Comparing Hg Code Hosting Providers

Mercury ElementMost usually, I’m a very organized person. Even before I was programming (when I was making Hero Quest maps in Q&A and WordPerfect) I would still want periodic backups of my data. Given all that, I’ve remained remarkably oblivious of Version Control for quite a long time. Here’s an overview of my VCS history:

  • 1990 – 1992 Derp derp, playing Commander Keen and friends.
  • 1992 – 2003 Copy-paste-style backups, periodically.
  • 2003 – 2005 Visual Sourcesafe. The horror…
  • 2005 – current SVN and TortoiseSVN. Much better!
  • 2011 – current Mercurial (with TortoiseHg), and a dash of Git.

On a coding project with friends, one of them suggested we’d use one of the DCVS systems: either Hg or Git. After a short debate (and after reading endless flamewars between the two) we decided on trying Hg. My “re-education” started with reading the HgInit tutorial by Joel Spolsky. Here’s a quote that stuck with me:

It turns out that if you’ve been using Subversion, your brain is a little bit, um, how can I say this politely? You’re brain damaged. No, that’s not polite. You need a little re-education.

True as it is.

To be honest though: I still don’t mind using SVN. At work we have an existing repository from which we’ll probably not be switching, and it even has some advantages over Hg. However, for any new project I would choose a DCVS, either Git or Hg, depending on the circumstances.

So for my latest pet project I’ve started a Hg repository as well. So far I’ve just been committing locally, using it as a backup and history mechanism. However, with friends and family joining on the project I will probably be moving the repository to an Open Source Hosting Provider. There’s a few that came to mind, and I’m currently considering four of them. Even though there’s a decent Wikipedia comparison article, I still decided to make my own comparison table with features I find interesting:

Google Code Bitbucket CodePlex SourceForge
Source Control Hg, Git, SVN Hg, Git Hg, Git, SVN, TFS Hg, Git, SVN
Issue tracker Custom JIRA Custom Custom
Wiki MoinMoin-based markdown Creole-based markdown Yes Daring Fireball-based markdown
Forum No No Yes Yes
Private projects No Yes No No
Licenses Any, single-licensed ? 10 OS licenses available Any OS license
Authentication Google Account Bitbucket account Codeplex + optional Win. Live SourceForge account
Projects 250,000+ 93,000+ 28,000+ 350,000+

Currently I’m leaning somewhat towards CodePlex, for no particular reason or rationale. Or perhaps I’ll end up trying them all before deciding. Either way, I’ll sleep another night on it, for now.

2 thoughts to “Comparing Hg Code Hosting Providers”

Comments are closed.