I just wanted to revisit an earlier post I made nearly two years ago, when I started this blog. I had originally talked about the necessary tools for any software development project…

  • Version Control
  • Wiki
  • Issue Tracker

Back then, I hadn’t had much experience using free version control software other than CVS & SVN, and of the ones I had used (Subversion, CVS, Clearcase, Perforce, VisualSourceSafe), Subversion seemed like the best option. Also, I hadn’t tried using hosted solutions or any of the open source project hosting sites like github, or sourceforge, and had everything setup in-house on my desktop machine. I had mediawiki (along with apache’s modphp & postgres), and svnd running on my iMac, and had to make sure my computer was always on and reachable from the internet. DynamicDNS helps :)

That was 2010. This is 2012, and two things have happened…

  1. I have a new favorite Version Control System – Git.
  2. I have discovered online hosting for private Git repositories.

I started using Git (on Github.com) for my work beginning in March, and fell in love with its ease right away. It is so much better than SVN. For starters, Git can work offline, as it clones a copy of the entire repository onto your local machine. This makes check-ins and merges super efficient as well, and more importantly, adds redundancy to your repository data, as you have a backup copy on each machine that clones the repo. On top of that, Github.com is pretty awesome. Their issue tracking system, and wiki are pretty slick, and they support private repositories, albeit at a cost ($7.99/mo.)

I personally use Bitbucket.org, an Atlassian service (the makers of JIRA, and Confluence). Though the web interface (or SSH/HTTPS Git access) isn’t as snappy or slick as Github, they too provide a wiki (mediawiki style), and an issue tracker (similar to JIRA) for each hosted repository. And to top it all off, they support unlimited private repositories… for FREE! As long as you don’t need to collaborate. If you do want to collaborate, their “Team” plans are relatively cheap.

Personally, I love the speed and slickness of Github.com, and using it at my work is a delight. But for hosting my personal projects, Bitbucket.org serves me well enough… and at a much appreciated cost of “free”!

So, there it is – What every project needs?… to setup a private repo on one of these services.