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Bidding farewell to Google Code

880 points by cdibona 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cdibona 12y ago
Hi everyone. I wanted to let you know (and I know this isn't a huge surprise) that we will be shutting down the Google Code project hosting system over the next year. Wired did a nice story about Github that touches on the shutdown: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microsoft-everyone-else/ http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microso... I'll be hanging around answering questions, but the short form of 'why' is that it just isn't used much anymore, ourselves included, in favor of Github or bitbucket.
- hsgeyfjw 12y ago
  how do you (google) get away with being such asses? i know a bunch of developers will come to your defense, and say things like it is a free service, but it's not really, because for google, users are the product, and you guys have developed a rep for constantly shutting those users down. switching costs are very real, and people just don't trust you anymore. i don't care about google code in particular, but i hate google by this point. just hate you.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    This is one service that needed to be shut down.
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    Edit: The parent comment was flagkilled, but he was ranting about how Google should be expected to keep Google Code (and their other failed services) on life support indefinitely out of the kindness of their heart, because negative public perception. This is pretty ridiculous. It is a free service, sustained only by how long corporate wants to foot the bill. This is why it's so important to keep in mind how sustainable your dependencies are longer term (if having to move away from them would be such a big deal). Not only that, but Google Code lost the mindshare battle and hasn't been getting much development attention for some time now. It has fallen way behind, is now sub-par, and there has been a mass exodus of projects away from it. It had a nice year or two, but it's time to put it down. It's simple: Stop wasting developer manpower, money, and time on something that no longer offers much utility. Close shop, figure out how those resources could be better spent doing things that are useful.
    - f055 12y ago
      Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products? What if Gmail switches to paid-only model? What if the next-big-Google-thing will be closed down after a year, again? What if free Google Apps will close down, and only paid version exists? What's the point of getting involved into any free Google stuff? What's the point of using Google at all?
      - gtaylor 12y ago
        > Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products? You just listed a bunch of projects that failed to get traction or lost mindshare battles. I expect an innovator to move on from failures, which is what all of your examples are. Reader: Failure, Google Code: Failure, G+: Failure, Wave: Failure. The reasons for each failure differ, but said reasons are irrelevant to this discussion. The fact is that Google attempted something, maybe enjoyed a little bit of success, but the results didn't meet their expectations. Rather than continue running these things with skeleton crews (to what effect?), they've done the right thing and closed them down. The only exception is Glass, which was an experiment that already is impacting other current and future products. It never had a guaranteed future. It never reached consumer "1.0".
        hackuser 12y ago
        > I expect an innovator to move on from failures That's great if you are an investor or employee, but if you are a user it kind of sucks. Google just needs to be up front about it (and maybe they are): We make no commitment to supporting this application or maintaining it as is. We might make radical changes, we might shut it down. If we do shut it down, we'll warn you at least 9 months ahead of time. I'm not going to invest much in those applications, but others might.
  - itsbits 12y ago
    it was expected by many people..infact there was discussion about same happening... Why to run a project when it is not being used?..nothing bad in that...People are angry about Glass..not this..
  - baggachipz 12y ago
    I might be feeding here, but the lesson is that you can't count on things Google releases to be around very long. Even APIs for popular products, like Google Maps. Just don't expect anything they release to have a long shelf life. It's annoying and it sucks, and it is now laughable when they tag things with phrases like "free code hosting forever" and so on. For them to change, they'd have to either: 1) Support everything into eternity, which given their propensity to release new things frequently would grow to be impossibly expensive, or 2) Be more disciplined in what they release, so that it can be supported in perpetuity. I don't see either happening, so we end up where we are now. They have to keep innovating or they'll stagnate and die.
    - gtaylor 12y ago
      They kind of get a bad rap for this because of how large and visible they are. The funny thing is that many of the people here on HN have worked on projects that had very finite lifetimes as well, often closing them down for some of the same reasons. Someone has to invest the time and money to keep services running, even if only limping along. Google likes to experiment and test the waters. It's part of why they've been so successful. I hope they keep killing off their underperforming/underused services so they can keep on pushing other things forward. However, closing down stagnant projects is very different from locking down access to previously open APIs (Google Maps). Since we're discussing the closure of Google Code, I won't get distracted with that controversial topic.
      - jdmichal 12y ago
        I also find a certain level of humor in the oft-espoused "release and pivot" ideology, accompanied with the pleas for mercy found in these Google product shutdown threads. What is different? Why is Google not supposed to release and pivot like everyone else?
        gtaylor 12y ago
        It is puzzling, but I think their rapid ascension has led to some people setting their expectations for Google too high. Others seem to hold them to some golden moral standard (of their own design), for some reason. In the end, they are a for-profit business. Not a charity.
