Bastian Greshake Tzovaras

[![a black and white photo of a person sitting on a fence overlooking a
mountain
scene](/assets/images/2024-07-22-hagiang.jpg)](/assets/images/2024-07-22-hagiang.jpg)

In the [last blog post](/seizing-means-of-computation/), I had mentioned
that I was looking to move away some of my personal code hosting away
from GitHub (GH), to avoid being locked in into yet another tech giant.
Instead, I wanted to move to a proper free alternative. On Mastodon,
lots of folks recommended checking out [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org/)
as a potential alternative that is based on
[forgejo](https://forgejo.org/) and provides [static page
hosting](https://codeberg.page/).

Beyond actually running on open source software, I particularly like the
idea of how they organize [the governance of the
platform](https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#what-is-codeberg-e.v.%3F):
Codeberg is structured as a registered non-profit association (or
*eingetragener Verein*) in Berlin. And while one doesn't have to become
a (paying & active) member of the association to make an account, I love
that this is an option. Beyond the financial support, the membership
also means having a more active role in the governance, including the
ability to vote on the presidium & board.

And so I made the switch over the last week, at least for the first two
projects: This website you're currently reading and the [*One Button
Tracker* for the Puck.js](https://tzovar.as/one-button-tracker/), which
both are based on static hosting.

As Codeberg, unlike GH pages does not automatically integrate with
static site generators like Jekyll a bit more manual setup was needed,
but [thanks to the extensive
documentation](https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/) that was quite
doable. To automate a build from a static site generator like Jekyll
(which this site uses), one can use of Codeberg's deployment of the
[*Woodpecker CI*](https://woodpecker-ci.org/). The CI can can create the
build based on a `source`{.language-plaintext .highlighter-rouge}
repository to then push the output into a `pages`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge} repository that codeberg.page can then serve.
Luckily, Codeberg [even provides an example `yaml`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge} Woodpecker config
file](https://codeberg.org/Codeberg-CI/examples/src/branch/main/Jekyll/.woodpecker)
for this.

As this all worked like a charm, I [flipped the DNS settings for my
domain
yesterday](https://scholar.social/@gedankenstuecke/112823968573749986)
and since then this page is being delivered through Codeberg. The one
thing I then noticed was that [Codeberg does not handle custom domain
settings in 100% the same way that GitHub
does](https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/1525): With GitHub,
once you have setup `mydomain.tld`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge} for the main user GH page, all further
project-repositories will be accessible as
`mydomain.tld/project_repo_name`{.language-plaintext .highlighter-rouge}
(unless you setup a custom domain for them too), which does not happen
with Codeberg.page.

But luckily, there's an easy - albeit slightly inelegant - fix for it:
Codeberg.page also looks for a `_redirects`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge} file, in [which one can specify
redirects](https://docs.codeberg.org/codeberg-pages/redirects/). Which
is what I did for the *one button tracker*, which before was accessible
at `tzovar.as/one-button-tracker`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge}, despite being hosted in a different repository.
With the redirect that link will still work, despite now being at
`https://gedankenstuecke.codeberg.page/one-button-tracker/`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge}.

When I started the process of moving even just these two repositories I
was slightly worried about how many things could (and thus probably
would) break. But it turns out that this was extremely painless! And,
I'm super happy to have these pages and projects now be hosted in a
place a lot more aligned to my own interests and values. Let's see if
replacing Google as my email provider will be on the menu next!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, I also use these posts to document this stuff for my forgetful
self, so here are the links to the setup files:

- [source repository](https://codeberg.org/gedankenstuecke/pages-source)
- [final pages repository](https://codeberg.org/gedankenstuecke/pages)
- [Woodpecker
  setup](https://codeberg.org/gedankenstuecke/pages-source/src/branch/master/.woodpecker.yaml)
- [`_redirects`{.language-plaintext
  .highlighter-rouge}](https://codeberg.org/gedankenstuecke/pages-source/src/branch/master/_redirects)


In the last blog post, I had mentioned that I was looking to move away some of my personal code hosting away from GitHub (GH), to avoid being locked in into yet another tech giant. Instead, I wanted to move to a proper free alternative. On Mastodon, lots of folks recommended checking out Codeberg as a potential alternative that is based on forgejo and provides static page hosting.

Rogue Scholar Beiträge

Code from some mountaintop