Top 10 Source Code Versioning and Management tools

Important news about Source Code Versioning and Management tools

2020. GitHub is now free for all teams



GitHub has made all of its essential features available at no cost for all users. This includes free, unlimited private repositories with unrestricted collaborators for everyone, including teams using the service for commercial projects, as well as up to 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions, the company’s automation and CI/CD platform. Teams seeking more advanced features like code owners or enterprise functionalities like SAML support will still need to upgrade to a paid plan. However, these now start at $4 per month per user for the Teams plans, compared to the previous $9, with the Enterprise plan beginning at $21 per month per user.


2018. GitHub business users now get access to public repos



In a move that would have made any galactic hitchhiker nod with approval, GitHub—yes, the code-hosting service that Microsoft, in a fit of whimsy or sheer practicality, recently decided to acquire—is rolling out a few shiny new features aimed squarely at its business users. Up until now, corporate folks tucked safely behind their Enterprise firewalls were as isolated from the sprawling cosmos of open-source repositories as a fish stranded on a mountain peak. But lo and behold, that’s about to change! Now, with a flick of the proverbial switch, business users on GitHub’s Business Cloud and self-hosted Enterprise can wander freely into the vast realms of open-source code, mingling and collaborating with developers across the galaxy—er, GitHub community. And, as if that weren’t enough to make even the most reserved sysadmin giddy, GitHub has bundled in a unified search feature, letting users peer both into their cloistered internal repositories and the wide-open reaches of public repos, bringing order to their own little corner of the coding universe.

2018. Microsoft acquired GitHub



Microsoft has acquired the well-known code sharing and collaboration platform GitHub for $7.5 billion. From small startups to major corporations like Microsoft, companies utilize the cloud-based platform to collaborate on code. GitHub boasts 27 million software developers working on 80 million code repositories. Thus, it appears to be a logical acquisition for the new Microsoft, which, under CEO Satya Nadella, has intensified its emphasis on supporting software developers through cloud services—regardless of whether they are coding for Microsoft Windows or not. GitHub is used for everything from websites to iPhone apps. Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub also signifies we will begin to see even more seamless integration between Microsoft’s developer tools and the platform.


2016. GitHub gets project management tool



GitHub introduced the "largest update" of its Git-based code hosting service. With this update, GitHub is expanding beyond code by incorporating some fundamental Kanban board-like project management features. GitHub has always supported integrations with various project management tools, but now you can also use this new built-in tool to move cards with pull requests, issues and notes between columns such as “in-progress,” “completed,” and “never going to happen” (or any other labels you prefer). Similar to Trello and other tools, you’ll be able to drag and drop cards between columns as needed.


2016. Atlassian launches Bitbucket Pipelines



Atlassian introduced Bitbucket Pipelines, which provides a continuous delivery service integrated directly into the Atlassian-hosted Bitbucket Cloud platform. With this, developers can effortlessly automate their workflow for building and deploying code each time they push an update to their Bitbucket repositories. During the beta phase, Bitbucket Pipelines will be available at no cost to all developers who wish to test it out. Additional updates include the debut of Connect for JIRA Service Desk, which now enables third-party developers to create embeddable add-ons for that service and the open-sourcing of RADAR, Atlassian’s internal tool for generating API documentation, which predictably adheres to the Open API Initiative’s standards.


2015. Atlassian merges Bitbucket and Stash developer services



Atlassian has long provided a range of Git-based developer services under the Bitbucket and Stash brands for developers seeking either cloud-based or on-premises code management solutions. Now, however, the company is merging these brands under the Bitbucket name and introducing a number of new features for its Git-based services. Atlassian is also unveiling three major new functionalities for Bitbucket. The first is Git Mirroring, which will streamline and accelerate Git use for distributed teams. The second is support for large files — an area where Git has historically faced challenges — and the third is support for projects, which will greatly simplify the organization of complex Git repositories. It’s worth mentioning, though, that Bitbucket now contends with the likes of GitHub Enterprise and other enterprise Git solutions. Even Microsoft, after all, now provides Git support within its Team Foundation Server products.


2015. Collaboration platform for developers GitLab raises $4M



GitLab, the open source Git-based collaboration platform for developers, today announced that it has secured $4 million in Series A funding. The company, which provides a free community edition, a free SaaS version and a paid enterprise edition of its service, says it will use the new capital to accelerate growth and broaden its global presence. Git, naturally, has become the standard method for managing code for many development teams. While GitHub is probably the most well-known Git-hosting service, there are several rivals in this arena — each adding a slightly different spin (and user interface) on what is essentially a hosted version of Git. For instance, Atlassian offers both free and paid Git hosting solutions. GitLab’s emphasis on its open source approach distinguishes it from some of these competitors.


2015. Version control service GitHub raises $250M



GitHub, the software development collaboration and version control platform based on the popular open source Git tool, has secured a $250 million funding round. The company plans to use this new investment to accelerate its growth and enhance its sales and engineering teams (as is common practice when companies raise funds). There is no doubt that Git has become a de facto version control system for numerous startups and GitHub currently leads the field among companies that essentially offer Git as a service. Atlassian, Microsoft, GitLab and others provide similar services, both cloud-hosted and on-premises, but GitHub has clearly garnered the most attention in recent years. GitHub reports having around 10 million users collaborating on over 25 million projects (up from 10 million in January 2014). Given that the company offers free accounts, it’s unclear how many of these users are actually paying for the service, although pricing begins at $5/month.


2015. Code management service Bitbucket opens to third-party extensions



Bitbucket, Atlassian’s GitHub-like code management platform, is receiving a significant update this week that now enables third-party tools to integrate their applications directly into the service. Atlassian asserts that this new Connect for Bitbucket feature will assist developers in consolidating all the information needed to deploy their code in one location, eliminating the need to frequently switch between unintegrated tools. The company contends that no other product on the market offers this level of integration directly within the product’s user interface. Some of the initial partners for this feature include code analytics providers like StiltSoft and bitHound, cloud IDEs like Codeanywhere and Codio and Sourcegraph’s code search utility. Currently, there are around a dozen plug-ins available.


2015. Google discontinues Google Code



Another Google service is being discontinued because Google says it has been outpaced by alternatives. This time it’s Google Code that’s being shut down—Google cites the reason for the complete closure as a “growing share” of projects on the service being “spam or abuse,” with the associated “administrative burden” being “almost entirely” related to managing abuse. In a post on its Open Source Blog, Google points out that circumstances have changed since it established Google Code back in 2006, with the goal of offering a dependable and stable project hosting platform. Consequently, it argues that developers have since migrated to “better” services, such as GitHub—including Google itself relocating many of its own open source projects to where more developer activity is taking place.