> I want to self-host, but I also don't want any infrastructure.

I think I understand what you're saying, but to me, "self host" means you are running your own servers. I.e. managing your infrastructure.

Maybe there needs to be some other term for "using the cloud, but only as dumb storage." Like cloud _storage_ vs cloud _app_...

Yeah that used to be it for me too, until I got rid of all my possessions and started living more minimalistic.

Self-hosting is broad enough to include wanting to get away from large centralized vendors and take hosting into your own hands. Owning your domains and being vendor agnostic with IaC.

Self-host is the right term. They install and host their OS or software themselves on a VPS, NOT a homeserver or VM. Until they set it up, there is no "cloud". "Cloud" IS a service, OS, etc that someone else set up and which you (pay to) use, and which that someone else ultimately has control over.

So this guy wants to run the software themself (the "self-host") without the infrastructure (the VPS which they rent yearly and which they have had to install Debian or Unbuntu 22, along with git and all the other software) - AWS replaces the infrastructure, and while it is close being "the cloud" it is still different because setting it all is still up to the user. They are still in control of their own data (although I guess some rogue AWS employee could read the data).

When I began reading this thread I thought roughly the same way. But not for long: if plugging together parts is building yourself a computer, then hosting on lower-level services is self-hosting.

But then on the other hand I'm on the "that's not self-hosting!" side when you shift from your own needs to selling a service: if you run and sell a gitsomething.com and it's all on AWS, that certainly isn't self-hosting. And again the similarity holds: when you operate a computer brand and it's all off the shelf parts you're not really a computer builder, even if the exact same configuration would nicely run under "I built this" when some by a consumer.

S3 sounds very inefficient for storing git objects. Unless you're talking converting git protocol to S3 Object Versions API which might sound like an interesting project.

I only say S3 because it's a cheap type of online storage that does not require any of your own infrastructure.

so you want to self host via the cloud?

... why not just use the cloud at that point and skip having to roll your own everything?

That's not SELF-hosting.

Self-hosting, with emphasis on the self, to me is taking it into your own hands.

Using the cloud can be very liberating these days, you can do it in a vendor agnostic way where you own all your domains, your data and can move freely between any cloud provider.

There's a sense in which using the cloud isn't SELF hosting either. Although I get what you mean.

It's even better than self-hosting on bare metal, because you can move from one vendor to another quicker using IaC.

Also more expensive of course.

To me self-hosting was always about freedom. The two arguments against self-hosting in the cloud are security and cost.

It's also a generic interface which is offered by multiple vendors (Azure, Backblaze, etc) including some on-prem options like MinIO.

I mean, on one level, a plain directory is also a generic interface, but blob storage has semantics which naturally lend themselves to replication in ways that a regular filesystem doesn't.

Check out rsync.net, it allows you to use git and ssh on its storage infrastructure. Create bare repos there and you can push/pull just like from github: https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/02/git-and-subver...

You won't get any server side CI/hooks or even multi user management, but if you just want a central place to push and pull your private code it's perfect.

Isn't it like putting your local repository on a dropbox or onedriver managed directory?

this is the play.

in the past have used git-remote-gcrypt[1] with rclone.

currently using git-remote-aws[2].

both work great.

1. https://github.com/spwhitton/git-remote-gcrypt

2. https://github.com/nathants/git-remote-aws

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