GitHub, a massive repository for open source software, is currently unavailable.

“All GitHub services are experiencing significant disruptions,” reads the GitHub status page.

The outage started just after 4:00 pm Pacific time when GitHub noted “We are investigating reports of degraded availability for Actions, Pages and Pull Requests.” Since then, the problem has escalated to the entire website, with the status page noting that GitHub suspects the issue is “a database infrastructure related change that we are working on rolling back.”

At 4:45 pm PST, GitHub noted that it was rolling back the changes it believed caused the current issues and already “seeing improvements in service health.”

It’s a rare outage for GitHub, which is used by millions of developers to host the code for open source projects. Microsoft purchased GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018, and it’s only grown in prominence in the six years since.

  • rhabarba@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    But Git is so great because it is so decentralised. Everyone says that. I should use Git, they say, because Git still works offline and it’s so decentralised. And doesn’t depend on centralised servers like ‘the evil SVN’. Then that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone ;-)

      • rhabarba@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        I know. and there are many other ways to host your code. The current GitHub outage shows that most Git users just can’t live without a commercial entity stewarding their code though.

        • MagicShel@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          It’s a convenient way to work together remotely. I’m in the US and my partner for a project is in Portugal. GitHub isn’t the only solution, but it’s very convenient.

          • Baldur Nil@programming.dev
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, saying “most GitHub users can’t live without a commercial entity” is such a nonsense. GitHub is successful while it works well. The moment it doesn’t, there will be other services.

        • Kissaki@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          The current GitHub outage shows that most Git users just can’t live without a commercial entity stewarding their code though.

          I don’t see it. How does downtime show that?

    • dragonfly4933@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      A ton of people using github barely understand the different between github and git and often think they are the same thing or that github and git are somewhat related more than they really are.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.orgOP
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      3 months ago

      Git repos are still decentralized. It’s just Github was failing, the thing centralized and synced to. The point of Git being decentralized is, being able to take any of the Git repo copies of the current working developer, and host it on a Github alternative. Meaning the code and project did not get lost because of Github. It’s not that such an outage wouldn’t be a problem, it’s just such an outage is still a problem that can be solved and not a showstopper in the longrun.

      Even if Github suddenly cease to exist, out of nowhere, everyone who has a repo copy can setup such a server and work on it as nothing was happened (minus the Github features and hopefully nobody uses the Github app). I believe this is not the case with SVN. If the main repo gets corrupted or destroyed, then its an unsolvable problem. Unless you have a backup. And on Git everyone working on the project has basically a backup.

      In short, Git itself works offline. But if you are dependent on Github and its features and applications, then it becomes a problem. So I don’t know why SVN is mentioned as the savior here.

      • rhabarba@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        SVN has become notably better over the past few years, but let me clarify that my comment was not meant as a reason to use SVN.

    • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Yes. The fact that git is decentralised means you can still carry on working and making commits while GitHub is down. With SVN your basically have to down tools.

    • Iapar@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      What is your point? All the things you say are true but the tone seems to indicate sarcasm?

      • rhabarba@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        I realise that this is theoretically possible. But I don’t have a problem that I need to solve right now. Others, on the other hand, seem only too happy to make themselves dependent on monopolistic corporations.

    • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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      3 months ago

      SVN is trash and the people who advocate for it over git are probably pretty crappy developers.

      Reason being, if they have trouble understanding git, I have little faith in their ability to create competent code.

    • katy ✨
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      3 months ago

      the biggest problem isn’t that people use github for code hosting; it’s that they also rely on github for hosting releases.