Comparison of source code hosting facilities

See also: Collaborative Development Environment and comparison of revision control software

A source code repository is a file archive and web hosting facility where large amounts of source code for software, but also for web pages are kept, either publicly or privately. They are often used by open-source projects and other multi-developer projects to handle various versions. They help developers submit patches of code in an organized fashion. Often these web sites support version control, bug tracking, release management, mailing lists, and wiki-based documentation.

People who write software retain their copyright when their software is posted to any code hosting facilities, including the "non-gnu" section of GNU Savannah—with the exception of contributors to FSF-copyrighted programs at GNU Savannah.[1][2][3]

Overview

General information

Name Manager Established Notes Countries blocked Server side: all free software Client side: non-free JS code Developed and/or used CDE Require free software on registration Ad-free Cost
Alioth Debian Project 2003 Preference for Debian related projects Yes No FusionForge ? Yes Gratis
Assembla Assembla, Inc 2005 No ? ? No Yes 15-day free trial. Commercial projects with customizable sets of tools and features.
Beanstalk Wildbit 2007 No ? ? No Yes Gratis for one repository
BerliOS FOKUS[4] 2000 Abandoned in April 2014[5] Yes ? BerliOS No No Gratis
Betavine Vodafone 2007 No ? ? No No Gratis
Bitbucket Atlassian 2008 No Yes ? No Yes Free private repositories are limited to 5 users
CloudForge Collabnet 2000 No ? ? No Yes No
CodePlex Microsoft 2006 (May) No ? ? No Yes Gratis
Fedora Hosted Fedora Project ? Yes Yes ? No Yes ?
Freepository ? 1999 Yes Yes ? ? Yes Gratis accounts have web access only.
GitHub GitHub, Inc 2008 (April) No yes ? No Yes Gratis for public, paid for private.
Gogs Gogs Team 2014 (Feb) ? Yes ? No Yes Free
GitLab GitLab B.V. 2011 (September)[6] No yes GitLab Community Edition (CE) free software, GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) proprietary No Yes Unlimited public and private repos, unlimited public and private collaborators[7]
Gitorious Powow AS[8] 2008 (January) Acquired by GitLab. gitorious.org will shut down end of May 2015 [9] Yes Yes ? No Yes ?
Gna! The Gna! people 2004 (January) Only for free software projects. Code access review[10] Yes no Savane Yes Yes Gratis
GNOME Git Repositories GNOME Foundation 2008 Accessing this resource is only granted to developers requesting explicit permission to existing GNOME module maintainers. Yes No Cgit No Yes Gratis, but limited to a set of pre-approved developers, see Notes.
GNU Savannah Savannah Administration 2001 (January) Project by the Free Software Foundation and projects with a GPL compatible license. Code access review[11] Yes no Savane Yes Yes Gratis
Google Code Google 2006 (July) Closing (new project creation disabled March 12, 2015). [12] Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria[13] No Yes ? No Yes ?
JavaForge Intland Software 2005 For open-source projects only. No No ? No Yes Gratis
Launchpad Canonical Ltd. 2004 Supports only Bazaar for version-controlled repository hosting. Yes Yes Launchpad No Yes ?
Ourproject.org Comunes Collective 2002 For free software, free culture and free knowledge projects. Yes Yes ? No Yes Gratis
OW2 Consortium OW2 Consortium ? oriented on middleware technology. ? Yes ? No Yes ?
SEUL ? 1997 (May) ? Yes ? No Yes ?
SourceForge Dice Holdings 1999 (November) For open-source projects only.[14] Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria[15] Yes[16][17] No Apache Allura No No Gratis, commercial services are offered as well
Tigris.org (community) 2000 Restricted to collaborative software development tools. Tigris.org is no longer accepting new project proposals. ? Yes ? No No ?

