I agree... I wish GitLab would do this too. No reason that everything can't be modeled as a git branch.
GitLab I know models their Wiki as a git repo. I think issues and PRs should be their own repo as well.... a branch for each issue or pr? Could tie it all up using submodules (or not, whatever)... just please someone take the jump first and do this.
DISCLAIMER: I work for GitLab.
We have a feature to replicate GitLab to different locations (EEP). We call it "Geo", which stands for "Geographical Replication". Part of the "Geo" effort is Disaster Recovery which is under heavily development. We want with Disaster Recovery to be able to reliably promote any Secondary node to a Primary, so if your US datacenter melts down under a nuclear war, you can start working with your copy in EU, India, China, etc.
Or you could just read disaster porn^W^W post-apocalyptic sci fi.
So, a lot depends on what kinds of info you want to find. But overall, I'd say it's not worth reading, because life's not going to be much fun. Even if you're prepared.
(only partially serious here) I'm not sure recovery from a nuclear event that wipes out US data centers is economically feasible. If an event were to effectively wipe out 20% of the worlds economy I think having my github issues online is the least of my worries.
If it's not Git based then I'm not interested in it.
I see no reason to have a RDBMS for issues, merge requests, pull requests, etc. All of these could be modeled in multiple ways using a Git database. Issues are files in a repo called issue1.md, issue2.md ... or issues are branches on a repo ... or something else.
GitLab I know models their Wiki as a git repo. I think issues and PRs should be their own repo as well.... a branch for each issue or pr? Could tie it all up using submodules (or not, whatever)... just please someone take the jump first and do this.