SSWI — When in doubt, buff it out.
Google Announcement,
Written in Frisco, TX on July 27, 2006 and tagged with technology and site-spotlight.
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There is a comparison of features between SF and Google Code over at Engtech. There is also an article on Newsforge. I have already set up an account and checked in the code for K2 so that I can play a bit… I am currently underwhelmed.
Google announced their Google Code Project hosting service today at the O’reilly Open Source convention. Greg Stein of Apache, SVN and WebDAV fame announced in his session the new service from Google that is targeted at the Open Source Community.
The new service is set up to be a ‘sourceforge’ like offering, hosted on Google’s servers. The new service will integrate subversion, issue tracking, mailing lists, etc into one Google-fied package. This being Google there is a heavy smattering of search technology throughout. The new system will allow you to search your issue tracker and svn for instance.
This new service will be running out of Google Code Hosting.
More to come as time permits.
If you post about this on Twitter, please use the hashtag #silly437.
Luke Wertz, on March 1, 2007
Michael Heilemann, on March 1, 2007
Luke, I honestly think this is _great_ stuff. I could see us moving K2 over on there to make it easier to maintain.
Only thing is, I can’t commit to my test repository for some reason.
Chris J. Davis, on March 1, 2007
Mike, do you have another repo, cause I set one up as well… And welcome back from your vacation!
You do know that you have to use that 'random' svn pasword thingy right? I have committed to my K2 repo and everything went fine.
Luke Wertz, on March 1, 2007
Michael, to each their own :)
I could see where someone who hasn’t been using a SVN or a similar management tool would like to sign up with Google’s Code Hosting. I guess I just assumed that people were *already* using SVN for managing their projects, thus gaining very little by making a move go google’s system.
Chris J. Davis, on March 1, 2007
Hey Luke,
We were aleady using SVN for K2, but I think what Mike is talking about is the tight integration of features that google hosting give us.
The move to the new system has already given us (the devs) more interaction, and us (the users) more information. Don’t get me wrong I am more impressed with the possibilities than the current features at this time.
But knowing some of the people who are working on this little project makes me excited for the future.
Luke Wertz, on March 1, 2007
“Don’t get me wrong I am more impressed with the possibilities than the current features at this time.
But knowing some of the people who are working on this little project makes me excited for the future.”
I couldn’t agree more!
By the way, how did you find the move? Was it pretty painless? Did you guys move all your old versions to Google Code for the sake of archiving (or any other reasons), or did you just make a “clean break”? Any info you would be willing to share, i would find very interesting!
God bless,
Luke
Chris J. Davis, on March 1, 2007
We made as ‘clean’ a break as possible. We still have the pre-move code in our old svn repo but that code is now in development freeze.
The same goes for our former bug tracker.
We are trying to be sensitive to our users and give them time to migrate to the new location before we shut down any important features.
I think the move was fairly painless, but I didn’t move all those tickets :) One feature I would really like to see is some migration paths for projects coming from RT, TRAC or Mantis bug trackers. Currently you have to migrate all the tickets by hand; on a larger, older project that could be a show stopper in and of itself.
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed. Google seems to be spreading itself and just trying to be bigger, not better. I mean, the advantages of this over the already very well-established SF.net are minimal, at best. This isn’t new, it’s just rehashing something that has already been done (and done quite well).
I’m sure Google will come up with something to make this better in the future, but for now, it’s just another code repository, just like the other ones (well, maybe a little more Javascript and a little less advertising).
Blah, I don’t know. Hate to be the “downer,” but I just don’t see this as being anything too exciting.