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The roundabout
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<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
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<li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
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<li><a href="/index">Index</a></li>
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<li><a href="/about">About</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://roundabout-host.com/roundabout">Roundabout-host</a></li>
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<li><a href="mailto:root@roundabout-host.com" id="mail-link">root@roundabout-host.com</a></li>
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<h1>
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The roundabout
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</h1>
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<a href="https://roundabout-host.com/roundabout/roundabout" class="repository-button">Go to repository</a>
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</div>
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<p class="tags">
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<a href="/index/web.html" class="tag">web</a>
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<a href="/index/flask.html" class="tag">flask</a>
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<a href="/index/git.html" class="tag">git</a>
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<a href="/index/software.html" class="tag">software</a>
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<a href="/index/python.html" class="tag">python</a>
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<a href="/index/agpl.html" class="tag">agpl</a>
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<a href="/index/roundabout.html" class="tag">roundabout</a>
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<a href="/index/roundabout-host.html" class="tag">roundabout-host</a>
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</p>
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<article class="content-area">
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<p>The roundabout is a <strong class="emphasis-2">git repository hosting</strong> server software. It is designed to be a complete
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alternative to GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, Gogs/Gitea/Forgejo, and other similar services. It
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is still in development and not yet ready for production use. As of version 0.3.0 development
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stage, it supports:
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</p><ul><li><p>User registration
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</p></li><li><p>Repository creation
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</p></li><li><p>User access control
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</p></li><li><p>Smart Git over HTTP(S) protocol
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</p></li><li><p>Web interface for repository browsing
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</p></li><li><p>User profiles and social features
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</p></li><li><p>Forum for repositories, useful for issue tracking
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</p></li><li><p>Notifications, including email notifications
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</p></li><li><p>Pull requests
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</p></li><li><p>Favourite repositories (subscriptions)
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</p></li><li><p>Commit views and diffs
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</p></li><li><p>Themeing
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</p></li><li><p>Static site hosting
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</p></li><li><p>Really basic search
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</p></li><li><p>Markdown formatting for comments, Markdown file rendering
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</p></li><li><p>Comments on commit diffs
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</p></li><li><p>Partial XML API, will be expanded
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</p></li><li><p>Decentralised merging
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</p></li><li><p>Forum labels
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</p></li><li><p>Static site hosting
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</p></li><li><p>Organisations by trusting users to take actions on your behalf
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</p></li></ul><p>For now, it doesn't support, but I won't consider it complete without:
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</p><ul><li><p>Decentralised social features (merging is already decentralised)
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</p></li><li><p>CI/CD
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</p></li><li><p>Repository metadata (licence, topics, language, etc.)
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</p></li><li><p>Package distribution
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</p></li><li><p>Code syntax highlighting
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</p></li><li><p>Any kind of statistics
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</p></li><li><p>Web-based code editing
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</p></li><li><p>Users changing passwords
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</p></li><li><p>Admin panel
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</p></li><li><p>User mentions
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</p></li><li><p>Git over SSH
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</p></li></ul><p>It won't support:
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</p><ul><li><p>Wikis (why have another interface just for markdown, when you can use your own repo and publish
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it as a static site?)
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</p></li><li><p>Issues (forum does it already)
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</p></li></ul><p>I'm still not sure about:
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</p><ul><li><p>Project boards (what about making label grouping instead?)
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</p></li><li><p>Advertising (I want a truly JS-free, libre advertising network)
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</p></li><li><p>Paste service (does it really work well with Git? Couldn't you just use a repo for that?)
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</p></li><li><p>Native clients (Android development is hard, iOS is hostile, and on desktop it's not needed,
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there are GUI git clients that work with any server, for social features web is fine)
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</p></li><li><p>IDE plugins (sounds good, but it's hard work)
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</p></li></ul><p>The roundabout is written in flask, a Python web framework. It uses SQLAlchemy for database
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management. For light UI interactivity it uses htmx and some vanilla JS. It does some GitPython
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calls for basic operations, but mostly calls git with subprocess. Repositories are non-bare
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because this allows the server to understand the repository and can lead to some performance
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gains since querying git is not required. The server is designed to be run on a single machine
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but decentralisation will be added in the future, but it won't be automatic, you'll have to
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choose a server to use.
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</p><h2>roundabout-host.com</h2><p>The official instance of the roundabout, roundabout-host, is hosted at
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<a href="https://roundabout-host.com">roundabout-host.com</a>. Anyone can register and create repositories
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there. However, we ask that you do not rely on it and always keep your repos locally as well.
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Uptime is not guaranteed, and data loss is possible. The server is not backed up.
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</p><p>In the future it may require payment for some features, but <strong class="emphasis-2">the program it runs will always
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be free</strong>. Payment will not be required to lift artificial limitations, but to support
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server-intensive features like CI/CD. Some free usage for useful projects will always be
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provided on demand.
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</p><p>Additionally, we may have advertising on the site. It will be unobtrusive and not track you.
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Logged-in users will be able to disable it for free. We will never have video, animation, sound,
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popups, overlays, or JS ads. Ads will be relevant to the content of the site, but they won't
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be personalised or use cookies. This just means no car, insurance, supermarket, or other
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unrelated ads. Most likely we will use EthicalAds, which is itself free software.
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</p><p>The roundabout program is licensed under the AGPL licence, version 3.0 or, at your option, any
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later version. Whatever I decide to do for roundabout-host, I can't pull the rug from under
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you, you can always run your own instance.
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</p>
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</article>
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<p>Page generated on Sunday, 4 May 2025 at 15:06:42</p>
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<p xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" >This work is marked with <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/?ref=chooser-v1" target="_blank" rel="license noopener noreferrer" style="display:inline-block;">CC0 1.0 Universal</a> (🄍). No rights reserved.</p>
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