5 ms·

Doesn't this mean BitBucket will die? Slowly, sure, but Mercurial support seemed like a key differentiator relative to GitHub.

the_duke 7y ago
They wouldn't have done it if a they had a significant user base using Mercurial, or if Mercurial usage was showing promising growth.
- cmiles74 7y ago
  The article claims that virtually no new accounts are using Mercurial support at all. I suspect that they are working on improving their build pipeline and CI tooling and it's proving to expensive (perhaps in both time and money) to get that working reliably for both Git and Mercurial.
DanHulton 7y ago
If it's going to die (and it might, I know I couldn't get off it fast enough), this can likely only help, not hinder. Not every feature helps you. There's a support burden with every line of code, and the support burden for another entire version control system is probably pretty high. Every new feature you add has to either be written for that second version control system as well, or come with a disappointing article explaining why not. If anything, this has the potential to free up resources they can spend on creating a differentiator that engages more than 1% of their customers.
philpem 7y ago
The key differentiator on Github's side is community involvement. The UI allows you to quickly search for projects across repositories. Bitbucket seems more geared to teams working internally; finding projects on Bitbucket is hard. To be brutally honest, I used Bitbucket because I had a grandfathered academic account (most features free). Github offers nearly all that I had on that account now. Github is great for "social" coding, but Bitbucket is very clearly moving towards targeting insular, corporate development tasks. But then, with the price ticket on Atlassian's products, that's hardly a surprise. B2B is their bread and butter.
- antupis 7y ago
  yeah, I think that open source and other social products will gear towards Github. While Bitbucket will thrive in B2B space. currently, JIRA has a huge moat around it and I am not seeing that disappearing in the near future.
  - philpem 7y ago
    There's already a self-hosted version of Bitbucket which is fairly decent aside from being as slow as molasses (which, let's face it, is an 'Atlassian thing' at this point). I used to use Jira extensively for my own internal projects (and, hilariously, my personal TODO list), but I'm moving away from that. I'm moving from my own personal server to a couple of Droplets, and I realised in moving JIRA across just how bloated it is. Most of the SCM integration tools I use are pay-for now, so for $10/yr, I'm getting less than I'd get with a Mantis or Bugzilla install. I need to have a look for a new bugtracker. Custom Workflow support would be nice, that's really the only feature which kept me on JIRA for so long!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pard68 7y ago
We use Bitbucket at work because they offer selfhosting. Until Github can offer this I don't think Atlassian has anything to worry about.
- knute 7y ago
  https://github.com/enterprise https://github.com/enterprise GitHub has offered an onprem server for some time now.
  - pard68 7y ago
    Would you look at that! This was not an option about a year or two ago when we signed our contract for bitbucket...
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Fairly sure GitHub Enterprise has been a thing for several years now?
      - nixgeek 7y ago
        It was preceded by GitHub:FI, but Enterprise has existed since I worked there in 2013. Definitely not a new capability for them and it’s actually really nice to administer, e.g. very easy high-availability setup and excellent documentation. https://help.github.com/en/enterprise/2.16/admin/installation/configuring-github-enterprise-server-for-high-availability https://help.github.com/en/enterprise/2.16/admin/installatio...
    - fnord123 7y ago
      It's been around since 2011: https://github.blog/2011-11-01-introducing-github-enterprise/ https://github.blog/2011-11-01-introducing-github-enterprise...
- emilycook 7y ago
  GitLab employee, just wanna pop in here to say we have free self-hosting too in case anyone stumbles across this comment: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/index.html#self-managed https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/index.html#self-managed
Sean1708 7y ago
As a data point, our company that only uses git moved from GitLab to BitBucket literally about two months ago. No idea why (waaaay to low on the food chain) but I'm guessing it must have some advantages at least.
- vidanay 7y ago
  Most likely you will also see a Jira roll-out soon (unless that preceded the move to BitBucket)
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  We have moved from BitBucket after they had several days worth of unavailability over a year and the fact that they would regularly decline our company credit card, which would subsequently immediately block all commits to our repos. It was a mess which was simply fixable by re-submitting the card details again. They only had one job.
krzyk 7y ago
It is quite funny because BitBucket started as a GitHub for Mercurial users (it had only Hg support). Then they (after it was sold) added git support and now they are removing hg.
x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
Unlikely. The deep integration between JIRA, BitBucket, and Bamboo is a huge selling point.
probably_wrong 7y ago
Mercurial support was the one reason for me to still use Bitbucket: there is no other Bitbucket feature I can think of that Github doesn't already have, while Github's community is miles ahead since everyone and their dog is already there. More importantly, Bitbucket leaves the migration to you (if I read the article correctly). Once I download my repo and convert it to git, why would I stay with the company that just made me go through an annoying (and often painful) process, when I can migrate to Github with the exact same command? And why isn't there a "migrate this repo to git" button right there? I want to believe that Bitbucket has smart people and that this choice is a good one. But I'm with you there - to me, this definitely looks like Bitbucket will die.

the_duke 7y ago

They wouldn't have done it if a they had a significant user base using Mercurial, or if Mercurial usage was showing promising growth.

cmiles74 7y ago
The article claims that virtually no new accounts are using Mercurial support at all. I suspect that they are working on improving their build pipeline and CI tooling and it's proving to expensive (perhaps in both time and money) to get that working reliably for both Git and Mercurial.

