Feature request: add codeberg equivalents of the github functions

[rgayler]

Many researchers are currently looking to minimise their dependencies on US corporate controlled infrastructure – including GitHub and GitLab. Codeberg is a popular European based alternative to US-based services such as GitHub and GitLab. As a non-profit community-led effort for free and open source projects Codeberg aligns with the values of many researchers and rstats users.

I think having Codeberg equivalents of the {usethis} GitHub functions would simplify the adoption of Codeberg by the segment of the rstats user base that finds {usethis} generally helpful (like me).

[dgkf]

Adding other suggestions that came in through a recent discussion on mastodon

usethis::pr_* family

from @Aariq on mastodon

I think these functions might even be able to re-use the same API. These would already be suitable for codeberg if these functions didn't assume GitHub, but instead looked at the remote to determine and/or offer the choice of platform where you want to open the PR.

[jennybc]

Realistically, I don't see us building out the full GitHub functionality that is in usethis for another platform at this time, despite me understanding the interest in using a non-US-based service. There have been related conversations in the past around Gitlab, for example.

The simple problem is that we maintainers are all-in on GitHub, so are highly motivated to keep that stuff working. It is also a part of the package with very little automated testing (because it's really hard to test!), which is only tenable with many of us exercising the code regularly and quickly noticing problems.

Our experience with building out support for features that we rarely use is that it ends up being a net negative for the code quality and user experience. Those features often break and, with low adoption, that can go undetected for a while. Once known, it can be hard to get a fix in a timely fashion.

Some usethis functions will already work with a general git remote, but yeah some things are quite specific to GitHub.

If there's a critical mass of interest around a platform like codeberg, my best suggestion is to create a package for it. Sorry for the disappointing answer 😕