One Year of Daily Code: A Journey of 366 Days on GitHub and Gitea

The Power of Daily Commitment

When we set out to make daily contributions to our projects, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Life, business, and unexpected obstacles would inevitably stand in our way. Yet, 366 days and over 2,250 contributions later—spanning a leap year no less—here we are, reflecting on over one year of daily commits. We’ve pushed code to more than 25 own open-source projects hosted on GitHub and worked tirelessly on over 50 internal projects through Gitea, our self-hosted Git solution.

This daily effort wasn’t just about fulfilling a promise. It was about nurturing our commitment to both internal development and the wider open-source community—a goal that has become one of our core missions at Neoground.

The Streak: A Year of Consistent Contribution

Our streak began with a simple challenge: could we commit to coding every single day for a year? The idea was simple, but its execution required discipline, creativity, and sometimes, the smallest of steps forward. Whether it was pushing a new feature, refining existing code, or even opening an issue to brainstorm an idea, the act of contributing became a part of our daily rhythm.

We learned something valuable in the process: progress doesn’t need to be monumental every day. Some days, a small tweak, a bug fix, or the addition of a new class was enough to keep the momentum going. This mindset of incremental development is what allowed us to maintain our streak across two platforms—GitHub for open-source contributions and Gitea for our internal projects.

Why Gitea? The Perfect Self-Hosted Git Solution

While GitHub remains the hub for our open-source work, we needed a robust and reliable solution for managing our internal projects. Enter Gitea—a lightweight, self-hosted Git service built for efficiency.

Gitea’s appeal lies in its simplicity. Written in Go, it's incredibly fast and easy to deploy, making it the perfect fit for companies like ours that prioritize control and customization. With Gitea, we host our repositories, manage pull requests, and track issues without relying on third-party infrastructure. This level of independence is crucial for our internal development flow, as it allows us to tailor our environment to our exact needs. For a long time we used GitLab but didn't like how heavyweight the whole platform on our host was, so Gitea is the perfect solution for us. It's under active development, has all the features we need and is easily maintained and very fast.

Moreover, deploying Gitea is straightforward. Thanks to its fast binary, it can be set up in minutes, giving us the flexibility to scale our infrastructure as our needs grow. In short, Gitea has become indispensable for managing the 50+ internal projects that help power Neoground.

Gitea vs. GitHub: Striking the Balance

One of the challenges we face is balancing our internal and open-source projects. While GitHub is our platform for sharing with the community, Gitea serves as the engine for our in-house development. Unfortunately, the demands of running a business mean we can’t always contribute as much to open source as we’d like. Despite this, we’ve managed to keep our commitment alive, knowing that every bit of progress—whether public or private—moves us closer to our goals. No matter if it's only an idea which we put in a new issue or a simple class or component we open-source, every small progress is a step forward.

That said, open source remains deeply important to us. We’ve built so much of what we have today on the shoulders of the open-source giants who came before us. We’re committed to giving back, even if it means opening small but meaningful contributions every day. With more donations, sponsorships, and community support, we hope to shift more of our focus toward open-source development in the coming years.

Our Open-Source Projects: Highlights of the Year

Over the past year, we've proudly contributed to a growing collection of open-source projects. Here are a few that stand out:

1. Charm PHP Framework

This is our in-house PHP framework that powers all our PHP applications. With comprehensive documentation and a reliable codebase, it’s quickly becoming a powerful tool for developers. As we approach its first completely stable release, we’re excited to see how it can support even more applications in the near future.

2. NeoWX-Material

Our NeoWX-Material project is a modern theme for the WeeWX weather station software. It’s currently our most popular open-source project, garnering significant community engagement with multiple open issues and pull requests. Though the project has been on pause for a while, we’re gearing up to overhaul the codebase and introduce a more modern design this winter, breathing new life into the theme.

3. InfinitySky

Still in its early stages, InfinitySky is a software package for a 360° all-sky camera based on Raspberry Pi. While it’s a work-in-progress, we’ve already laid the groundwork for what promises to be a powerful tool for sky observation. With development planned to ramp up next year, this is one to watch for enthusiasts of astronomy and meteorology.

Looking Ahead: Exciting Projects on the Horizon

Our commitment to open-source doesn’t stop at what we’ve already created. There’s a lot more in the pipeline for the coming year, including some truly exciting projects we can’t wait to share with the world. Here are the most important projects:

1. BreezeBee

Imagine a personal weather station UI that’s more than just a theme. With BreezeBee, we're aiming for an innovative system that includes charts, APIs, CLI support, and a stunning real-time interface. It's designed to elevate the experience of personal weather data collection to a whole new level.

2. La Galerie Moderne

Inspired by our own experiences in photography, La Galerie Moderne is a sleek, contemporary online photo gallery designed for creative professionals. Whether you’re a photographer or an artist, this web app will allow you to showcase your work in a polished, beautiful format.

3. Shackleton

Named after the famed explorer, Shackleton is a web app aimed at radio enthusiasts, designed to track satellites, manage logbooks, and more. It’s the ultimate tool for ham radio operators and hobbyists alike.

4. Newsnest

In an age where information overload is a real challenge, Newsnest seeks to simplify the way we consume news. It’s a modern RSS reader with a user-friendly interface, designed to make staying informed both intuitive and enjoyable.

5. Neopren Design System

Lastly, we’re excited to release the Neopren Design System, a comprehensive UI kit built from the ground up using Preact and Bootstrap 5. This library will allow developers to create stunning, responsive web apps with ease, bringing our internal tools to a wider audience.

The Road Ahead for Neoground and Open Source

As we celebrate one year of daily commits, we’re reminded of the importance of persistence, no matter how small the progress might seem on any given day. At Neoground, we believe that open source is the future, and we're committed to being part of that future through our continuous contributions.

Looking ahead, we’re eager to further expand our open-source footprint, engage with the community, and hopefully receive the support we need to dedicate even more resources to public development. With more projects on the horizon and our ongoing commitment to daily coding, the journey is far from over.

Interested in our projects or want to support our open-source journey? Check out our GitHub repository or consider sponsoring or donating us to help us dedicate more time to open-source development. Have thoughts or feedback? Drop us a comment below or join the discussion on social media—we’d love to hear from you!

Let’s continue building the future, one commit at a time.