Metahead – An enterprise-grade, Git-based metarepo (opens in new tab)

(metahead.dev)

53 pointsgrokx2y ago34 comments

34 comments

As someone who's never heard of a metarepo before, I'm still not sure exactly what it is or why I should use it after reading their landing page. I think a metarepo explainer video would helpful.

vlad_ivanov2y ago

Vlad from metahead here. We answer this in the FAQ – metarepo is just a git repo that you can slice and dice any way you want while preserving history and having the ability to work on your part of the code. We went with "meta" because it's not exactly mono- or poly- – it's flexible enough so that you can make anything out of it. It also stores information about how your repos / projections relate – in that sense it's "meta" as well.

layer82y ago

“Meta” would normally mean that a metarepo relates to a repo like a repo relates to a file. That would imply an orthogonal versioning axis, similar to a bitemporal database.

I find the term confusing here because that’s not really what it is (if my understanding is correct).

1 more reply

flir2y ago

It's... a materialized view? There's a great big ur-repo back there somewhere, and your tool provides multiple views into it?

Hoenstly, that's a neat idea. No use to me, but a neat idea.

1 more reply

remram2y ago

Where is your FAQ? I couldn't find it in the first few pages of your websites. No link in the footer either. The only button in your navbar is "about" which is not it.

1 more reply

fuddle2y ago

Thanks for the explanation, that helps a bit. I still think a video explainer would be helpful. :)

umvi2y ago

"metadata" is data that describes other data.

I would guess a "metarepo" is a repo that contains other repos.

Why would you want this? It's an alternative to monorepos or hacky homegrown solutions for managing related repos.

iFire2y ago

I am still really happy with using git subrepo as my metarepo https://github.com/ingydotnet/git-subrepo

iFire2y ago

The readme is understandable and the failure modes means it degrades to an ordinary git repo.

> This git command "clones" an external git repo into a subdirectory of your repo. Later on, upstream changes can be pulled in, and local changes can be pushed back. Simple.

wdb2y ago

One of the reasons to have a mono repo is to avoid the mirroring of PRs between repos. If you have 40+ repos and each time a package gets updated and you need to raise 39 PRs to bump the package. It's getting really old to do mirroring etc.

Not sure how this is an improvement over using a mono repo

vlad_ivanov2y ago

One thing to note is that we don't bump package versions but rather "mirror" the source code, so in that sense it works like a monorepo. But you're right that PR mirroring doesn't work beyond a certain point, and we certainly intend to scale beyond that in future

edgyquant2y ago

Not sure the implementation details but this

    $ git clone https://josh-project.dev/josh.git:/docs.git

Seems really neat to me

rbetts2y ago

> Maintaining an open-source library as part of your proprietary codebase? You can use metahead to publish and synchronise part of your code in its own public repo. Accept external contributions and check them against your internal usage of the library. You have the choice to make as much or as little as you want public, with file-granularity filters.

I've wished for this in multiple open-source oriented companies.

btown2y ago

Are there any other open-source solutions for this?

bananskalhalk2y ago

Looks cool, but I am unsure why I would use this instead of git scalar[0] with git submodule[1]?

[0]: https://git-scm.com/docs/scalar

[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitsubmodules

vlad_ivanov2y ago

We will add a FAQ entry about scalar and we have one about submodules. But in short, here's why you might want to use this instead of the existing solutions:

* sub-repos -- projections as we call them -- are still a part of the one big history. But the history is filtered on your end and you only see relevant commits. You don't need to manually bump the version of projections * you could also get "one big history" behaviour with a traditional monorepo, but with projections you get benefits like fine-grained ACL

dayjaby2y ago

Why invent a new word like "projection" though? Literally everyone would have understood "subrepo" just as fine.

How does your dependency management integrate into workflows? Last month I built a monorepo with all our repositories. For workflows it was essential that if a subrepo changed, not just this subrepo but also all its dependants get rebuilt.

