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Codeberg Documentation

Getting Started with Codeberg
What is Codeberg? Your First Steps on Codeberg Install Git Your First Repository The Basics of Issue Tracking Integrated Wiki Email Settings Licensing on Codeberg Frequently Asked Questions
Collaborating with Others
Citable Code Pull requests and Git flow Invite Collaborators Create and Manage an Organization Repository Permissions Resolve Conflicts
Working with Git Repositories
Using .gitignore Configuring Git Clone & Commit via CLI Clone & Commit via Web Merge multiple commits into one Tags and Releases Working with large files
Writing in Markdown
Introduction to Markdown Using Links Topics Preformatted Text Using Lists Using Images Tables in Markdown Markdown FAQ
Security
Setting up two-factor authentication Adding an SSH key to your account Verifying you're connected to Codeberg using SSH fingerprints Adding a GPG key to your account
Codeberg Pages
Using Custom Domains Troubleshooting Example: Docs as Code with Sphinx Pushing output from SSGs into Codeberg Pages Redirects
Advanced Usage
Generating an Access Token Migrating Repositories Using Webhooks
Working with Codeberg's CI
Using Forgejo Actions (Self-hosted)
Integrations with Other Services
Integrating with Keycloak Integrating with LiberaPay Integrating with Matrix Integrating with Read the Docs
Codeberg Translate
Introduction to Weblate Manual Component configuration Getting started
Improving Codeberg
Contributing Code
Improving the Documentation
Style Guide How to create a new article? Can I preview my article? How to make screenshots for Codeberg Documentation? Documentation Contributor FAQ
Contact

What is Codeberg?

Codeberg is a democratic community-driven, non-profit software development platform operated by Codeberg e.V. and centered around Codeberg.org, a Forgejo-based software forge.

On Codeberg you can develop your own Free Software projects, contribute to other projects, browse through inspiring and useful free software, share your knowledge or build your projects a home on the web using Codeberg Pages, just to name a few.

Codeberg is not a for-profit corporation but an open community of free software enthusiasts providing a humane, non-commercial and privacy-friendly alternative to commercial services such as GitHub.

Our Mission

The development of Free and Open Source Software is experiencing an unbroken boom, due to the general availability of the internet and the resulting social network effects, multiplying communication, exchange of ideas, and productivity each and every month. The number of developers and projects participating in the Open Source movement is growing exponentially. Only new software tools and collaboration platforms made these dynamics possible and manageable.

While all successful software tools that enabled this development were contributed by the Free and Open Source Software community, commercial for-profit platforms dominate the hosting of the results of our collaborative work. This has led to the paradox that literally millions of volunteers create, collect, and maintain invaluable knowledge, documentation, and software, to feed closed platforms driven by commercial interests, whose program is neither visible nor controllable from outside. Considering the fate of formerly successful startups like SourceForge, we need to break the circle and avoid history repeating.

The mission of Codeberg e.V. is to build and maintain a free collaboration platform for creating, archiving, and preserving code and to document its development process.

Dependencies on commercial, external, or proprietary services for the operation of the platform are avoided, in order to guarantee independence and reliability.

Read more at Codeberg's initial announcement and the Licensing article.

Codeberg vs. Forgejo

Forgejo is self-hostable free software for software development, built on top of Git. Codeberg is powered by Forgejo, which is in turn a soft-fork of Gitea. Compared to Codeberg, Forgejo is not one service, but free software to help you build your own. Everyone can install their own Forgejo instance to host their own projects. There are also public Forgejo instances as well as Codeberg you can use, but make sure you find a site that is actively maintained and updated, and that you trust the provider.

The codebase history of Forgejo and its predecessors predates Codeberg. However, since 2022, Codeberg is backing the development of Forgejo as an umbrella organization.

People are often asking why they should use Codeberg over other Forgejo instances. The most important reasons are:

  • a vivid, vibrant community to collaborate with and ask for help
  • active maintenance through the community and shared effort to provide an awesome experience
  • you are able to take part in operation and decisions, and ideally donate
  • we add additional services like Codeberg Pages, hosted CI and Weblate for localization of your software

What is Codeberg e.V.?

Codeberg e.V. is a registered non-profit association based in Berlin, Germany. You don't have to be a member of the association in order to use Codeberg.org or to contribute to the development of the platform, but if you want you can join Codeberg e.V. to support the project financially, be informed about Codeberg and, optionally, to actively contribute to the association.

Codeberg members can also take part in the decisions of the platform as explained in the bylaws, and they elect the presidium and board of the platform, thus Codeberg can be considered as community-owned.

Alternatives to Codeberg

Codeberg is not the only libre option for hosting Free Software project. We don't aim for a vendor-lock-in, but hope you like our space and stay here.

We recommend choosing a shared instance to save time, money and energy, ideally run by a community of people (like Codeberg). By choosing a Forgejo instance, you can easily migrate away from Codeberg in case you don't like it.

We'll list a few options:

  • disroot: Our recommended alternative public Forgejo instance. Powered by the community at disroot and funded by donations. They do offer much more than Forgejo, so check them out in any case.
  • other public Forgejo instances
  • Self-Hosting Forgejo, the software that powers Codeberg.
  • SourceHut: A minimum-GUI Free Software based service, available as hosted version by a transparent for-profit. Self-Hostable.

To start your journey with Codeberg, let's create an account.

Hey there! 👋 Thank you for reading this article!

Is there something missing, or do you have an idea on how to improve the documentation? Do you want to write your own article?

You're invited to contribute to the Codeberg Documentation at its source code repository, for example, by adding a pull request or joining in on the discussion in the issue tracker.

For an introduction on contributing to Codeberg Documentation, please have a look at the Contributor FAQ.

© Codeberg Docs Contributors. See LICENSE