Gleam Is Now on Tangled(tangled.org)

114 pointsby nerdypepper3 hours ago16 comments

Planktonne3 hours ago
This post needs a bunch more context; right now it's only immediately accessible to people who don't need the announcement [1].
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/curtains-for-zoosha
- ryukoposting3 hours ago
  Headline reminds me of Poob.
  https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/3056633-poob-has-it-for-you
  - wffurr2 hours ago
    The fact that I know what both Gleam and Tangled are in this context means I spend too much time on HN and not enough time doing useful things.
- classifieda few seconds ago
  So is it true that JESTERMAXXING at the club is the new meta?
  https://trending.knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-...
- Arubis3 hours ago
  The irony of that linked page dragging a reposted mid tweet into multiple scrollable pages of “content” and in doing so reading exactly like a celeb news article
  - Planktonne3 hours ago
    I think it would only be irony if it was guilty of the same issue it's complaining about in celeb news: not sufficiently explaining the context. If anything, it's too exhaustive.
  - nvme0n1p13 hours ago
    Yeah, it turns out human culture has a lot of depth and complexity, even so-called "mid" culture. If you think you can write a better explainer, I'd love to read it.
    Arubis2 hours ago
    I absolutely could, by removing everything past the first 3-5 sentences in the article. But that probably wouldn’t satisfy the site owner’s desired metrics and SEO targeting.
    andrewflnr37 minutes ago
    Actually that means they did a great job of writing a BLUF article. If you only care about the most basic details, you're free to click away after reading the first paragraph. They didn't even mess with my history, a very low bar many similar websites fail to clear. You only need to scroll down if you want more background and context.
    andersonpico19 minutes ago
    I mean, you could. I've read your blog and it's quite well-written, not only just better-than-know-your-meme. Thank you btw, some really nice reads there.
pbjerkeseth2 hours ago
First hearing of tangled, tried signing up and this first time user experience needs to be tightened up. Currently unwilling to sign in because of the friction I ran into using a password manager. From what it looks like they:
- ask you for an email
- send you an email
- ask you for a username
- except you cant actually log in with this username directly
- im being forced to learn some new social url protocol
- why does the auth flow pass me through a new ui/url that seems owned by the project but visually disconnected (eg, different branding/colors for the form)
- my password manager couldnt bridge the gap
I'm notoriously fickle about dealing with signup/login friction, but the project sounds cool so hopefully my feedback is more actionable than curmudgeony.
- whywhywhywhy2 hours ago
  Better than my experience with it, just says:
  >Failed to complete sign up. Try again later.
  - bpavuk2 hours ago
    ha, I could not sign in and I already have an Atmosphere account!
- gpm2 hours ago
  Fwiw the sign up/in process for me was "click login, type in my existing blue sky handle, type in my password (into a bsky domain name login prompt), click authorize".
  I expect that's the... more optimized flow at this point in this forge's life.
  > - why does the auth flow pass me through a new ui/url that seems owned by the project but visually disconnected (eg, different branding/colors for the form)
  Probably because of the above, identity isn't tightly associated with the app you're using here so they've stood up their own infra for it but probably not spent too much time on making it good.
  > - except you cant actually log in with this username directly
  Really? That's strange... I haven't made a native account... what do you need to login with then?
  - pbjerkesethan hour ago
    a "username.tngl.sh" schema, which is that I meant by the unfamiliar protocol in the next bullet
    gpman hour ago
    Oh, that is unfortunate. Bluesky implicitly adds the .bsky.social domain name. Hopefully tangled starts doing the same some day.
    extraduder_ire16 minutes ago
    Does it? I just tried logging in without typing the full username and it didn't work.
    gpm14 minutes ago
    Blue sky... Yes, at least for me. I double checked in private browsing before posting that claim.
sc68cal2 hours ago
I tried Tangled and tried to run my own Knot, the problem I had was I'd create a repository, have it get created correctly on my Knot, but then would never see any updates to the repo on Tangled itself.
