I need a repo that should not be publicly findable with explore. Does this mean the repo necessarily must be private? When it’s private, I cannot simply give an URL to friends to browse. IIUC, they must create an account, tell me their username, then I must add their username as a collaborator. That’s way overkill.
I just want to give out an URL that will reach the content when visited. It should not be discoverable by the general public but we are not talking state secrets. It must be hassle-free for read-only access. When browsing to a private repo (when logged out), it gives a 404 error.
update: A hack comes to mind: I could create a 2nd account on the same server, make that account a collaborator, then share the password to that acct with friends.
I’ve often wondered about the reach of crawlers. Don’t crawlers need to be seeded with links? Don’t they rely on links that are published on crawled pages? If there is no navigable path to the repo, how would a crawler find it?
Of course if a friend publishes the link, all bets are off. And I would accept that.
While that is the main way how pages are discovered, some scrapers also just try random URLs, or known words from leaks