[evlapix]

Technically, yes.. waving your command line wand IS a solution. But also, technically, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be able to keep 100+ small remote git repositories active for less than $100/month.

Also, Github doesn't require you to know how to use tar, S3, or have any other Linux experience. So why should this particular use case? Why wouldn't a business be able to cater to that market?

This is a business, and as such, should be measured as one. Why are we criticizing the "technical necessity" of the product? Are we under the impression that HN is the target audience?

[true_religion]

> Github doesn't require you to know how to use tar ... or have any other Linux experience

You don't need tar to package a git versioned project.

All you need is some kind of zip program, and every major OS has one built in.

The difference knowledge it requires to just zip up a directory and send it in an email, versus running a github connection is so minimal its laughable that anyone suggests that you need some kind of web interface in order to unburden yourself.

> This is a business, and as such, should be measured as one.

I think that this is a solution chasing a problem. However, lets assume that it is a viable business.

The beauty of github was ease of sharing, and the web interface. If you take away the web interface and don't need to share then what's the value proposition here?

All you're getting out of this project is backups of your local git repo. And you know what.... tar is pretty damn competitive when it comes to that arena.

[tptacek]

Doesn't "git bundle" already do exactly this?

[alphakappa]

Yes, you can zip up a repo easily. But where do you store it? Do you really want to save it in your email instead of saving it in some kind of source control so that you can use it as such if you need to quickly commit some change?

Saving it to S3 is an option, but then you have to create that account too. Why shouldn't you be able to just use one account?

[true_religion]

Codespace is in the feature middle-ground between Github and a zipped backup.

It's online and active, but its a CLI only.

To match the functionality of Codespace, you don't need anything as inelegant as S3. If you have a dropbox account, you basically have the same functionality as Codespace offers. And its free.

And as a bonus, you can store other things in dropbox apart from your git repos.

Looking at Codespace, its targeting a space below Github that's already massively serviced by other simpler competition.

Edit:

Let me add. Before using Github, I personally would just open a network drive to my webhost, and save things on there. It was cheap. It was CLI. And as a benefit I could save other things apart from my code there.

[burgerbrain]

If your goal is to have only one account, and you presumably also back things up that are not under version control (who doesn't?), then S3 is clearly the more appropriate route since it can do both.

[jshen]

Write down the steps required to merge changes from 5 different people using your method. Now what are the steps using something like github without the web interface?

There is a big difference.

[vog]

> Write down the steps required to merge changes from 5 different people

This thread (and hence the comment) was about archiving a repository, not about merging it.

[jshen]

The original post was not about archiving only. To argue that archiving is easy, and ignore the other needs, seems to miss the point.