Features

Name Code review Bug tracking Web hosting Wiki Translation system Shell server Mailing List Forum Personal branch Private branch Announce Build system Team Release Binaries Self-hosting
Alioth NoYesYesNoNoYesYes YesYesYesYesNoNo ?Yes
Assembla Yes[18]YesYesYesYes NoNoNoYes Yes[19] YesYesYes?No
Beanstalk Yes[20] No No NoNoNoNoNoYes Yes NoNoYesNoNo
BerliOS ?YesYes Yes[n 1] ?YesYes Yes??Yes[21]???Yes
Bitbucket Yes[22] Yes[n 2] Yes[23] YesNoNoNoNoYes Yes[n 3] NoNoYesYesCommercially (Stash)[n 4]
CloudForge ? Yes Yes YesNoNoNoNo? ? ????No
CodePlex NoYesNoYesNoNoYes YesNoNoNoNoNoYesNo
Fedora Hosted YesYesNoYesNoNo NoNoNoNoNoNoNo??
GitHub Yes[24] Yes[25][n 5] YesYesNoNoNoNoYesYes[n 6]Yes 3rd-party (e.g. Travis CI and Appveyor)YesYesCommercially (GitHub Enterprise)
GitLab Yes[26]YesYesYesNoNoNo NoYesYesYesYes[27]YesNoYes[n 7]
Gitorious YesNoNoYesNoNoNo NoYesNoNoNoYesYesYes
Gna! ? Yes Yes No Yes ? Yes No ? No ? No ??Yes
GNOME Git Repositories No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
GNU Savannah Yes[28]YesYesNoNoYesYes No[29]NoNoYesNoYes?Yes
Google Code YesYes No YesNoNo No No Yes[n 8] NoNoNoNo No longer for new projects[n 9] No
JavaForge Yes[30]YesYesYesNoNoNo YesNoNoYesYesYes?No
java.net/Project Kenai ?YesYesYesNoNoYes YesYesYesYesYesYes?No
Launchpad YesYesNoNoYes NoYesNoYes Yes[n 10] Yes Yes[n 11] Yes?Yes
Ourproject.org ?YesYesYesNo?YesYes??????Yes
SourceForge YesYesYesYesNoYesYes YesYesYesYesNoYesYesYes
tigris.org NoYesYesYesNoNoYes YesYesYesYesNo? No longer for new projects[n 12] No
Name Code review Bug tracking Web hosting Wiki Translation system Shell server Mailing List Forum Personal branch Private branch Announce Build system Team Release Binaries Self-hosting

Other features

Available version control systems

Name CVS Git Mercurial SVN GNU Bazaar TFS Arch Perforce
Alioth Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No
Assembla No Yes No Yes No No No Yes
Beanstalk No Yes No Yes No No No No
BerliOS Yes Yes[43] Yes[44] Yes No No No ?
Betavine Yes No No Yes No No No ?
Bitbucket No Yes Yes No No No No ?
CodePlex No Yes Yes Yes No Yes No ?
Fedora Hosted No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No ?
Freepository No No No Yes No No No ?
GitHub No Yes No Yes[45] No No No ?
GitLab No Yes No No No No No ?
Gitorious No Yes No No No No No ?
Gna! Yes No No Yes No No No No
GNOME Git Repositories No Yes No No No No No No
GNU Savannah Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[46] No Yes No
Google Code No Yes Yes Yes No No No ?
java.net No Yes[47] Yes[47] Yes[47] No No No ?
JavaForge Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No ?
Launchpad Import only Import only[48] Import only[49] Import only Yes No No No
Ourproject.org Yes No No Yes No No No ?
OW2 Consortium Yes No No Yes No No No ?
SEUL.org Yes No No Yes No No No ?
SourceForge Yes Yes Yes Yes No longer for new projects[50]No No ?
Tigris.org Yes No No Yes No No No ?
Name CVS Git Mercurial SVN GNU Bazaar TFS Arch Perforce

