What do you like best about Gitea?
GitHub, Gitlab, Sourcehut - Source code repositories well known for their easy access and collaborative nature in not just the development of software, but also a place where authors and publishers, even recipe writers keep their most valuable creations.
Books and blogs and virtually anything that you can think of are compiled and disseminated, assembled, and made available for the public in revision control systems powered by Git, yet these all lack one important aspect, and that is the security and confidence inherent in self-hosting your very own creations on your very own property.
Enter Gitea - a fully FOSS based Git powered solution with a beautiful GUI that is web based, and accessible from anywhere on the Internet - if you so choose, because you could keep it behind your corporate firewall, or even in your home running on a RaspberyPI.
Gitea has the almost identical look and feel that you're so comfortable with if you've ever been involved in a project where Github was used to house your repository, and offers most all of the features that Github does, and many more that Github doesn't.
It runs on your own infrastructure, that means that no one determines aspects concerning the privacy of your intellectual property but you. Any UNIX based machine, bare metal or virtual server, will suffice nicely because Gitea is so lightweight that it will perform exceedingly well even on a single board hobbiest computer with the most popular webservers, and comes with its own SSH server that you can optionally enable.
For the database engines available, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and SQLite are your choices - again, all Free and Open Source solutions that are proven performers in the Enterprise. For your Android, Gitea has a cousin that is virtually plug and play in Gitrex, a beautiful client that you can install on your phones and tablets that is available from the F-Droid repo as well as the Google Play Store - Everything is FOSS, so there are no licensing fees, subscriptions for support, or contract renewals.
Unlike Gitlab, Gitea is super lightweight, which is why it can be so responsive on low powered devices like the Pi. Gitea supports the mirroring of repos from any other server running Git, such as the big three mentioned above, and its capability as a PWS means that on your phone it's basically like a native app that can be conveniently placed on your home screen - one touch and your in, perusing your repos and mirrors and clones, submitting PRs and making commits or reviewing code - or that novel you've been writing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What do you dislike about Gitea?
There's really very little that I don't like about Gitea, but two things stand out, and one of those isn't even really an issue, so I'll cover that first.
1.) SQLite3 - If you really want to see lightning (even on your home router with OpenWRT installed or a RaspberryPI), you'll be amazed at the blinding speed with which Gitea responds, but with SQLite it's common knowledge that as your database grows, there's eventually a point where you reach the land of diminishing returns. But that's a long way down the road and if the number of users and projects aren't enormous you'll never see that kind of degradation of performance.
That's why I recommend choosing either MariaDB or PostgreSQL for your database, along with Nginx as your web sever, but Apache is also a time proven server as well.
2.) Gitea's initial web-based installation routine allows you to select the features and options you wish to have enabled or disabled in your configuration. After that, a single config file handles all of those adjustments and options.
Although it's simple enough to open the configuration file in any editor and restart Gitea with your new settings and features, there's also the graphical system's "Configuration tab under "Site Administration". But there's a catch, you can't actually affect any changes there, although it certainly looks like you can - i.e., it's strictly for reference, and you need to actually make any changes you want in the config file and once restarted those features and options will be reflected there.
Both of those issues are so trivial, they're almost non-issues, but it would be nice if you could make those changes in the GUI, like you can in the graphical installation routine; however, the developers tell me that is on the roadmap. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
