Haxy.net is live! — HAXY (git forge) devlog

# Haxy.net Is Officially Live! A Local-First Git Forge with a Text-Based Interface **TL;DR:** Haxy, the Git Forge Zach has spent five or six months developing, finally has a public preview server at try.haxy.net that anyone can try. Its two main features are a text-based interface that works entirely in the terminal and a local-first design that stores metadata such as issues in a special branch within the repository. ## The Public Preview Server Is Live Hey everyone, it's your Zach here, with some accidentally very dramatic lighting. Haxy finally has a real public server. Haxy is a new Git Forge I've been developing for five or six months, and now you can finally try it at try.haxy.net. This is a preview release, which means you can mess around and do whatever you want. But don't expect your data to stick around—I'm going to delete all of it before the official release. The whole idea is for you to mess around: try to find bugs, try to break it, I don't care, as long as you tell me what's broken. Tell me however you like. I'd prefer that you still use GitHub to report issues for now, but you don't have to—you can actually report issues directly on Haxy using Haxy's own issue tracker (dogfooding). The only reason I prefer GitHub is that this is still an unstable server. But I don't care how you do it. You know, you could send a carrier pigeon to tell me about a bug, and I'd listen. The same goes for things other than bugs: feedback on anything confusing or awkward to use is welcome too. ### Timeline The preview will last about two months. I'll fix all the bugs I find, and then hopefully we can launch the official release on haxi.net before the end of the year, when it'll be more stable. But I can't predict the timeline. You all know I'm very bad at that—I said the server would be up before July 4, and that was several months ago. ## What Is Haxy? If you haven't been following the devlogs, here's a quick introduction: Haxy is a Git Forge, an alternative to GitHub, with a few things that make it unique. ### Feature One: A Text-Based Interface—the Website Simply Renders the TUI The first thing is obvious just by looking at it: it has a text-based interface. We're looking at the web app right now, but you can actually use it entirely in your terminal too. In your terminal, type: `` ssh try.haxi.net `` And you'll see exactly the same interface. I've put a fairly large repository on Haxy as a demo—Zig, which has over 15,000 commits. You can browse the repository, view commits, and push your own stuff, all through SSH in your terminal. So there are two ways to access Haxy: in your terminal or directly on the web. It doesn't matter; it's the same interface—the website simply renders the TUI, just like the terminal does. ### Feature Two: Local-First, with Metadata Stored in the Repository The second thing is that it's local-first. Haxy stores your issue tracker and all other metadata inside your repository. This is very important because there aren't many Git Forges that work this way. Most put the data in their own proprietary databases, which makes migration difficult. In Haxy, all the data is stored in a special branch within your repository. The day-to-day experience is basically the same. If you open the issue tracker on Haxy's own repository, you'll see a list of issues, and it works just like any other issue tracker. What's truly unique is this: when you clone the repository, it also fetches that special branch. That means once the clone is complete, you're already "inside the repository." If you have Haxy installed locally (which is easy to do; you just need to build it—I don't distribute binaries yet), run this inside the repository: `` haxi `` The interface will open entirely locally, and the issue tracker will be right there, with all its issues visible. That's the idea: your issues are available offline, and you can search them, browse them, or do whatever you want. You can even edit them and leave comments offline, then push your changes later. ### User Control and Migration Because the project metadata is inside your repository, you're in control. If you want, you can easily migrate it to another server—if my server isn't working out or you don't like it, you can move all your data to another Haxy instance simply by pushing it there. Those are its two main features. We'll find out whether people care about these things. But I care a lot. And I also care about ASCII art, so of course, every time you load a page, there's different ASCII art in the background. ## What to Know Before Trying It The preview will only last a month or two, and during that time you can do whatever you want and push your own repositories. I have fairly strict limits on things like repository size, so if you push a particularly large repository, you might get an error. When the official release launches, I'll loosen those limits so it's actually suitable for people to use, even for large projects. It actually already scales quite well to large projects—as I said, you can look at the Zig repository hosted on Haxy right now, browse all its files, browse all its commits, search all its commits, or do whatever you like. But I can't guarantee that everything will work perfectly. When you actually put something on a real public server and expose it to the internet, all kinds of unexpected horrors can happen. So that's why I'm asking you to help me out and tell me about these problems, so we can have a good official release before the end of the year. That's my goal. I hope you'll help me make that happen, and I hope you'll like it. If you don't, then screw you. ## Quick Takeaways - **Preview URL**: https://try.haxi.net (data will be periodically wiped during the preview) - **Terminal access**: `ssh try.haxi.net`, with the same interface as the website - **Run locally**: After cloning the repository (which also fetches the metadata branch), run `haxi` inside it - **Demo repository**: Zig (over 15,000 commits) - **Feedback**: Preferably report issues on GitHub, though you can also use Haxy's issue tracker directly - **Target timeline**: A preview lasting about two months, with an official release on haxi.net hopefully before the end of the year Source: Haxy.net is live! — HAXY (git forge) devlog (https://youtu.be/89yAiqYEwKg)