Popularity

Name Users Projects Prominent projects Alexa rank (lower = more popular)
Alioth 16,521[51] 1,061[51] SANE N/A (subdomain not tracked)
Assembla 800,000+[52] 60,000+[53] GXUnit, Hikarunix, HippoMocks, MadSwatter, SnakeYAML, Scala IDE 6,010 as of 3 July 2014[54]
BerliOS 52,811[55] 4,863[55] aMule, avidemux, SuperTux, LinCity-NG (before shutdown of BerliOS) 54,107 as of 3 July 2014[56]
Bitbucket 2,500,000 93,661[57] OGRE, TortoiseHg, Codeigniter, Pylons, Sphinx 2,696 as of 3 July 2014[58]
CodePlex 151,782 36,472[59] ASP.NET MVC Framework, Entity Framework, IronPython, Cosmos , PCSX-Reloaded 2,392 as of 3 July 2014[60]
Fedora Hosted ? 411[61]
GitHub 8,500,000[62] 19,800,000+[62][n 1] Ruby on Rails, IronRuby, jQuery, Moodle, Diaspora, node.js, NumPy, Spring Framework, PHP, Play Framework, Scala, SciPy, PPSSPP, Dolphin (emulator), HDNes, PCSX2, phpMyAdmin, Poedit, ReactOS, Retroarch, Nestopia, RPCS3, Xenia, Whonix 97 as of 18 February 2015[63]
GitLab 20,000[64] 100,000+[64][n 1] GitLab Community Edition (CE) 24,485 as of 22 January 2015[65]
Gitorious Unknown[n 14] 33,750[66] Qt, MeeGo, GNU social 32,360 as of 3 July 2014[67]
Gna! 8,511 1,437 130,683 as of 3 April 2015[68]
GNU Savannah 57,591[69] 3,487[69] Most GNU projects (including Emacs), QEMU, GNU IceCat 54,672 as of 3 July 2014[70]
GNOME Git Repositories Unknown[n 14] 600+ GNOME Apps, GIMP, GTK N/A (subdomain not tracked)
Google Code Unknown[n 14] 250,000+[71] Inferno, Android, Chromium , N/A (subdomain not tracked)
JavaForge 816,023 as of 4 April 2015[72]
Launchpad 2,145,028[73] 32,699[74] Ubuntu, MySQL (code hosting), BlueBream (Zope 3) (bug tracking), Inkscape, Bazaar, GNOME Do, Drizzle, Launchpad, LiVES (translations) 5,618 as of 3 July 2014[75]
Ourproject.org Unknown[n 14] 1,411[76] Hispanic Critical Mass movement,[77][78] the Kune federated collaborative social network, the P2P Foundation workgroup, plenty of non-software free culture initiatives N/A (subdomain not tracked)
SourceForge 3,400,000+[79] 324,000[79] Inkscape (download hosting), LAME, MinGW, 7-Zip, Fluxbox, Audacity, ffdshow, EMule, FileZilla, LiVES, DeSmuME , BizHawk, Yabause, Mednafen, FCEUX, Nintendulator, Gambatte. 213 as of 18 February 2015[80]
Tigris.org Unknown[n 14] 684 Subversion,[n 15] TortoiseSVN, RapidSVN 47,234 as of 3 July 2014[81]
Name Users Projects Prominent projects Alexa rank (lower = more popular)

Specialized hosting facilities

The following are open-source software hosting facilities that only serve a specific narrowly focused community or technology.

Name Ad-free CVS Git SVN Arch Notes
Drupal Yes No Yes No No Only for Drupal related projects.
freedesktop.org Yes No Yes No No Only for interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, including the X Window System (X11) and cairo (graphics).
GNOME Git Repositories No No Yes No No Only for GNOME related projects.
mozdev Yes Yes ? No No Only for Mozilla related projects.
OCamlForge Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Only for Ocaml related projects
RubyForge Yes Yes Yes Yes No Only for Ruby related projects
Name Ad-free CVS Git SVN Arch Notes

See also

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 One common wiki for all projects
  2. Anyone can submit Bug Reports without logging in.
  3. private branch limited to 5 users on free plan, see Pricing and plans — bitbucket.org
  4. Self hosted version is known as Stash and only supports Git repositories
  5. Requires one to log in to report a Bug.
  6. private branches are only available with paid plans, not with the free plan, see Plans and Pricing GitHub
  7. Has an open source Community Edition and commercial Enterprise Edition
  8. git and mercurial only
  9. deprecated, see A Change to Google Code Download Service
  10. Currently only available for security vulnerability updates
  11. Ubuntu
  12. deprecated, see
  13. site is open source, see Gitorious' code on Gitorious
  14. 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Data not available.
  15. Bug tracking only, as a legacy service after the Subversion project migrated to the Apache Software Foundation.