The main issue is that even though I had the knot with IPv6 connectivity, it only really reliably worked once I enabled lots of IPv4 NAT'ing and also created a dummy A record for the Knot.
This is a known issue - https://tangled.org/tangled.org/core/issues/494
lavela2 hours ago
I'd love to hear why they chose a VC funded forge over e.g. Codeberg.
Doesn't really fit the 'friendly language' claim IMO
- jdiffan hour ago
  They're still on GitHub. This isn't any sort of official transition. It's just now also on this other ATProto-based forge.
  - lavela32 minutes ago
    So I assume you know that tangled being ATProto-based was the reason for going there?
    And please explain how it's not a choice when they are still on GitHub.
LukaD2 hours ago
I just tried out tangled for the first time and unfortunately it seems buggy beyond being actually usable. I created a repo but can't look at it because I get a 404 for it. The login was quite painful as well as I needed several attempts to enter my atproto handle (copy-pasted every time, so no typo). But I'm glad more people are working on git hosting options.
- embedding-shape2 hours ago
  > I created a repo but can't look at it because I get a 404 for it.
  I remember back in early GitHub days this used to happen too, as the repository was asynchronously created but the redirect was immediate, then after a few seconds you refreshed the page and it was there. At one point they added the interstitial that I think is still there, that basically does the "waiting then redirect" for you.
  - LukaD2 hours ago
    Oh yes, seems like that's it. I can now view the repo. A bit annoying when creating a repo redirects you to a URL that will give you a 404 initially (and at least for minute or so, that's how long I tried).
atprotosucks15 minutes ago
They reinvented a worse Twitter (it failed)
Now they're trying to reinvent a worse GitHub (not off to a great start)
Abandon AT proto - dumb idea, all empty ego on the part of the creators, no utility for the masses
propstober3 hours ago
if anyone has more info on tangled would love to hear. been looking for a decentralized git provider for a while. started self hosting but was missing the social element
- Arubis3 hours ago
  [Radicle](https://radicle.dev/) gets a wee bit closer. It’s selfhostable and federated. You’ll have a hard time finding something with the same social gravity well as GitHub; it remains to be seen whether that’s a separable element or if it needs to ship as part of the forge itself.
  - Certhasan hour ago
    Can I interact with and discover any federated instance without having to know it exists?
    My experience with Bluesky Vs Mastodon really showed that the friction of federation in the latter can really kill the experience for me. I think we need something like Signal is to WhatsApp but for GitHub and my impression is that the ATProto world is the only one with the potential to deliver this.
  - theptip2 hours ago
    I’ve been testing Radicle and it’s more focused on the distributed protocol for federating git repos, I.e. the data plane. The social / coordination control-plane angle is really thin, following users and repos goes by opaque IDs, etc.
    It could be a better solution for agents that don’t bounce off such mundane complexity. It could be better for private repo federation (eg private collective or agent swarm.)
    I’m interested in Tangled for the OSS/community aspect, it seems to have an advantage there with the richer identity layer for humans.
    jeremyjhan hour ago
    Issue and PR content are not social artifacts, they belong in the repo or at least its hosting instance. Likes and activity feed are the sort of thing that belongs in the social layer.
  - jeremyjh2 hours ago
    This looks like a much more sensible design for code repos: all the artifacts live in the repo.
- vixalien3 hours ago
  I think it's currently non-selfhostable. You can host your own git server (knot) and CI runner (spindle) but not really the UI/API itself, but they're working on changing it. Currently it's a bit centralised
  - nerdypepper3 hours ago
    you can selfhost the appview: https://blog.tangled.org/bobbin, which makes all of tangled fully selfhostable now.
  - arikrahman3 hours ago
    It is self-hostable, but Tangled could disclose that great fact a bit more upfront.
