Create your own GitHub alternative with Gitea, Opengist, and Forgejo

I mentioned on Mastodon that I was trying to move most of my projects off of Big Tech™️ and one of the ways I am doing that is hosting similar platforms on my own servers.

Recently I decided to use decentralized and open source platforms for my website deployment and hosting, where I can create a webhook from my GitHub-like platform of choice and instantly deploy that site to Coolify.

Another option#

I also use PikaPods to deploy more resource intensive apps like Nextcloud as PikaPods doesn’t bill you; you just top up your account. This way you’re not saddled with an unexpected server bill.

First pick a platform#

I am using both Gitea and Forgejo, both for very different things. But the idea is to decentralize git as a hosted service that doesn’t need to funnel through Big Tech™️ infrastructure.

Both of these options are extremely lightweight and don’t require a ton of resources. Neither will bog down your server.

Both are using the Gitea framework, or platform if you want to call it that. You can do pretty much the same GitHub-like things on both.

Simple way of installing#

Either using docker-compose.yaml or a service like PikaPods.

An example of a docker compose file:

networks:
  forgejo:
    external: false

services:
  server:
    image: codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo:10
    container_name: forgejo
    environment:
      - USER_UID=1000
      - USER_GID=1000
+      - FORGEJO__database__DB_TYPE=postgres
+      - FORGEJO__database__HOST=db:5432
+      - FORGEJO__database__NAME=forgejo
+      - FORGEJO__database__USER=forgejo
+      - FORGEJO__database__PASSWD=forgejo
    restart: always
    networks:
      - forgejo
    volumes:
      - ./forgejo:/data
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
      - "222:22"
+    depends_on:
+      - db
+
+  db:
+    image: postgres:14
+    restart: always
+    environment:
+      - POSTGRES_USER=forgejo
+      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=forgejo
+      - POSTGRES_DB=forgejo
+    networks:
+      - forgejo
+    volumes:
+      - ./postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/dataCopy

Example of a docker-compose file from the Forgejo website

Usually you wouldn’t need a full-on database for this; the initial setup just needs sqlite, most self-hosted projects using Forgejo don’t need a database like Postgres because most of the time, the scale is smaller¹.

This process is similar for Gitea as well.

Opengist for hosting your own code snippets#

I discovered Opengist sometime last year. The end of last year was an absolute nightmare so I didn’t install it, I didn’t have the energy. It wasn’t until recent events in the US that I thought it might be a good idea to bring all my projects over to Gitea, Forgejo, and host my gists on Opengist.

Their docker compose example is simple:

services:
  opengist:
    image: ghcr.io/thomiceli/opengist:1
    container_name: opengist
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "6157:6157" # HTTP port
      - "2222:2222" # SSH port, can be removed if you don't use SSH
    volumes:
      - "$HOME/.opengist:/opengist"
    environment:
      # OG_LOG_LEVEL: info
      # other configuration optionsCopy

You can configure auth and permissions when you first login or you can add environment variables in a secrets.env file on your server. Then run docker compose up -d and off you go.

You can also just run: docker run --name opengist -p 6157:6157 -v "$HOME/.opengist:/opengist" ghcr.io/thomiceli/opengist:1

Opengist embed example#

Your choice#

I know there is a lot of chatter about self-hosting and decentralized networks in general lately and it is definitely a time commitment to roll your own tech stack but I find it works for me. You can do it cheaply or in your own home using your own hardware and internet service². Either way, there are choices. Self-host is the best one, and I want to convince you of this. But it is your choice to make.