References

  1. Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation. Gnu.org (2014-10-18). Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  2. Sourceforge. "terms of use". says "PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU RETAIN OWNERSHIP OF ANY COPYRIGHTS, ... IN ANY CONTENT YOU SUBMIT."
  3. Github. "Github terms of service". says "We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service."
  4. BerliOS – The Open Source Mediator
  5. BerliOS Developer: New berliOS portal launched. Web.archive.org. Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  6. "About". GitLab.com. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
  7. "GitLab Cloud". GitLab.com. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
  8. Mathiesen, Marius. "Powow AS acquires Gitorious AS « The Gitorious Blog". Retrieved 3 September 2013.
  9. GitLab acquires Gitorious to bolster its on premises code collaboration platform | GitLab. About.gitlab.com (2015-03-03). Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  10. Step 1: Services and Requirements [Gna!]. Gna.org. Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  11. Hosting requirements [Savannah]. Savannah.gnu.org. Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  12. Bidding farewell to Google Code. Retrieved on 2015-03-11.
  13. Google Project Hosting – Google Code. Code.google.com (20 July 2006). Retrieved on 2010-11-26.
  14. "About (SourceForge)". SourceForge. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  15. Terms_of_Use – sitelegal. Sourceforge.net (19 October 2009). Retrieved on 2010-11-26.
  16. "About Allura". SourceForge. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  17. "The Next SourceForge". SourceForge. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  18. Assembla Merge Requests
  19. Pricing/Plans — assembla.com
  20. — Introducing Code Review
  21. BerliOS Developer: Welcome. Developer.berlios.de. Retrieved on 2013-09-21.
  22. — Using Mercurial Queues And Bitbucket.org
  23. Publishing a Website on Bitbucket - Bitbucket - Atlassian Documentation. Confluence.atlassian.com. Retrieved on 2013-09-21.
  24. GitHub Pull Requests
  25. no file attachments, but images can be embedded GitHub Issue Tracker — GitHub
  26. - GitLab features
  27. GitLab CI
  28. From Savannah's Maintenance Docs, How To Get Your Project Approved Quickly: "The review we do can be lengthy and difficult for both the submitter and the reviewer. Be sure to follow these steps; if your project doesn't comply with our requirements, we will ask you to make changes to your project or register again. This ensures a level of quality for projects hosted at Savannah, and even more important, raises awareness of these legal and philosophical issues related to free software."
  29. From Savannah's documentation, this feature is deprecated. See
  30. Integrator Workflow: Pull Requests – codeBeamer Knowledge Base
  31. Ticket Tags explanation
  32. Assembla API documentation
  33. How to Focus your Team with Custom Tabs
  34. Space Manager announcement
  35. Advanced Merge Requests for Git
  36. Introducing Protected Branches
  37. GitHub API docs
  38. GitHub pages
  39. Gist is a pastebin service operated by GitHub
  40. STL File Viewing
  41. Creating Pages with the automatic generator - User Documentation. Help.github.com. Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  42. Forge / Documentation / Docs Home. Sourceforge.net (2013-05-30). Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  43. News, BerliOS Project (5 July 2008), BerliOS provides GIT Source Control Management, retrieved 2008-12-10
  44. News, BerliOS Project (5 July 2008), BerliOS provides Mercurial (HG) Source Control Management, retrieved 2008-12-10
  45. Collaborating on GitHub with Subversion 路 GitHub. Github.com (2012-06-26). Retrieved on 2015-04-01.
  46. Savannah Support Request, sr #106417 (24 October 2008), GNU Bazaar on Savannah, retrieved 2008-12-10
  47. 47.0 47.1 47.2 "java.net Managing a Project: Source Code Repository". 8 February 2013. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
  48. Launchpad supports Git imports.
  49. Accessing Git, Subversion and Mercurial from Bazaar.
  50. SourceForge docs for bazaar, Bazaar is no longer available for new projects, they only offer limited support for Bazaar for projects previously using it on the Classic SourceForge system (2013-07-01).
  51. 51.0 51.1 "Alioth: Welcome". alioth.debian.org. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  52. Assembla: Home
  53. "Assembla integrates with Basecamp and offers workspaces and portfolios for distributed agile development teams". 37signals. 6 March 2009.
  54. "How popular is assembla.com?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  55. 55.0 55.1 BerliOS Developer Portal
  56. "How popular is berlios.de?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  57. Repository List
  58. "How popular is bitbucket.org?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  59. CodePlex – CodePlex – Project Directory
  60. "How popular is codeplex.com?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  61. Fedora Hosted project list. Retrieved on 2013-05-22.
  62. 62.0 62.1 GitHub Press Page. Retrieved on 2015-02-18.
  63. "How popular is github.com?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2015-02-18.
  64. 64.0 64.1 The hardware that powers 100,000 git repositories. Retrieved on 2011-01-22.
  65. "How popular is gitlab.com?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2015-01-22.
  66. Projects. Gitorious.org. Retrieved on 2013-10-29.
  67. "How popular is gitorious.org?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  68. "How popular is gna.org?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2015-04-03.
  69. 69.0 69.1 Statistics – Savannah. gnu.org. Retrieved 2011-09-30.
  70. "How popular is nongnu.org?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  71. Rosenberg, Jonathan (21 December 2009). "The meaning of open". Official Google blog.
  72. "How popular is launchpad.net?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2015-04-04.
  73. People and teams in Launchpad. launchpad.net. Retrieved 2013-01-02.
  74. Projects registered in Launchpad. launchpad.net. Retrieved 2013-01-02
  75. "How popular is launchpad.net?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  76. , Accessed March 8, 2014
  77. "Spanish bicycle Critical Mass movement". March 8, 2014.
  78. Caprarelli, Giuseppe (2007). "A Plus in Quality of Life". Workshop 3a: Self-Organized European Bike Workshops. Rome, Italy.
  79. 79.0 79.1 "What is SourceForge.net?" sourceforge.net.
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  81. "How popular is tigris.org?". alexa.com. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-07-03.

External links