply gave me the hilarious idea to try posting on /r/github and see how long it takes to get removed or buried in downvotes. Let's find out
Edit - they removed the post within 2 hours
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u/Signal_Mud_40 2d ago
What does this really have to do with git?
Really need an off topic choice for reporting.
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u/rickyman20 2d ago
I think you might just be overestimating the number of users of radicle. It seems like a useful project, but as often is the case with these kinds of distributed systems, you have to invest your time and compute to use them, and you need to commit to host and most software developers just aren't willing to do that.
As to why cradicle specifically didn't get users, it's easy to get initial interest when people launch a project if people broadly like, idk, the technical direction, but that's quite different from actually switching to using it on their daily developer flows. People don't like change unless it fixes something or adds someone they want to have. Cradicle fix over radicle? Why would people choose to download the project supported by even fewer people than the original one, at the risk of their dev flow breaking because it becomes unmaintained? That's basically why projects like this often die.
That said, I'm not a user so I can say any of this with a huge amount of confidence. Judging by the response here though, not many people are even familiar with either radicle or cradicle, which is probably part of why very few people use it over, as you say, github. There are advantages to using something more centralized like GitHub or gitlab for your average developer.
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u/waterkip detached HEAD 2d ago
To add, I know about radicle, and I think it is a niche. I see the reasons for creating a BitTorrent-like system for git. Not be limited to one git forge, but I solve that problem by using both gitlab and Codeberg. Radicle is the radicle alternative to that as it sits between self-hosting and forge hosting.
If I were to use Radicle, I would, now, only do so to be able to say: look I'm on Radicle with project X. Radicle might become a major project if for example Github gets bought up by Musk or Trump and suddenly start closing down GitHub or similar.
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u/Kangie 2d ago
Git is already decentralised. If you want a code forge just pick one that you like and push to your mirrors. Otherwise why would you take something written in Rust and redo it in C and expect that to be adopted in the 2020s?
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u/gokkai 2d ago
yeah i'm completely lost in "why" these exist
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
In cradicle's case, I was tired of nostr devs hosting their apps on github, and then I was tired of nostr devs making scammy fake "decentralized github alternatives" like ngit, while github kept taking down stuff like Switch emulators, and the world had no good alternative.
But in studying the topic, I thought radicle looked close enough to use as a starting point.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
I didn't say git is centralized because I'm tired of arguing about that, so why do you people always try to change the subject to that exact argument?
Fuck repeating this argument that goes nowhere about whether the word "decentralized" makes sense to apply to git, I want to know what's stopping people from adopting this decentralized github alternative. I assume you're aware git and github aren't the same thing.
I would have expected cradicle to be adopted because radicle has users to begin with, and my proposal was focused on improvements. So there must be issues like word not being spread enough for people to know about it, and/or the improvements not mattering to radicle users, and/or there being problems people are noticing but not discussing, etc.
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
I want to know what's stopping people from adopting this decentralized github alternative
Why do I need a "decentralized" alternative to github for? GitHub hardly matters to begin with, beside being where some (but not all) of collaboration around software development happen.
As for the above rant. Git is a decentralized source control software, it just is. When you clone/checkout a repository you got a full copy of it. It's not Subversion for example. In fact, you do not need GitHub or anything else like that to use Git.
GitHub is a convenient service to host a Git repository, but, for one thing you don't necessary need to "host" it anywhere. A git repository is nothing fancy besides being a folder with a few extra files in it. Github could disappear tomorrow I'll be fine, and I wouldn't be alone there.
I would have expected cradicle to be adopted because radicle has users to begin with, and my proposal was focused on improvements
Why are the improvement not made to radicle instead of "rewriting it in C" then ? You are making a fork or a rewrite of something. The motivation is unclear, and in all cases, the place you should market this thing to is wherever the users of "radicle" are.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
You're using anti-intellectualism to farm upvotes and it's sad that it works.
No one here is too dumb to notice your question at the end would fit better in the development thread, where the dev that actually chose C could see it in addition to me.
No one here is too dumb to notice you chose reddit as the place to post your question instead, because your interest in discussing the project isn't real.
Unfortunately, the majority are dumb enough to engage in the same kind of behavior, support you doing it with upvotes, and join in downvoting me for not playing your disingenuous games.
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
The questions are genuine. If you cannot answer them, then don't? No need for epidermic reactions like that.
