I finally moved ubox MSX lib from its GitLab home to my own infra, you can check ubox MSX lib via cgit.
I moved SpaceBeans back in June 2023 –as I wrote self-hosting git repos for now–, and I kind of put off moving my MSX project because having more users I thought it would be harder. But I was wrong!
SpaceBeans has binary artifacts, that I have to build and host somewhere, and back in GitLab, that was mostly automated and managed by CI (Continuous Integration). And in my mind, ubox MSX lib was that, and more –because the users–.
I was probably right about the users, but ubox MSX lib doesn’t have a binary that needs to be produced and distributed. Instead, the project’s output is just the source code, and in that case cgit has you covered using the refs view where you can download a zip or a tar.gz of any of the tags. And that’s all!
So the project is out of GitLab now. I put an announcement on the GitLab’s repo, and archived it so it is preserved read-only. And, obviously, things are going to work slightly different:
- The project can be cloned only via
httpsonly with:git clone https://git.usebox.net/ubox-msx-lib. - The web interface to the repo is provided via cgit: ubox MSX lib tree view.
- You can subscribe to new releases following this feed in your feed reader.
- Contributions are now via email, or alternatively you can make them available on a public repo so I can pull from it.
The project home is the same, ubox MSX lib in usebox, with news and the documentation for easy access.
The only thing that is currently missing is a shared public channel for communication and collaboration, that previously was GitLab’s issues and merge requests. I know things can be more difficult now, for several reasons, but mainly because the way I want to work now is not following the mainstream forge model that you can see in GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, and others –you can even self-host projects like Forgejo–.
Nothing is set on stone: if necessary, I could setup a mailing list somewhere. I’m not doing it for now because it doesn’t look to me like this project has that many contributions that the resource would be used.
I’m planning a 1.2 release, adapting the project to work with the latest SDCC and its new calling convention, which will be a big change because people using the older SDCC will stay in current 1.1.14 version.
Meanwhile, there is an active fork by robosoft, in case you want and advance of what that 1.2 could look like (also it includes some MSX2 related changes that may interest you as well). Let’s keep those MSX games coming!