---
title: "Gitea Federation Development"
author: "Anthony Wang"
date: "2022-07-20"
theme: "Berlin"
---


# Current progress

## Gitea main

- Not much currently, but the building blocks are there.
    - User keypairs and HTTP signatures

## Pull request #20391

- Adds backend for federated following, starring, issues, forks, and pull requests
- Task list:
    - 36/84 = 43% done!
- Federated following demo:
    - Go to https://YOURFEDIVERSEINSTANCE.com/authorize_interaction?uri=https://git.exozy.me/api/v1/activitypub/user/Ta180m

# Steps to implement a federated feature

## Step 1

- Think about and **conceptually design** the feature.
- Example: We can support account migrations using a `Move` activity like what Mastodon does, and we'll need a UI to migrate all of an account's repos.

## Step 2

- If there are spec-level changes, **contribute them to ForgeFed**.
- Example: Submit a PR to ForgeFed documenting the usage of `Move`.

## Step 3

- **Implement** the feature in Gitea.
- Example: Write backend code for sending/processing `Move` and implement the UI.

# Upcoming challenges

## Frontend/UI

- I'm temporarily using some Ruby scripts and handwriting AS objects, but that won't work long-term.
- I predict this will be tricky and time-consuming, so we should start now.
- Reuse current Gitea UI but add federation handling to internal functions?
    - Example: Use current create new issue UI, but handle federated issues in `issues.CreateCommentCtx()`.

## Federated collaborators and organizations

- Federated collaborators:
    - How to handle Git push?
    - How to handle settings synchronization?
- Federated organizations:
    - A huge headache due to all sorts of crazy scenarios that can happen.
    - Example: User on instance A is in a organization on instance B and forks a repo located on instance C to the organization.

## Permissions and private repo federation

- fr33domlover is working on OCAP in ForgeFed.
- Another simple solution is to use HTTP signatures for authentication.
    - Example: I would like to view open issues on a remote private repo, so my instance uses my private key to send a signed request to the remote instance's Ticket actor endpoint.

## Contributors

- I won't have much time over the next two weeks to work on Gitea.
- Both Loïc and I posted calls for help on the fediverse, but no one has showed up yet.
- Contributions to my Ta180m/gitea fork highly welcome!
- Gergely Nagy set up daily Docker builds of my Gitea fork, so it'll be easy for testers to try it out.

## Moderation

- Blocking instances
    - Add each remote instance as a login source, then you can disable login sources in the admin UI?
- Blocking users
    - Any ideas how to do this?