Maybe what I misunderstood is where git ends and github starts. I know there are other hosting platforms, and I've used a lot of git visualizers. But what I've never tried to do is use git with multiple developers without connecting to some 3rd party server. Is there some peer to peer functionality built into git or did I totally misunderstand your original comment? Or are you literally sharing the git folder via network file system, thumb drive, etc?

[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes the original use case is sending patches back and forth on the Linux kernel mailing list

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Git doesn't have a concept of a preferred repository; your local copy is exactly as valid to git as a git server hosted on github.

The originally intended workflow as I understand it involved generating patches which would be shared via a mailing list.

In practice there will generally be a repository that's considered "canonical" for a project, whether that's the one on the computer of the lead maintainer or some hosted solution.

A basic git server is essentially just a repository owned by a restricted user with SSH access granted to maintainers.. This can allow users to push and pull from a centralised or semi-centralised repository in much the same way as GitHub.