elasticdog / transcrypt

transparently encrypt files within a git repository
MIT License
1.48k stars 102 forks source link

comparison to similar tools e.g. git-secret #149

Open andreineculau opened 2 years ago

andreineculau commented 2 years ago

I received a question "How does transcrypt compare to (the more github-starred) git-secret?". Maybe others are getting the same question.

Might be worth adding a section describing just that, for git-secret, but maybe for other tools if needed. The rationale for this request is that there's an opportunity to increase transcrypt's usage when it's clear what does it bring to the table. Choosing based on popularity (github stars) is never optimal, even less so given encryption is not a light topic.

PS: @jmurty - a random thanks for all your improvements! I haven't been following transcrypt's development for a couple of years, and I was blown away today looking at the careful and caring commits. 🙌

jmurty commented 2 years ago

Thanks very much for those kind words @andreineculau, I appreciate it 🙏

I think a brief comparison of transcrypt with other tools in the same space would be useful. I'm not personally invested in increasing usage of this tool versus others, but I like the idea of giving potential users a quick overview of the relative pros and cons of the available tools, to make it easier for them choose the tool that will best suit their needs.

I'm reluctant to write such a comparison myself. I don't have a lot of spare time, and I haven't used alternative tools like git-secret enough to compare them properly without researching them. Plus I'm biased, since I use and like and work on transcrypt.

Perhaps you and/or others could add to this issue some brief notes comparing transcrypt to other tools? Then once we have enough notes, I could summarise them into a comparison section in the README.

jmurty commented 2 years ago

This suggestion made me curious to see what else is out there, since I last looked at tools like transcrypt a few years ago. Here are some candidates for comparisons:

And of course https://github.com/hashicorp/vault