[Question] Stay with Gitea or jump to Forgejo?

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Does anyone who’s more on the pulse of stuff than I know if I should stick with Gitea or jump to Forgejo while I can?

I understand that, for the moment at least, Forgejo should be a drop-in replacement for Gitea as they shared codebase for so long…

Anyone have experience that this is the case? What version did you make the switch on? Was it really just a binary/docker container swap on existing database or did you run into any troubles?

I’m at a crossroads where as a casual HomeLab user I don’t really care either way, but if there is a chance Gitea does something that ruins my use of it, I will regret having not switched while it was supposed to be easy. On the other hand, if Gitea remains the stronger choice and Forgejo fizzles out, I will regret leaving it behind. Help me decide? I’m on Gitea 1.21.5, the last “guaranteed” jump point now.

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Definitly go with Forgejo ASAP.

As for concerns that Forgejo fizzles out... highly unlikely given that the by far largest former Gitea instance is the driving force behind it (https://codeberg.org). But yes, as all community run FOSS projects that don't rely on for-profit investments it will be a community effort to keep it running.

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Fair bias notice: I am a Forgejo contributor.

I switched from Gitea to Forgejo when Forgejo was announced, and it was as simple as changing the binary/docker image. It remains that simple today, and will remain that simple for the foreseeable future, because Forgejo cherry picks most of the changes in Gitea on a weekly basis. Until the codebases diverge, that will remain the case, and Forgejo will remain a drop-in replacement until such time comes that we decide not to pick a feature or change. If you're not reliant on said feature, it's still a drop-in replacement. (So far, we have a few things that are implemented differently in Forgejo, but still in a compatible way).

Let me offer a few reasons to switch:

  • Forgejo - as of today, and for the foreseeable future - includes everything in Gitea, but with more tests, and more features on top. A few features Forgejo has that Gitea does not:
    • Forgejo makes it possible to have any signed in user edit Wikis (like GitHub), Gitea restricts it to collaborators only. (Forgejo defaults to that too, but the default can be changed). Mind you, this is not in a Forgejo release yet, it will be coming in the next release probably in April.
    • Gitea has support for showing an Action status badge. Forgejo has badges for action statuses, stars, forks, issues, pull requests.
    • ...there are numerous other features being developed for Forgejo that will not make it into Gitea unless they cherry pick it (they don't do that), or reimplement it (wasting a lot of time, and potentially introducing bugs).
  • Forgejo puts a lot of effort into testing. Every feature developed for Forgejo needs to have a reasonable amount of tests. Most of the things we cherry pick for Gitea, we write tests for if they don't have any (we write plenty of tests for stuff originating from Gitea).
  • Forgejo is developed in the open, using free tools: we use Forgejo to host the code, issues and releases, Forgejo Actions for CI, and Weblate for translations. Gitea uses GitHub to host the code, issues and releases, uses GitHub CI, and CrowdIn for translations (all of them proprietary platforms).
  • Forgejo accepts contributions without requiring copyright assignment, Gitea does not.
  • Forgejo routinely cherry picks from Gitea, Gitea does not cherry pick from Forgejo (they do tend to reimplement things we've done, though, a huge waste of time if you ask me).
  • Forgejo isn't going anywhere anytime soon, see the sustainability repo. There are people committed to working on it, there are people paid to work on it, and there's a fairly healthy community around it already.
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All this, and while you're at it, Donate!

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I haven't done any research yet. Gitea includes an oauth2 provider. Does Forgejo also provide oauth2 authentication with a similar feature set?

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Yes it does. I even host a forgejo instance where you can only login via SSO and it works perfectly!

Edit: sorry, got my wires crossed with idp and SSO. But yes, forgejo can also act as an idp.

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At home I'll use Forgejo, but at work I'll set up Gitea for my department where we are forced to work in a Windows infrastructure.

I would like to be able to use Forgejo both places.

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Why not at work?

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Forgejo has no official Windows builds, and since it is not tested on windows at all, it's not guaranteed to work.

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forced to work in a Windows infrastructure

My condolences. I hope you find some relief in the future

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You might check out this thread, especially that first post about the open letter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33749757

I homelab to study and practice, and I switched around 1.19. It's been very smooth for me. Literally just had to change the docker image I was using.

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