I'm joining the waiting list to check for this :)

1 more reply

kissgyorgy2y ago

You lost me at "enterprise-grade".

sgammon2y ago

Hey Metahead. I wonder if you guys would be down to collaborate? We have a project that might plug in nicely. Let me know: sam@less.build

Or, feel free to drop a GitHub link?

da39a3ee2y ago

Sounds really interesting. I read the whitepaper; it was nice, but it's more like a technically-oriented setting-the-scene than a whitepaper.

opentokix2y ago

What the f is "Enterprise grade"?

vosper2y ago

There's no published pricing, just "contact sales", if you want SSO.

iFire2y ago

MIT License

https://github.com/josh-project/josh/blob/master/LICENSE

dang2y ago

Can you please stop posting these? I'm sure your intention is good but anything as repetitive as https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... is off topic on HN.

You've also posted some good unpredictable comments so I definitely don't want to ban you. Basically, any form of predictability is what we're trying to avoid here.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

34 comments

fuddle2y ago

As someone who's never heard of a metarepo before, I'm still not sure exactly what it is or why I should use it after reading their landing page. I think a metarepo explainer video would helpful.

vlad_ivanov2y ago

layer82y ago

“Meta” would normally mean that a metarepo relates to a repo like a repo relates to a file. That would imply an orthogonal versioning axis, similar to a bitemporal database.

I find the term confusing here because that’s not really what it is (if my understanding is correct).

1 more reply

flir2y ago

It's... a materialized view? There's a great big ur-repo back there somewhere, and your tool provides multiple views into it?

Hoenstly, that's a neat idea. No use to me, but a neat idea.

1 more reply

remram2y ago

Where is your FAQ? I couldn't find it in the first few pages of your websites. No link in the footer either. The only button in your navbar is "about" which is not it.

1 more reply

fuddle2y ago

Thanks for the explanation, that helps a bit. I still think a video explainer would be helpful. :)

umvi2y ago

"metadata" is data that describes other data.

I would guess a "metarepo" is a repo that contains other repos.

Why would you want this? It's an alternative to monorepos or hacky homegrown solutions for managing related repos.

iFire2y ago

I am still really happy with using git subrepo as my metarepo https://github.com/ingydotnet/git-subrepo

iFire2y ago

The readme is understandable and the failure modes means it degrades to an ordinary git repo.

> This git command "clones" an external git repo into a subdirectory of your repo. Later on, upstream changes can be pulled in, and local changes can be pushed back. Simple.

wdb2y ago

Not sure how this is an improvement over using a mono repo

vlad_ivanov2y ago

edgyquant2y ago

Not sure the implementation details but this

    $ git clone https://josh-project.dev/josh.git:/docs.git

Seems really neat to me

rbetts2y ago

I've wished for this in multiple open-source oriented companies.

btown2y ago

Are there any other open-source solutions for this?

bananskalhalk2y ago

Looks cool, but I am unsure why I would use this instead of git scalar[0] with git submodule[1]?

[0]: https://git-scm.com/docs/scalar

[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitsubmodules

vlad_ivanov2y ago

We will add a FAQ entry about scalar and we have one about submodules. But in short, here's why you might want to use this instead of the existing solutions:

dayjaby2y ago

Why invent a new word like "projection" though? Literally everyone would have understood "subrepo" just as fine.

I'm joining the waiting list to check for this :)

1 more reply

kissgyorgy2y ago

You lost me at "enterprise-grade".

sgammon2y ago

Hey Metahead. I wonder if you guys would be down to collaborate? We have a project that might plug in nicely. Let me know: sam@less.build

Or, feel free to drop a GitHub link?

da39a3ee2y ago

Sounds really interesting. I read the whitepaper; it was nice, but it's more like a technically-oriented setting-the-scene than a whitepaper.

opentokix2y ago

What the f is "Enterprise grade"?

vosper2y ago

There's no published pricing, just "contact sales", if you want SSO.

iFire2y ago

MIT License

https://github.com/josh-project/josh/blob/master/LICENSE

dang2y ago

Can you please stop posting these? I'm sure your intention is good but anything as repetitive as https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... is off topic on HN.

You've also posted some good unpredictable comments so I definitely don't want to ban you. Basically, any form of predictability is what we're trying to avoid here.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse