I wasn’t a fan of HACS making a github account a requirement.
I understand the reasoning, but IMO it should be optional.
I’ve been getting by fine manually installing custom components, but some basic automation to this process would be nice., especially for updates.
Before I start on my own barebones addon for maintaining custom components, I figured I would ask around if any such thing already exists.
At the bare minimum an addon that serves as a frontend for git clone/pull plus moving the files into the appropriate folder. A bonus would be to display available updates with change logs attached.
The HACS searchable database is great, but I don’t find it particularly necessary. Manually pasting a codeberg/github repo then clicking an Add button seems totally acceptable.
If you just want to use other repos, maybe a scheduled script is better than writing a full extension. Since most extensions are only on GitHub still you’d run into the rate limits without the API key pretty quickly unless you only poll once a day and only have a couple from it.
But sounds like basically HACS Lite would be the kind of thing you’d want otherwise. Rather than scratch I’d say just fork HACS since there’s already a framework there and alter it to remove that centralized repo checking and maybe add a config option for poll frequencies. You end up with something polished that’ll likely fit other folks needs and if you just call it “Lite” you might get interest from them even in it being an alternative version.