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SourceForge Commits to Git, Bazaar and Mercurial Support

The sites and services existing under the SourceForge umbrella have experienced some significant changes in the past several months. In the first three months of 2009, we've seen management changes and the re-direction of some SourceForge properties. SourceForge is ushering in another change -- free hosting for the Git, Bazaar, and Mercurial source code management systems. These services are now available to every open source project registered with SourceForge.net.

The new source code management (SCM) systems supplement SourceForge's Subversion and CVS support.

Ross Turk, SourceForge's Director of Community, said that freedom of choice was the major impetus for adding the new SCM methods, and that SourceForge feels "it’s better to provide a broad selection of quality tools and let open source developers choose the one that fits their needs."

It was a wise move, as source code management system preferences are often as deep-seated and passionate as one's preference for a particular text editor or desktop environment. Indeed, even if personal preference isn't an issue, the nature of a project, its developers, and the systems and machines they use to make changes to the code influences what SCM is used.

Over the past six months, SourceForge has released new developer tools with increasing frequency. SourceForge has focused heavily on its Hosted Apps tools, which give developers instant, virtualized access to applications such as Trac, MediaWiki, and Laconica.

SourceForge has made some positive changes in the past few months, emphasizing its commitment to both developers and the wider open source community. Certainly the addition of these services aren't the last changes we'll see -- SourceForge, like any living software project, is a continual work in progress.

• Subversion
• open source
• git
• scm
• cvs
• SourceForge
• bazaar
• mercurial
• source code management

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