patchbin

A pastebin for patches, supercharged for git collaboration.

Contributions are designed to be anonymous: the quality of your work is what matters. No signup required, just connect with an SSH key.

The target project doesn't need to run patchbin for someone to submit a patch request against it. It works like a pull request, except both sides collaborate by sending rounds of patchsets: a contributor sends patches, a reviewer replies with their own patches on top, back and forth, as commits rather than comments. The result is a collaborative workspace built entirely out of patches. Reviewing means pulling the code down, not clicking through a diff viewer. Issues work the same way: an issue is just a patch request without any code attached yet, and anyone can follow up with a real patch request on top of it.

There's no accept or reject step. A patch request is simply active or inactive: active ones go inactive after 14 days without activity. When a reviewer is happy with the code, they pull it, merge it, and push upstream themselves; there's nothing to manage here beyond that.

quickstart

Submit a patch request (new or follow-up):

git format-patch main --stdout | ssh {url} {repo}:{slug}

Checkout the latest patchset from a patch request:

ssh {url} pull {repo}:{slug} | git am -3
# or shorthand:
ssh {url} {repo}:{slug}.patch | git am -3

View PR metadata and discussion:

ssh {url} show {repo}:{slug}

Help guide:

ssh {url} help

commands

{repo}:{slug} - submit a patchset

Submit a new PR or follow-up patchset from stdin:

git format-patch main --stdout | ssh {url} {repo}:{slug}

pull - print patches for checkout

• pull {repo}:{slug} [rev] - print mbox patchset for checkout (pipes to git am)

  ssh {url} pull {repo}:{slug} | git am -3
  

• {repo}:{slug}.patch - shorthand to pull latest patchset

  ssh {url} {repo}:{slug}.patch | git am -3
  

show - view PR summary

• show {repo}:{slug} - show metadata, patchsets, and patches for a PR

  ssh {url} show {repo}:{slug}
  

ls - list patch requests

• ls [repo] [--active|--inactive|--mine] - list PRs

  ssh {url} ls {repo}
  

comment - add a comment

• comment {repo}:{slug} [message] - add a comment via argument or stdin

  ssh {url} comment {repo}:{slug} "looks good to me!"
  echo "looks good to me!" | ssh {url} comment {repo}:{slug}
  

edit - rename a PR

• edit {repo}:{slug} {title} - rename a PR (creator only)

  ssh {url} edit {repo}:{slug} "new title"
  

rm - remove a patchset

• rm {repo}:{slug}.{rev} - remove a patchset and its patches (creator only)

  ssh {url} rm {repo}:{slug}.2
  

issue - text-only patch requests

• issue {repo}:{slug} [title] [body] - submit a new issue

  ssh {url} issue {repo}:{slug} "bug: crash on startup" "steps to reproduce..."
  

logs - event history

• logs [--pr {repo}:{slug}] [--pubkey] - list event logs, optionally filtered to a PR or your own activity

  ssh {url} logs --pr {repo}:{slug}
  

self-hosting

patchbin needs a patchbin.toml config file and a data directory (for the sqlite db and SSH host keys).

Copy or create a patchbin.toml file inside a ./data directory:

mkdir -p data
cp patchbin.toml ./data/patchbin.toml
vim ./data/patchbin.toml

docker-compose

The included docker-compose.yml pulls the published image and mounts a local data directory:

services:
  patchbin:
    image: ghcr.io/picosh/pico/patchbin:latest
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./data/patchbin/data:/app/data

Place patchbin.toml inside ./data/patchbin/data, then run:

docker compose up -d

docker image

Run the image directly, mounting your data directory to /app/data:

docker run -d -v ./data:/app/data ghcr.io/picosh/pico/patchbin:latest

patchbin.toml must live inside the mounted ./data directory, since that's the default config path the binary looks for.

from go source

Clone the repo, then build and run the binary:

make build
./build/patchbin --config ./data/patchbin.toml

Or without the Makefile:

go build -o ./build/patchbin ./cmd/patchbin
./build/patchbin --config ./data/patchbin.toml

done

Access the SSH app:

ssh -p 2222 localhost help

Access the web app:

curl localhost:3000