DanHulton 7y ago

If it's going to die (and it might, I know I couldn't get off it fast enough), this can likely only help, not hinder. Not every feature helps you. There's a support burden with every line of code, and the support burden for another entire version control system is probably pretty high. Every new feature you add has to either be written for that second version control system as well, or come with a disappointing article explaining why not. If anything, this has the potential to free up resources they can spend on creating a differentiator that engages more than 1% of their customers.

philpem 7y ago

The key differentiator on Github's side is community involvement. The UI allows you to quickly search for projects across repositories. Bitbucket seems more geared to teams working internally; finding projects on Bitbucket is hard. To be brutally honest, I used Bitbucket because I had a grandfathered academic account (most features free). Github offers nearly all that I had on that account now. Github is great for "social" coding, but Bitbucket is very clearly moving towards targeting insular, corporate development tasks. But then, with the price ticket on Atlassian's products, that's hardly a surprise. B2B is their bread and butter.

antupis 7y ago
yeah, I think that open source and other social products will gear towards Github. While Bitbucket will thrive in B2B space. currently, JIRA has a huge moat around it and I am not seeing that disappearing in the near future.
- philpem 7y ago
  There's already a self-hosted version of Bitbucket which is fairly decent aside from being as slow as molasses (which, let's face it, is an 'Atlassian thing' at this point). I used to use Jira extensively for my own internal projects (and, hilariously, my personal TODO list), but I'm moving away from that. I'm moving from my own personal server to a couple of Droplets, and I realised in moving JIRA across just how bloated it is. Most of the SCM integration tools I use are pay-for now, so for $10/yr, I'm getting less than I'd get with a Mantis or Bugzilla install. I need to have a look for a new bugtracker. Custom Workflow support would be nice, that's really the only feature which kept me on JIRA for so long!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pard68 7y ago

We use Bitbucket at work because they offer selfhosting. Until Github can offer this I don't think Atlassian has anything to worry about.

knute 7y ago
https://github.com/enterprise https://github.com/enterprise GitHub has offered an onprem server for some time now.
- pard68 7y ago
  Would you look at that! This was not an option about a year or two ago when we signed our contract for bitbucket...
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Fairly sure GitHub Enterprise has been a thing for several years now?
    - nixgeek 7y ago
      It was preceded by GitHub:FI, but Enterprise has existed since I worked there in 2013. Definitely not a new capability for them and it’s actually really nice to administer, e.g. very easy high-availability setup and excellent documentation. https://help.github.com/en/enterprise/2.16/admin/installation/configuring-github-enterprise-server-for-high-availability https://help.github.com/en/enterprise/2.16/admin/installatio...
  - fnord123 7y ago
    It's been around since 2011: https://github.blog/2011-11-01-introducing-github-enterprise/ https://github.blog/2011-11-01-introducing-github-enterprise...
emilycook 7y ago
GitLab employee, just wanna pop in here to say we have free self-hosting too in case anyone stumbles across this comment: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/index.html#self-managed https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/index.html#self-managed

Sean1708 7y ago

As a data point, our company that only uses git moved from GitLab to BitBucket literally about two months ago. No idea why (waaaay to low on the food chain) but I'm guessing it must have some advantages at least.

vidanay 7y ago
Most likely you will also see a Jira roll-out soon (unless that preceded the move to BitBucket)
heavenlyblue 7y ago
We have moved from BitBucket after they had several days worth of unavailability over a year and the fact that they would regularly decline our company credit card, which would subsequently immediately block all commits to our repos. It was a mess which was simply fixable by re-submitting the card details again. They only had one job.

krzyk 7y ago

It is quite funny because BitBucket started as a GitHub for Mercurial users (it had only Hg support). Then they (after it was sold) added git support and now they are removing hg.

x3n0ph3n3 7y ago

Unlikely. The deep integration between JIRA, BitBucket, and Bamboo is a huge selling point.

probably_wrong 7y ago

Mercurial support was the one reason for me to still use Bitbucket: there is no other Bitbucket feature I can think of that Github doesn't already have, while Github's community is miles ahead since everyone and their dog is already there. More importantly, Bitbucket leaves the migration to you (if I read the article correctly). Once I download my repo and convert it to git, why would I stay with the company that just made me go through an annoying (and often painful) process, when I can migrate to Github with the exact same command? And why isn't there a "migrate this repo to git" button right there? I want to believe that Bitbucket has smart people and that this choice is a good one. But I'm with you there - to me, this definitely looks like Bitbucket will die.