- p-e-w3 hours ago
  I’d be interested too. Besides the fact that the company appears to be registered in Finland, I haven’t been able to find any information on who’s behind this, how they are funded, etc.
  - verdverm3 hours ago
    https://blog.tangled.org/seed/
    Similar groups to Bluesky (bain capital crypto) and some notable CEOs
    GitHub's moat is not code hosting, they will need to build out the equivalent of Actions and figure out what private repos look like. Unclear how they intend to IAP with corporate identity systems, I have a hard time seeing ATProto break into that category.
    dgellow3 hours ago
    Oh they raised a pretty large seed. But they don’t seem to have a business model, or at least I cannot find details on how they plan to make an actual business
    OneDeuxTriSeiGo2 hours ago
    I'm not sure what's been published but as someone who plays with tangled as a hobby the immediate monetisation paths I could see are:
    - Charging to bypass the (admittedly very reasonable) rate limits on the main appview
    - Providing paid hosting tiers for private git knots, high traffic git knots, git LOP knots, CI runners/spindles, web page hosting (via their github pages equivalent), etc
    - Introducing a paid-for and permissioned nix binary cache platform since their CI spindle system is already nix-first.
    - providing paid PDS hosting for corporate/business customers with SSO integration etc.
    - SLAs and support contracts
    There's enough options here that they have a pretty flexible path towards profitability.
    dgellow8 minutes ago
    There are always options, I’m interested to know what their actual plan is. Given that seed investment and who the investors are I would be worried they would try to extract value from people code by training on it
    p-e-w3 hours ago
    > GitHub's moat is not code hosting
    Of course not, it’s the number of people who are already signed up.
    Instagram’s moat also most certainly isn’t a scrollable photo timeline.
    verdverm3 hours ago
    There's more to it than the number of people.
    Actions, GitHub apps/external integrations, identity/permission management
    The most significant, near-term, non-moaty gap is still private repos, which isn't all that big of a feature on the surface, but will have major work under the surface because of how bluesky is designing private spaces.
    I also think being primarily nix/jj focussed turns a lot of people away. Those techs are not my cup of tea, so I don't see myself using tangled.
    I'd be curious to hear tangled's thoughts on the path to financial sustainability. Without something that sounds plausible, I'm unwilling to migrate my code forge, for risk of going away / obsolescence.
    arikrahman2 hours ago
    I see it attracting more people than it dissuades. You can use jj as just a prefix for Git commands like jj git init. Yet you get supercharged repo navigation abilities. If obscelecene is your concern, jujutsu is VCS agnostic and doesn't have to use Git in the future.
    Nix is as simple as it gets, even better than docker. Just 'nix run' whatever flake file someone gives you and everything works magically.
    This codeforge going away can't happen for me because I self-host it.
jordand3 hours ago
I'm willing to give Tangled a go too with a project, but feature set to bridge the gap still has a long way to go (no idea how long it'll take). Github outages (especially when just viewing repos!) are getting way too disrupting.
- julianlam3 hours ago
  Why Tangled instead of something more established like Codeberg, or if f/loss, Forgejo or Gitea?
  Just because ATProto vibes?
  - nerdypepper3 hours ago
    disclaimer: i maintain tangled, some reasons to try might be:
    - tangled federates: https://blog.tangled.org/federation
    - native stacked PRs: https://blog.tangled.org/stacking
    - tangled implements mitchell's vouch system: https://blog.tangled.org/vouching
    benrutter2 hours ago
    > - tangled federates: https://blog.tangled.org/federation
    People have been talking about federation across forges for a couple of years and seems like its finally at least close to being a real thing!? That's absolutely amazing!!
    avsm2 hours ago
    yep, I host two separate Tangled knots; one for my personal use and another for work at the Cambridge Computer Science department. Having large git repos on a server near me is great, and because I can sync the bare git repos it’s easy to run a local forge as well.