- lloydde 12y ago
  I got a kick out of the CmdTaco cameo in the Wired article: “GitHub is just really smooth,” says Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda, who lived through the open source revolution as the editor-in-chief of the tech site Slashdot. “It’s a sexy, modern interface.” These are some captions in need of a meme generator.
  - timgws 12y ago
    Consider it done. http://i.imgur.com/Xdmlj6v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Xdmlj6v.jpg In all seriousness, though, I started my own open source project hosting website back in the day. It was the first to offer public Mercurial and Git hosting. Google Code existed then and the interface and functionality has not really changed since I released the first version of the site.
- shubhamjain 12y ago
  While true that no one uses Google Code. Every now and then, I bump into some obscure but a little useful project being hosted on Google Code. Maybe, makers of those projects have grown out of them and don't wish to put any more effort but still, there is a bit of value, I am able to derive from them. What will happen, if those projects are not migrated because their developers have simply forgotten about them?
  - AnkhMorporkian 12y ago
    Perhaps archive.org will take it upon themselves to archive all the projects.
  - btown 12y ago
    Someone needs to do an Internet Archive style project on all these repositories, put them up on Github, and make sure that they are indexed properly by search engines (i.e. intro pages become README.md, wikis are migrated, etc.).
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - nothrabannosir 12y ago
        Not at all, that's 100% the point of most open source licenses. Which are compulsory for a project on GC. E.g. MIT: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Specifically, note "Permission is granted" and "distribute". Comply with those terms (i.e. include that piece of text when you redistribute) and you satisfy MIT. GPL, &c, they all have similar clauses. In fact, MIT goes much further. I could take all those projects, mirror them, and charge people insane amounts of money for it. If you can't even rehost on Github, what good would copyleft be?
- mherdeg 12y ago
  It sounds like Google hasn't committed to serving this content in any form past 2016. But there is a plan to provide archival-style info throughout 2016 (tarballs per project). Is Google in touch with someone like the Intenet Archive to make sure that these data are still available after Google stops hosting them? I'm sure there's some group that's willing to take on the work of hosting the project metadata and associated files. I personally, occasionally use a handful of "orphaned" libraries that haven't been touched in years and only live on Google Code. Gonna be a bummer when those links break.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  From the comments "What will happen to things that are hosted on google code, like jquery and the google font set? Thousand, if not millions of pages link to these directly - will they all be invalidated? "
  - richardwhiuk 12y ago
    That's Google CDN, not Google Code, as the follow on comment says
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Apparently it's called Google APIs or something https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    I hope those millions of pages are not linking into Google Code URLs, which are repos for developers. I don't think popular libraries like jquery core and fonts even have Google Code URLs. They should be linking into Google's Hosted Libraries, which are separate and will continue AFAIK: https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide
- jnewland 12y ago
  Hi cdibona! I'm primary on-call at GitHub today, and I wanted to say thanks to everyone that worked on https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ and worked with us to load test it before this announcement. It's really cool to see so much work put into making it easy for folks to easily move their data.
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  I had my hopes up that you guys would update Google Code to be more of a contender with GAE and Compute integration.
  - cdibona 12y ago
    I have a secret desire to reuse the code domain in this manner.
    - oaktowner 12y ago
      Well...it was a secret.
- lake99 12y ago
  Thank you for taking questions. Can you give me a rough idea when you'll have the bitbucket migration tools in place?
- dudus 12y ago
  It's true that Google does not use Google Code for any coding project anymore, but it's still used as a support interface. For instance if you want to file bugs for AppEngine the official way is through Google Code https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list What are the plans on moving this and other issue lists for different Google products out of Google Code?
  - ajessup 12y ago
    PM on App Engine here. We'll continue to be using (and monitoring) the Google Code issue tracker until we have a robust alternative available. We have plans for this, we're just not ready to talk about them yet.
    - dudus 12y ago
      Is this a plan just for AppEngine or for all other Google Products that use Code as an external Issue Tracker?
      - ajessup 12y ago
        Not sure about other products
- eranation 12y ago
  One thing that might be nice to do - if you see a project with high recent download stats (I'm sure there are a few) but their developers seem to have abandoned them, will you please do a courtesy backup to github, or perhaps notify people who starred it that the owners didn't mograte it to GitHub and the data will be lost unless someone does.
