GitFlic: The Russian equivalent of GitHub is out of beta. Let's see what's there

Hello everyone, dear friends. This is a new format for me, the review format. Therefore, do not judge strictly, writing this review was not as easy as I saw it at the beginning. I must say right away that it is not paid by the creators of GitFlic, I'm just interested in writing about it. So, in Russia they created an analogue of the American GitHub. The project is called GitFlic and is out of beta, which means regular users can sign up now. But before we do that, we need to understand what kind of project it is, how many people work there and for how long, so that we don't have unrealistic expectations. Actually what I had in the beginning.

A bit of history

Against the background of changes in the GitHub policy and possible sanctions, the question arose of the need for a repository for projects in Russia. And they wrote that the Russian government wants to allocate 2.1 billion rubles to create an analogue. And it might seem that this project was paid for by the government, but after browsing the Internet a little, I found an interview in which there are many answers to our questions. The following can be taken from it:

1. This project is not public, but private. And it has nothing to do with the mentioned 2.1 billion rubles. This is even good, the product will compete and try to offer something new and in demand, it will not be a place for “cutting” the budget and the creators will try to offer something of their own.

2. At the time of writing the interview (10/28/21), there were only 5 people in the team, which included three backenders, one front-end worker and a leader. There were no expansion plans due to budget. But, having searched more on the Internet, I found a vacancy for a Java developer for their project, and this is a good sign. So, the money did come.

3. The project is only 10 months old, that is, it is still quite young and most likely raw. Therefore, it makes no sense to compare without this understanding with the same GitHub (which is already 13 years old).

4. The project is written in Java!! This cannot but rejoice us Javisists. And if you look in the job description that I showed above, you can understand what technologies GitFlic is written on:

   • Java 11;
   • PostgreSQL 11.x;
   • RabbitMQ;
   • Redis;
   • Spring Framework 5
   • Springboot 2;
   • spring data;
   • spring core;
   • spring messaging;
   • spring mvc;
   • spring security;
   • Spring HATEOS;
   • Spring integration.

5. The overall goal is to create a place to store the code in Russia and for Russia, so that in case of blockages, people can safely store their code.

6. What will attract is educational integration with Russian universities. This will help to have your own storage space for labs and other things, which is very important. To be honest, I don't even know where they do it now. If there are students among the readers - share, where do you store your code from the lab?

7. There is a paid option, the project needs to earn. But it is much cheaper than analogues. In addition, you can develop private projects in a team of up to 5 people without payment, which is very good. I consider this a plus.

So, I think the preface was enough, now we have some idea of ​​what we are going to see, so we need to go and still register!

First steps

To begin with, let's go to their landing page , there we will see: Here we see that we can already register, we will do this a little later. The first Russian service for storing code and working with it ... Apparently, yes, the first one. I had never heard of the others before. And here I have a question: why didn’t they do it earlier? He should have been there a long time ago. Next, we list the features of the project:

• You can work in a team. Without this, it is generally unclear who would need such a project.

• Merge requests. It’s not very clear yet, but I think that this is something similar to how in GitHub you can propose your changes through a pull request after a project fork. Apparently, this is an example of The Forking Strategy. Here is described this approach, you can read.

• 2fa profile protection. De facto, this is already a safety standard, well done for immediately thinking about it. This is definitely a plus.

• Availability of both public and private repositories. Without this, as well as without working in a team, it is impossible now.

And those that are planning to add soon:

• Code discussion. Ability to comment on sections of code. Interesting, let's see how they implement it.

• Task tracker. Full integration with the code, which is very important and in demand. For now, we'll wait.

• Telegram notifications. The thing is certainly useful, but it looks somehow faded against the background of others. Well, God bless him, there is so there)

By the set of functionality, we can say that the project is only at the start of its development. There are still a lot of features that I would like. Will wait. Further, we repeat once again that the code is stored on the territory of Russia and on Russian servers. I think there will be those who care. And the company’s mission itself: “We are confident that GitFlic will become not only a platform for storing code and working with it, but a full-fledged community of developers and just people who love to do programming, both as a hobby and as their main income.” The idea is quite interesting. And that's where the landing ends.

Price policy

As long as the payment is easy. 250 rubles per person in a team of more than 5 people. This is, roughly speaking, 3.5 dollars. The price is small, but so far they have nothing special to offer. Only in the future, so it makes no sense to compare the price with other places to store repositories. In the future, they promise CI/CD, static code analysis, and a task tracker. And also running applications in the cloud. The latter seems very interesting, but so far these are just words, let's see what happens.

Registration

It's time to register and see what's inside ...) Registration, as usual, is everywhere, the design leaves much to be desired, but as the technical director said: "The hands will also reach the design and it will be better." Okay, believe me)) I created a test project to see what it looks like. Everything is reminiscent of GitHub: the buttons are in the same places, and the functionality is all similar, subscriptions to other developers are available and the ability to evaluate the project (here this is called the “ Favorites” section ). Here is the linkto my account, there will be a desire, subscribe. I don't know if I will use this project, we'll see. The fact that it is similar in functionality to GitHub is a good thing. For those who used GitHub, it will be easier to migrate to GitFlic. In addition, it makes no sense to reinvent the wheel a second time. From what differs from GitHub: when creating a project, the programming language in which the project will be is initially selected. A tricky decision, in my opinion. On GitHub, this is determined by the amount of code. Maybe this is a temporary solution that is made while there is no functionality by definition in the repositories. A cheat sheet is included in the newly created projectto work with git. Useful, thanks. From the interesting: if you try to delete the repository, the button is not pressed. Maybe they will fix it when you read the article, but now, when I write, it does not work. And so the functionality repeats what is done in GitHub. But at this stage in the development of the project, I don't see anything wrong with that. This approach works successfully and has shown that there is a place to be.

Transfer your projects or not?

Good question, because if you are already using GitFlic, then you need to understand why. I think that those who are afraid of GitHub shutdown should create copies of their projects here. Whom this does not concern, I see no reason to transfer.

conclusions

I think this is a great initiative. There is a need for the project and there are people who decided to create it. What is important is that this is not a government project, which means that there will be a competitive struggle with the provision of features, because of which people will come. There is also a target audience, which means that the project will live. Yes, the project is still raw. And it will not be possible to use it fully and only for the time being (at least development cannot take place without CI / CD in our time). I think that you can look at GitFlic, create some projects in order to better learn how to use it and wait for updates. Friends, as always, I invite you to subscribe to my telegram channel. There I write about development, about my new articles, in the channel chat we often discuss interesting topics, the author's channel, so it's always nice and cozy there) In this article I tried to show you a new project - a place to store code. Looking forward to your feedback, I'm very interested in what you think about it. All the best!