document dependencies on github, to support future substitution

[quite]

Disco seems potentially really neat for empowering folks with very smooth deployment stories on self-hosted systems. But for me, starting a new project that uses tech which depends on Github (for one) is a no go.

To be able to support usage of Disco without any dependency on Github, one first step could be to document Disco's exact needs in terms of repo access, auth, webhook receiving etc, and how and where in the code this is accomplished towards Github.

I don't have any specific code forge, or other server software in mind. I also don't know exactly what Disco requires, but possibly it's not that much or complicated all together? And if intricacies are found when documenting this, maybe refactoring could be made to generalize the requirements, and make it possible to plug in alternatives.

[emanuelefaja]

Yeah, I get where you're coming from, but on the flip side, I would say like 99% of teams that I know do use GitHub. So I understand why the maintainers are focused on that, and we use it in our organisation, both GitHub and Disco, and it works seamlessly.

You'd be considering hosting your own Git server?

[quite]

Your comment is almost entirely off-topic, and I would flag it as such if that was a thing. No hard feelings really, but it's very unnecessary given the scope set in my first sentence above.

You'd be considering hosting your own Git server?

I already do host several. Just for example, a "Git server" may entail just SSH access to a chroot environment where the git command and a bare Git repo is all that is available.

[emanuelefaja]

Sorry, wasn't looking to offend. Was just saying I understand why Disco is focusing on GitHub, as it's a quick setup for most organisations that are already using it. That's all.

I agree it would be cool to just be able to push to any Git repo on a server and have it do the full deployment pipeline.

[gregsadetsky]

Thanks all for the discussion/thread! Our first, actually..! :)

I hear you both - yes GitHub was a pragmatic choice, but I also understand and think we should be able to support another service

One that we were talking about is GitLab, but correct, there's also Gitea and Forgejo and many others.

Each service does things differently - and supporting something as bare as a server with a "raw" git server is also not easy, as Disco's deployment "engine" right now is tied to webhooks, something a git server wouldn't provide out of the box.

But... we should still consider how to do this. :)

Thanks again for the issue!

[quite]

something a git server wouldn't provide out of the box.

Webhook just means that Disco runs an HTTP server that receive requests, right? Disco does not itself send http requests? (but maybe the latter does not even matter).

So, then it is surely imaginable that my bare Git repo (above) has some git-hook (man githooks) that posts a HTTP request somewhere, when the repo receives a push...

[gregsadetsky]

Yes, correct - Disco exposes a rest/https api right now and GitHub hits that url

There is already a programmatic way of triggering Disco to deploy a commit via its api, but the git cloning part right now is tied with GitHub

GitLab and other services do provide webhooks functionality - so again, they'd all need a different setup. And the other element is that we'd need to support different "apps" (we support github apps right now for auth/setting up the webhooks automatically)

So yeah - it's just work :) but definitely doable