- rogerbinns 12y ago
  Please can you add a way for projects on google code to do a redirect to wherever they have gone. I moved all my projects late 2013, put notices on all pages I could etc, but still searching for the project often shows the google code site first. https://code.google.com/p/apsw/ https://code.google.com/p/apsw/ Google Code did one thing very well - each project could have one wiki and issue tracker, but any number of source code repos. This is fantastic for projects where there are multiple parts - eg an Android client, an iOS client, multiple server parts etc. Github for example only lets you have one source repository per project, and as a result the wikis and issues are useless since they are almost always filed against the wrong sub-project. Every startup I have been involved in over the last many years used Google for business (users, groups, office stuff etc), but then for code hosting we were forced to go elsewhere, needing yet another set of user accounts, groups, admin, billing etc. There was a ticket begging to let folks pay for google code, but it never came to pass. All the startups would have gladly paid, especially to avoid dealing with multiple accounts, sites and admin. Some features like the issue tracker were quite good. Heck you could even prioritise issues - something github still didn't have the last time I looked.
  - tjohns 12y ago
    Google Code already has an option to flag a project as moved. From your project: Administer > Advanced > Project Moved For an example of what this looks like: http://code.google.com/p/iosched http://code.google.com/p/iosched
    - rossj 12y ago
      That's great, until code.google.com no longer resolves, at which point it won't help :( Would be nice if they used that info to automatically redirect to the new site.
      - Someone1234 12y ago
        They also should be returning a 301 and the new URL so crawlers can follow it and delete the old site from their records...
- eveningcoffee 12y ago
  Have you considered that Google Code hosts amount of code that is related to the research papers and are not actively maintained (many probably since uploading). This wast valuable resource will be gone forever.
  - Moru 12y ago
    Mabe someone will finally get it. You can't trust third-party sites to keep your stuff up. Host it yourself if you want to be sure it's around somewhere. Use free hosting as a backup plan.
    - skagedal 12y ago
      Looking at my own and others actual behavioral patterns, I'd say the opposite is more closer to the truth. Dead links often go to someone's old server that they at some point probably planned to keep online forever. But you are of course right in that redundancy is a good thing!
- frik 12y ago
  This wired article tries to rewrite the history: > rather geeky and sometimes unreliable internet site called SourceForge Wtf. SourceForge was for a long time very decent. It wasn't geeky nor unreliable, it offered CVS and later Subversion, web hosting, mailing list hosting, forums and downloads. GoogleCode itself was geeky with its very basic "Wiki", but it had a leaner "GMail style" UI, with only basic features so newer projects used it over SourceForge. "Bidding farewell to Google Code", that's a rather nice wording for closing down a web service. Please archive orphan open source projects to a read-only SVN/GIT repo or donate the data to archive.org. It reminds us that more open source projects should host the code on their servers, e.g. using Gitlab. In some years SourceForge and GitHub may get closed down too. Some orphan project of great value may get lost of the digital dark age.
  - sytse 12y ago
    If any open source projects want to self host with GitLab CE we will be glad to provide free consulting to help them migrate and provide a free instance. Contact me at sytse@gitlab.com to get started.
  - innocenat 12y ago
    I haven't read the source article, but SourceForge at some point was real slow. Like, it would takes minutes alone to Log In at SourceForge, let alone checking out SVN repo. Accessing website hosted on SourgeForge was real slow too. I think during that year (not sure which year), tons of projects migrate either to Google Code or to GitHub. It was later that sourceforge improve.
    - frik 12y ago
      Sourceforge was really good and as big in the open source world (between 1999 and 2006) like Github today. Later Google Code took over a larger part but never become as popular as Sourceforge or Github. Sourceforge is still used by many open source projects as download hosting provider (binary files). Google Code already stopped the download functionality several months/years(?) ago. Google Code was a 20% project created by Google devs in their 20% free-project-time, though it never improved beyond its first MVP stage, but was for many years very successful nevertheless.
- rwallace 12y ago
  As someone who used Google Code a while back (and did indeed end up moving to Github): it's a pity it had to end, but thank you for hosting it while it lasted. In its day, it was a service of unequaled quality.
- jfoster 12y ago
  What will happen to the bug trackers of large Google projects like android, chromium, app engine, etc?
- boyter 12y ago
  Hi Chris, Would it be possible to get a list of all the projects inside Google Code? I would very much like to grab the lot and preserve them inside searchcode.com Codeplex provides this sort of data and GitHub and Bitbucket have an API. I could write a crawler/scraper to do so but I would probably miss something. Please don't let this become similar to Geocities and have it all lost forever.
- blakeyrat 12y ago
  Are there any alternatives that allow the use of SVN? I use Google Code to store my Skyrim mods-- because Skyrim mods heavily depend on being in the Skyrim folder structure, I need to have them on SVN (or TFS, I guess) so I can create "sparse" repos. Git doesn't allow this.
  - SSLy 12y ago
    Would git-annex (avaiable on gitlab.com) together with vcsh and mod-organizer cover you?
    - blakeyrat 12y ago
      I can BARELY figure out how to work Git itself, I'm guessing combining it with 3 other systems is not going to be a good idea.
