[RESOLVED] google code, sourceforge...pros, cons, opinions?

Bjom

So let's say that once upon a time I have a small and trivial class (e.g. session_handler) that I like so much that I feel I need to share it with the world...

Also I have used it in a project and have put some open source license into it that requires me publicising the source ... (that's not the actual requirement, but one possibility, I know)

What would be a recommended platform for this and why? Google code, Sourceforge, my own website, a combination of these, any other place?

Are there any catches to google code/sourceforge, any restrictions. Can/should I use both?

I'd be happy to hear any opinions, facts or your experiences....

Bjom

laserlight

Bjom wrote:
What would be a recommended platform for this and why? Google code, Sourceforge, my own website, a combination of these, any other place?

It depends on what you want, methinks. If you use a code hosting service, you would get access to things like a bug tracker, and you probably can settle for a service available at zero price. If you host it yourself, you may need to do a little more work to setup such tools, and also update them when necessary, and possibly have to pay for the hosting, but you also get the free reign to customise exactly what you want.

Bjom wrote:
Are there any catches to google code/sourceforge, any restrictions. Can/should I use both?

Google Code has a rather restrictive set of licenses allowed. This is a Good Thing in principle, but a Bad Thing if you disagree with their choices.

I suggest that you search online for code hosting comparisons to see which has the features that you want. If none will suffice, by all means host it yourself.

Bjom

This is what I found out so far:

General
As for parallel hosting - it's possible (if one wishes to do so).

Google explicitly states that you may host your project simultaneously anywhere else. Sourceforge has nothing in their Terms of Use that would prohibit that either. The licenses that are allowed on both sites would make any restriction void anyway.

From my first impression both seem good. I like google a bit better - w/o being able to actually say why, maybe because it lacks features and looks cleaner 😉

Licenses
Sourceforge accepts OSI compliant licenses

While google code accepts the limited set of licenses shown in the list below. I compiled it here, because it doesn't seem to be available on the net - you'll only see it when setting up a (test-) project.

Google Code - allowed licenses

Apache License 2.0
Artistic License/GPL
Eclipse Public License 1.0
GNU General Public License v2
GNU General Public License v2
GNU Lesser General Public License
MIT License
Mozilla Public License 1.1
New BSD License

I'm thinking of using the LGPL.

Uploading a project/Version Control
For both of them you need to familiarize yourself with using a version control system with which to create the repositories and upload them: CVS or Subversion for sourcforge; Mercurial or Subversion for Google.

I'm going to go with Subversion - the free book for which you find here

Now back to subverting my project...

Bjom

laserlight

Bjom wrote:
For both of them you need to familiarize yourself to use a version control system with which to create the repositories and upload them: CVS or Subversion for sourcforge; Mercury or Subversion for Google.

Actually, Sourceforge also has support for Bazaar, Git and Mercurial.

Bjom wrote:
I'm going to go with Subversion - the free book for which you find here

Subversion is a good choice: it is mature with a pretty large user base and good tool support. On the other hand, distributed version control systems like Bazaar, Git and Mercurial offer features that may be useful to you (read: Distributed Version Control Systems – Why and How).

Bjom wrote:
From my first impression both seem good. I like google a bit better - w/o being able to actually say why, maybe because it lacks features and looks cleaner

If you are willing to consider the use of a distributed version control system, I suggest that you also consider Launchpad. That said, I note that you do not actually need to use version control if the class is really so trivial: you might just upload the code as-is for a release, and stop there.

Bjom

Thanks for the update, good to keep the info accurate - I didn't see the other options over at sf.

I had a look at the distributed VCSs. That's a very good concept - I'll keep that in mind. For the moment I'll stick with svn, simply because it's popular over here and you find it in every other job-description.

The project won't be completely trivial - I'm thinking about adding a few classes together - auth-, session-, user-control and maybe more over time. Once I got it up and running I'll give you a linky and you can see yourself, if you like.

For google code at least you do need the vcs anyway if you want it so that users can browse the source on the site - w/o vcs you can only upload files for download.

Bjom