Ask HN: Open sourcing a previously closed project

4 pointsokal3 comments

I'm working on cleaning up the codebase for one of my side projects, and there are things in the repo history that I don't want floating about in the wild. Is there a list of security best practices for this sort of thing? I'm thinking of starting a new repo with only code from the latest "safe" HEAD. I'd also love to hear about people's personal experiences doing this, not limited to the security ramifications.

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Why? The occasional profane code comment or commit message proves two thing; (1) you're human like the rest of us, and (2) you both find and fix the mistakes. The frustrating stumbling blocks that you hit are good things for others to know, even if your reaction may have been a bit too severe in retrospect.

Thanks :) Well, there's that, but I'm less worried about being viewed as a potty mouth and more about stuff I did early on in the development process like having passwords in config files and such.

If there's any chance of that, then yes, definitely start a new repo just to be safe.

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