Overview of Git hosting sites

Overview

Teaching: 15 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• What are the most-widely used Git hosting sites?

Objectives

• Common functionalities of Git Hosting sites.

• Differences between Git hosting sites.

• Many common features:
  • Usually free for public and private repositories
  • Private repositories may have some limitations
  • Code Management
    • Git repositories
    • Browsing history
    • Branches
    • Web code editor
  • Forking
  • Pull/Merge requests
    • Code review
  • Issue Tracker
    • Milestones
  • Wiki (documentation / notes)
  • Rendering of Markdown files.
  • Group-accounts
    • Organizations (GH), Groups (GL), Teams/Projects (BB)
  • Snippets (GitHub: Gist)
  • Continuous Integration (CI, Pipelines)
    • limited number of CI-minutes per month for free

Hosted Platforms

Note that the providers below are constantly adding new features and the list below is just a snapshot of notable features at the time of writing and does not claim to be complete in any way but should just serve as a limited overview.

GitHub

• Biggest site
• Unlimited public/private repositories
• Hosting of static websites using GitHub pages
• Continuous Integration (GitHub Actions):
  • free CI-minutes for public repositories and self-hosted runners
  • limited free monthly CI-minutes for private repositories
• Package registry (GitHub Packages)
  • host packages for npm, RubyGems, Maven, Gradle, NuGet, Container
  • free for public packages
  • certain amount of free storage and data transfer for private packages
• GitHub sends “Dependabot” alerts for vulnerable dependencies
• Integrated with many 3rd party services
• Offers for Students, Teachers/Educators, OpenSource Teams, Nonprofits.

GitLab.com

• Unlimited public/private repositories
• Hosting of static websites using GitLab pages
• Continuous Integration (CI/CD pipeline) with limited free monthly CI-minutes
• Package registry
  • Host packages for npm, Maven, NuGet, PyPI, Containers
  • Support for other types is available as Beta
  • Limited repository storage amount per project is free
• Additional CI/CD minutes and package storage can be purchased

Bitbucket

• Unlimited public/private repositories (max 5 collaborators)
• Academic accounts (User and/or Team) with unlimited private repositories.
• Continuous Integration (CI/CD pipeline) limited free monthly CI-minutes

Others

• SourceForge.net
• Google Code (closed)

Self-Hosted

• Run a Git Hosting Platform on your own server.

GitLab Community Edition (CE)

• Open Source version of the software running on GitLab.com
• Almost all features of GitLab.com

Gitea

• Very lightweight but just the basic features

Others

• Trac
• Gogs
• gitolite (only repository - no other features)

Key Points

• Several services exist that offer hosting of Git repositories.

• Hosting of public and/or Open-Source projects is mostly free of charge.

• Hosting of non-public repositories often requires a paid-for plan or has certain restrictions.

• Several self-hosted solutions exist.