  - jeremyjh2 hours ago
    It also has a pretty fundamental design flaw: issue /PR comments belong to the server where the commenter is hosted, not to the repo. I’m sure they will find a workaround but finding that reduced confidence they actually understand the problem they are solving.
    nerdypepper2 hours ago
    this is changing very soon :)
    see knot2[0] for some initial experiments: https://tangled.org/oyster.cafe/knot2
    > As time goes on we are re-assessing the idea of users owning what is "collaborative data" (issues, PRs, etc.) on their PDSes - soon may come the day that an issue also lives on the knot as a source of truth, with an accompanying pointer record on user PDS to attest that it's theirs
    icy2 hours ago
    We’re solving for this very issue. Issues & pulls will belong to the repo, backed by a “COB” (collaborative object) system.
  - chaosharmonican hour ago
    > something more established like Codeberg, or if f/loss, Forgejo or Gitea?
    Codeberg's git hosting is a Forgejo instance, actually.
  - arikrahman3 hours ago
    Yes, separation between git storage and identity. Very simple to use your own Knot instead of the default knot1, just enter your own website link to it. Not as beholden to Github downtimes that are out of your hands.
    I was using Codeberg this morning, now I'm on Tangled. All I had to do was switch remote origin.
HeavyStorm2 hours ago
What's tangled? Which Gleam?
- YorickPetersea minute ago
  What's a search engine?
- sbuttgereit2 hours ago
  I guess this is one of those cases where, "if you know, you know."
  I'm not sure of the link on the post though... I didn't see anything at all that jumped out as pertinent to this "Tangled" thing. I get that many posts on HN just aren't meant for me... but this seems to take that to an extreme.
  Edit: yes I see the URL is Tangled... But that is a very subtle cue that I didn't notice until the third time I clicked through to see if the landing page really said nothing about Tangled.
arikrahman3 hours ago
How does tangled compare with codeberg? Seem like a cool project, wonder how the migration story is.
- bpev3 hours ago
  I use both. Tangled is missing some important features (private repos, protected branches). The ui feels more comfy to me, though. And Codeberg is quite slow for me.
  Idk if I can give you toooo much about migration, since I haven't used any CICD kind of stuff; just having repos to push to is super simple if you use their hosted knots. Also not too complicated to host a knot yourself; I'm hosting my own knot, and I like that I own at least one of the servers that I'm pushing code to.
  - nicce2 hours ago
    Tangled is also VC funded, something to consider.
  - arikrahman3 hours ago
    I just switched to Tangled. It was actually very similar experience. I will be using Tangled henceforth!
gchamonlive3 hours ago
Wish a git forge would support both Actions and Gitlab CI pipelines. Reuse community workflows for simple actions, default to Gitlab CI for anything custom.
- nerdypepper2 hours ago
  the way the CI runners on tangled work, you could just plug in your own bespoke runner as long as it fits the interface. we implement two such "engines": nixery and microvm. you can plug an engine like tack[0], which can act like a bridge interface to other CI systems. there is also loom[1], which is a kubernetes based engine.
  [0]: https://tangled.org/mitchellh.com/tack
  [1]: tangled.org/evan.jarrett.net/loom
  - gchamonlive2 hours ago
    The problem is that interface isn't enough when in Gitlab the CI natively integrates with other systems, like test reports displaying results in merge requests. This would certainly enable hybrid pipelines through.
esafak2 hours ago
If you too are wondering their CI story, it is based on NixOS:
https://blog.tangled.org/ci/
https://blog.tangled.org/spindle-microvm/
Curiously the link to the spec is broken: https://tangled.sh/@tangled.sh/core/blob/master/docs/spindle...
an hour ago
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phplovesong2 hours ago
Github is fine. I know it has issues, but for the day to day random OS gig it has never failed me.
- jdiffan hour ago
  Project's still on Github, it hasn't migrated or anything.
sergiotapiaan hour ago
"federation" has a certain stink to it, I regret creating an account just now. I didn't realize it was that type of website.
nicechianti3 hours ago
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