GitLab plans support for ActivityPub

erlend_sh@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 664 points – Support ActivityPub for merge requests (&11247) · Epics · GitLab.org · GitLab
gitlab.com

Several years in the making, GitLab is now very actively implementing ActivityPub! 🙌

The end-goal is to support AP for merge requests (aka pull requests), meaning git.alice.dev can send a merge request to gitlab.com/Bob/project.git

In the most expansive version of this vision, anyone running an AP-enabled git instance (with one or more repos) can send MRs to another instance’s repo, without having to sign up there.

For starters this will be GitLab-specific, but that’s already huge for self-hosters of GitLab who currently don’t benefit from the internal interop of the GitLab.com network.

First bite-sized todo on the implementation path there is ‘subscribe to project releases’. And yes, they are aware of ForgeFed and will likely make use of that spec for the advanced features of this epic.

Smart move by GitLab; through ActivityPub they’re getting a distributed version of GitHub’s social layer.

Hugely impactful as a way around GitHub’s moat as the de-facto social network of open source development. I follow hundreds of developers on GitHub, though mainly just to keep track of who I’ve interacted with, effectively adding them to a dev-specific address book.

I have a much harder time keeping track of non-GitHub devs on alt platforms, but if I could follow them on the fediverse that’s actually preferable over GitHub’s proprietary follow list.

Cross-posted to Mastodon: https://writing.exchange/@erlend/110949168258462158

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Kind of lame that they’re wasting time on gimmicky features like this rather than stuff people have been asking for (like Conan registry support)

I self host Gitlab because I want to be in control of my private repos. If I wanted to release open source projects and collaborate with people, I would use the SaaS version. Public instances that encourage contributions like Gnome have open registration, but activating federation seems like it would just add a new layer of moderation headaches for very little real benefit.

Am I missing something? Besides marketing for Gitlab, what real benefits could this bring to users?

its very much wanted, I dont want to have to create new accounts on every gitlab instance for all different projects like KDE, GNOME and others when I want to report a bug or something

If you can't be bothered to spend 1 minute to create an account, then you probably can't be bothered to create an actionable bug report or a merge-able PR.

I'm not against federation in general, but gitlab isn't twitter or reddit. It's a utility for doing work, and I don't see how it will do anything but grow the mountain of bloat on which gitlab is sitting.

its not me not being bothered, its just annoying having to create an account for 1 issue I'll probably never use again so its a waste of time

Disagree. I self host three gitlab instances, and use gitlab.com as well as another gitlab. I have bothered to create accounts on all of those, created meaningful bug reports and Mrs on all of them, and I'd like to see this.