Comment by IshKebab

Comment by IshKebab 3 days ago

15 replies

Does Codeberg provide free CI runners? I'd estimate Microsoft spends over $100m/year on free Github CI. Likely their biggest cost. It doesn't seem like a reasonable thing Codeberg to fund for free.

kccqzy 3 days ago

The article quotes from Codeberg,

> Running CI/CD pipelines can use significant amounts of energy. As much as it is tempting to have green checkmarks everywhere, running the jobs costs real money and has environmental costs.

Honestly I think the mention of environmental costs has likely made users hesitant to sign up. Mentioning it costs real money is reasonable. Mentioning the environmental costs is not; the environmental harm is equivalent to the population buying a few dozen extra cars, which can easily be influenced by random marketing decisions by automakers and dealers.

In my experience reprimanding tech savvy people for the environmental costs of compute just doesn’t work. It’s far better to rephrase things into performance optimization problems, which naturally pique engineers’ interest.

  • ISSOtm 2 days ago

    Is it really that low an impact? A lot of the work performed in CI is duplicated (`apt update && apt install texlive-full` f.ex.), and thus there'd be a benefit to running it less often.

    Consider also https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-n... :

    > Automated CI systems, large-scale dependency scanners, and ephemeral container builds, which are often operated by companies, place enormous strain on infrastructure. > These commercial-scale workloads often run without caching, throttling, or even awareness of the strain they impose.

    ...which implies that the load isn't negligible.

    • kccqzy 2 days ago

      Not negligible on its own. But negligible when you compare it to the transport sector.

  • [removed] 2 days ago
    [deleted]
oever 3 days ago

You can use your own Woodpecker instance with Codeberg. I do this at work and privately and it works great and is much faster than the free CI that Codeberg can afford.

jsheard 3 days ago

They do, but their capacity is limited so you have to ask them for access and make a reasonable case.

https://docs.codeberg.org/ci/

  • ISSOtm 3 days ago

    Actually, that's only for the Woodpecker instance. Forgejo Actions can be used without asking for permission, and three tiers of (Linux-only, adm64-only) free runners are provided.

    • WCSTombs 3 days ago

      Ok, that's very interesting. Last I checked only self-hosted runners were documented, but I definitely want to look into this.

  • schubidubiduba 3 days ago

    Been a while since I applied, but when I did the "reasonable case" was mostly just your repo being FOSS and having a license file (+ a very vague description of what you plan to do and how much resources you'll use)

duttish 3 days ago

For me this is the GitHub moat.

  • NewJazz 3 days ago

    It isn't really a moat so much as a loss leader. Travis CI was free back in the day IIRC.

    • WCSTombs 3 days ago

      So it's a moat that trickles out to the sea and has to be kept filled very expensively.

      (I'm just keeping the metaphor alive because for me it is the primary blocker, whatever we call it.)

    • bloppe 3 days ago

      Well if/when GH eliminates the free tier, I'll probably churn. I agree that's the main thing keeping me there.