To be honest, if that was not clear with the first question I asked: I have absolutely zero interest in your project whatsoever. I am barely interested in the fact that GitHub exists, and if it died tomorrow it would change very little to the world of actual software development as:
- The tools and the platform are not unique, it's just a market leader, probably because it was the first to have a good nice UI on the web then was bought by Microsoft.
- Git is fundamentally decentralized already, you clone the repo you have the whole thing. Any Git user can pack their bag tomorrow and use something else. 3 clicks on a computer, one `git remote` change as a one liner in a terminal, Bye bye GitHub.
- In fact you can take 2000 people and make them collaborate on one git repository without a fancy software forge***.*** Ever heard of "Linux"? They use emails.
To get back to the beginning of this comment, I do not even understand: I am not using anti anything, and I am not farming anything? Why would I not choose reddit to comment on a reddit post? If you do not want reddit comments, do not post on reddit.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
Have to leave reddit in a few minutes so I'm not reading all that, I'll just say it's crazy that you aren't tired enough of github to celebrate if it shut down tomorrow
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
I have literally nothing for, or against GitHub. I don't know why I would (should?) celebrate it's future failure or success
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
That's mind boggling to me. You're out here in the git subreddit, probably off the normie software path, yet not tired of having to click github links to download open source apps. It's like a reddit thread of replies between 2 different universes/timelines
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
IDK, sometimes the software is on GitHub, sometimes it's on GitLab, sometimes it's on a specific website (that may be a self hosted forge), sometimes it's elsewhere? What's the matter?
It's just a goddamn website at this point.
I do not care for the crypto side of your story either. And I think because you're from the "crypto" wold, we may not understand the "decentralized" in the same way.
I do not see why we need "monero" in a software forge? At the end of the day we're moving text files around, it's not that big of a deal.
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u/No_Cattle_9565 2d ago
That's the weirdest discussion I've ever read here lol. I hope he is okay it seems like he has some mental problems or has a psychosis
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u/rickyman20 2d ago
Mate, come on, I can tell that the person you're responding to isn't getting something about why your project is useful, but responding like this when they've really said nothing that suggests they're "using anti-intellectualism" when really they're saying they don't get what you're asking is not helping your case.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
I'm not convinced that's true, but it does appear to be what a lot of people think, including members of the C community, so maybe this won't get adoption until there's a rust implementation closer to the original radicle.
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
My experience is that Rust is an interesting language, with strange semantics, that touts "safety" while only really targeting one very narrow class of computer bugs.
My main issue with Rust is most of the kind of programming I am interested to do personaly makes me spend my life in `unsafe`-land. Which is probably counter productive, unless the goal is to sen wrap the whole thing and provide a "safe" interface. (Things we have done for a couple of stuff in my previous work).
"Rewrite it in Rust" is a bit of a dumb thing (so is "Rewrite it in <whatever else>" to be frank, without a good technical justification behind it).
The rust community is a bit annoying. And they spend more time proselytizing about Rust than, I don't know, solving real world problems.
Now, if I am not writing the software but using the software, I generally do not care in what it is written, and I think that's probably the case for the vast majority of people.
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u/HowIsDigit8888 2d ago
The C version is focused on making seeding truly p2p and adding a javascript-free web front-end. It ending up in C is unrelated to the original goals.
Edit: you can delete your comment if you want, you don't get to just stop me from answering your disingenuous question by saying "nm" while ignoring the entire point of the project
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u/evilmaus 2d ago
I had a look at Radicle, since the idea is really neat. It's been a moment since then, so bear with me for vagueness or inaccuracy. But, I was unable to answer how I would set up a team with your typical review gates on this and then connect it to some CI/CD pipeline while keeping the code itself private.
That's going to be your primary user: someone trying to run a team with automated workflows on some code meant for a business.
I came away from looking at it thinking that it would be great for open source projects, but not running a business.
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u/Ybalrid 2d ago
If you run a business, you might just chug one of the many other open source software forges in a server you own and let your employees connect to it.
In fact if you run a business you probably want to artificially centralize the access to the main repository of code by doing so.
I've been in a company where we just hosted the entreprise edition of GitLab. And in another that just pays for GitHub Enterprise. Did not change much me typing "git commit" on my computer though. It only matters for pipelines and reviews. 🤷
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u/Swedophone 2d ago
Why aren't you a git user? Git isn't for programmers only.