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
This is exciting. I think code forges are one of the biggest opportunities for ActivityPub to really go mainstream and change the internet. Not only because it'll make working with open source way easier since you can work with any compatible forge, but developers will be more exposed to ActivityPub just by working with the software and so more likely to participate in AP dev. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the fediverse. There's been a lot of talk from various organizations/companies but this will be the first large project adopting AP. I'm interested to see how development goes for them and for other fediverse projects.
I wonder what changes it will force on Mastodon. Masto won't be the biggest project anymore and won't be able to throw its weight around as much. Just like the recent influx of users forced the implementation of full text search and has reenergized conversations about quote posts, I think federated gitlab would force masto to rethink some things.
Didn't think of it this way. It would be cool if we weren't stuck with microsoft github for coding social network.
Yeah I've been trying to find good alternatives to github for "where open source should happen" because at it stands a ton of it happens on a single node owned by a single entity. My first instinct was gitlab since its big and open source, but you can't really do discovery with it like you can github, and you need to be logged in to do discovery at all. I landed on Codeberg as being the best for an open source future, and them with Forgejo, Gitea, and Gitlab are all implementing ActivityPub now. This is great news. Mastodon users could hypothetically create and comment on issues without creating forge accounts. People with self hosted forges can do some work and open pull requests. Major win, I think