Google Code Hosting
2006.07.27 19:42
When I first released Templation last fall I took a look at project hosting. SourceForge seemed the obvious choice, but it was plagued with problems and didn't support Subversion (they do now I guess). I opted to create my own repository at TextDrive, but that still left the issue of bug tracking. I've looked at Trac but ultimately it seems like a big hassle to get it up and running.
That's why today when I heard about Google's new Open Source hosting initiative I jumped on top of it. Not only do they provide a high availability distributed subversion repository, but they are attempting to innovate on the issue-tracking side as well. This is perfect for me since I'm not particularly impressed by anything I've used so far. Time to see how Google stacks up.
My assumptions about why Google is better:
- Google's infrastructure is rock solid.
- Google has not need to make money directly from this, thus no incentive to quietly ignore problems in favor of paying customers.
- It's simple and straightforward. Sourceforge is a usability abomination.
- No website hosting. I don't need a website for my project, the way SourceForge has done it has always confused me. I'll host my own site and Google can host the bug tracker and repository.
- Searchability. I want people to find Templation. I can't count the number of times I've searched for a known project on SourceForge and actually had to go to vanilla web search just to find it.
Although the interface is a little sparse (no file distributions yet!), I have quite a bit of confidence that Google will make this a very useful and usable service. The project URL is:
http://code.google.com/p/templation/
Good to see that Templation is still alive... sort of.
— Paul Armstrong Jul 28, 08:40 am #
— Gabe da Silveira Jul 28, 09:42 am #