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Exclusive: Atlassian dresses up Stash to take on Github Enterprise

Barb Darrow — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:17 +0000

It’s clear that there are two major types of dev projects. One is for webscale and consumer-oriented apps. Then there is behind-the-firewall development for enterprise applications. As popular as Github has become, many companies still won’t trust their workloads to that code repository and version management system. That’s the audience Atlassian wants to woo with Stash, its Git repository management system, which has just been updated with support for more flexible workloads to encourage team development.

“The idea here is to make Git approachable for every enterprise team and the beauty is workflows and that comes from two main workflow types–branching and forking,” said Giancarlo Lionetti, group product manager for Atlassian’s developer products.

Forking allows an authorized contractor to access the code and get a copy to work on it, but won’t allow changes to flow back into the main project until they pass muster with admins, said Lionetti. Branching allows team members to take code off, work on it and then flow it back into the main repository.

Stash 2.4 also allows developers to build personal code repositories and, as needed, assign permissions to colleagues.

Stash competes with Collabnet as well as Github Enterprise, a formidable task, given the traction that Github has gotten among open-source oriented web developers. Stash claims some impressive customers including NASA, Nike, Intuit, eBay and Orbitz.

London-based Server Density, is a Github shop, but CEO David Mytton said via email that Atlassian is strong in the enterprise market, especially with its JIRA bug tracking tool. That could give Atlassian a leg up vis-a-vis Github overall with enterprises. Mytton characterized Github’s issue tracking tool as “fairly basic.”

And for those web developers outside the firewall, Atlassian competes with Bitbucket.

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Can Bitbucket prevail in a Github-obsessed world?

Barb Darrow — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:00:48 +0000

Github may be the kingpin of source code repositories and versioning systems with more than 2 million individual developers aboard, but Atlassian is pushing its revamped Bitbucket as a good option for corporate developers. On Tuesday, the company plans to unveil a major facelift to Bitbucket as well as new features including in-line commenting.

While Github is the repository and versioning system of choice in the open-source world, Bitbucket — which supports both Git and Mercurial repositories — is strong in private repositories and private coding teams, said Jay Simons, president of Atlassian. Bitbucket customers include Zillow, Nordstrom, Best Buy, Verizon, Orbitz and NASA, according to the company.

When GigaOM reported on a Github outage a few weeks ago, one commenter said that more developers will start looking for redundant repositories and that Bitbucket is a viable option. “It might be a good idea to mirror the central repo with multiple providers when it comes to [version control system] hosting,” commenter JohnB wrote. “It’s already becoming a best practice to do that with cloud hosting in general.”

Bitbucket user interface before (left) and after.

Atlassian also updated Stash, its 5-month-old on-premises Git-based code repository/version management offering, with support for pull requests. That means a developer using that piece of software at the time can be alerted of the update and sync up as needed. Stash targets companies that want to keep their code development inside the firewall.

While Github keeps a running count of active developers and repositories supported, Bitbucket is more interested in development teams and claims 20,000 of them use the service. Bitbucket is free for teams of up to 5 developers who can use an unlimited number of repositories. There is a nominal $1 per user per month charge for each additional user. Github is free for open source developers but the company also offers price plans based on number of repositories used.

Other code repositories include Google Code and CodebaseHQ.

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5 Collaborative Code Sharing Tools

Thursday Bram — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:00:38 +0000

Sharing code can be one of the toughest parts of managing a big project: a lot of collaboration tools have a way to share written content and images but they don’t handle code particularly well. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. The following tools make it much easier to share code, whether you just need to pass along a snippet or you need to handle forks of existing projects, and several of them also offer ways to keep code private, with appropriate security measures.

Github: Github is one of the most recommended tools for managing code. It offers free repositories for open source projects, as well as inexpensive private repositories, based on the Git version control system. Tools for bug tracking, code review and management are all integrated. Github’s pricing starts at $7 per month, but if you’re using it to manage code for an organization, it’s worthwhile checking out the business plans available, which start at $25.
Pastebin: If you just need a way to share a snippet of code quickly, Pastebin is the right tool. It’s free to use, although it’s important to remember that the code you share is public.
Pastie: Pastie offers a fast way to deal with code snippets, in a similar fashion to Pastebin. You can get them up and online in about as long as it takes you to copy and paste. From there, you can send a link to anyone who needs to look at your code.
Google Code: Google provides its own code sharing solution. You can host individual projects through the site, as well as manage versions through either Mercurial or Subversion.
Bitbucket: On Bitbucket, you can share code, branch and merge projects. The site is based on the Mercurial version control system. For a project with five or fewer users, you can use Bitbucket for free. Tiered service is available based on the number of users who need to access your project, starting at $10 per month.

It’s always worth consulting with your development team before making a final decision about code management. While one of these tools may seem like exactly what you need, there may be some considerations that simply aren’t seen at the broadest level. Coders on your team may have personal preferences, or one tool may work particularly well with their existing set up.

Image courtesy Flickr user Ronny-Andre Bendiksen

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