      - SSLy 12y ago
        I've just remembered that github does offer access to its repositories via the svn protocol. what aobut that?
  - eli 12y ago
    Doesn't github provide svn access? Bitbucket too, I think.
    - blakeyrat 12y ago
      Does it? I dunno. Honestly, I'll probably just download the archive and take it offline. I don't want to think about this shit.
      - eli 12y ago
        https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clients/ https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clie...
- haosdent 12y ago
  Would you migrate Chromium Project to Github?
dawson 12y ago
CodePlex will be next is my guess.
- itsbits 12y ago
  Codeplex will stay some more time..but I am expecting around 2016-17..
  - talles 12y ago
    Why? Microsoft itself already jumped to GitHub... https://microsoft.github.io https://microsoft.github.io
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
gtaylor 12y ago
I'm sure some are going to immediately say "Yet another Google casualty", but I feel like this one probably needed to happen. It's been stagnant for years, and they have been on the mindshare decline since the first two years. I dread having to deal with open source software that is still on Google Code. Admit failure, provide plenty of notice (like they're doing), and close up shop so resources can be spent on more impactful projects.
- cdibona 12y ago
  Basically, this. In case others didn't read the post, you'll have almost a year to take your projects off. We wanted the handful of projects that were still active to have plenty of time to migrate.
  - samatman 12y ago
    Is it possible, when code goes cold, to redirect URLS to archive.org rather than 404ing them? I have been known to make use of ancient, forgotten code from geocities pages, and keeping the integrity of hyperlinks together matters to me. Think of the blog posts that currently link to Google Code pages; those will never be updated.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  I agree, a lot of google shutdowns are really awesome products that just have a small userbase. Stuff like Reader didn't even have good alternatives when it shutdown. Google Code isn't that great of a product, it has a small userbase, and there are many alternatives.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  Yeah. I don't think anyone is surprised by this, and it's very different from a Google Reader situation. The writing was on the wall when Google projects started moving off of it and onto Github.
- munificent 12y ago
  How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for several years. Now it's not. That doesn't eradicate the time in the past where it provided real value to millions of users. A party isn't a failure just because everyone eventually has to go home. It just means even successful things have ends.
baldfat 12y ago
So the move to GitHub by Google's open source code is the next step? I kept hearing from people "in the know" that moving to GitHub was a real possibility a long time ago.
- kllrnohj 12y ago
  Most of Google's open source code is already on GitHub and has been for quite a while: https://github.com/google https://github.com/google
  - baldfat 12y ago
    If you ever read any of my comments and down votes from Hacker News it was always this. The code on GitHub is a mirror and not an actual GIT repo that is accepting merges and being worked on.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      This is true for some projects, like Chromium and golang, but AFAICT not true for the majority of projects on that page. e.g. the currently most recently updated repo that doesn't have a "mirrored from..." subtitle is [1], and you can go see all the pull request activity on it (though I'm sure there are also lots of code dump repos in that list). [1] https://github.com/google/trace-viewer https://github.com/google/trace-viewer
    - skj 12y ago
      wrong. https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/oauth2client https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/oauth2client and https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes, just to list two that I deal with.
    - oaktowner 12y ago
      Googler here. Depends on the project. github.com/grpc is being developed github first (and accepting contributions), as are several of the projects on github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform.
stephen 12y ago
Seems like one of the better (best?) shutdowns Google has done IMO. There are several compelling (also free) alternatives (GitHub/etc.), so this isn't like Reader (which had previously killed a lot of viable/non-free competitors in its market). They even have automated migration setup. Looks pretty well done.
- sjs382 12y ago
  Agreed. There are viable alternatives, there are migration tools, and the "sunset" is staged nicely. You can't create any new projects on the service. You have 5 months to continue using the service while you work on finding an alternative. In 10 months, it's shut down, except that tarballs of project source, issues, and wikis will still be available. For ~12 more months (until the end of 2016), tar balls will be available for download. A 2-year shutdown is more than reasonable. Hopefully by then I'll catch all of the orphaned projects that I may want to use, and be able to save them elsewhere myself. Kudos, Google!
apendleton 12y ago
I think this will invite comparisons to, e.g., killing off Google Reader, but they won't be deserved in my opinion. Google Reader was the leader in its niche, and when they announced the shutdown everyone had to scramble to find alternative services before all their stuff disappeared. By contrast, this is a niche where the community has clearly moved on to other things that everyone acknowledges as being better in basically every respect. There's just no need for Google to continue to provide this service.
reuven 12y ago
GitHub's success is due, in no small part, to their excellent interface. Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to understand. (This, of course, ignores the many features that GitHub offers, which Google Code doesn't.) I know of many companies that learned about GitHub via open-source projects, which GitHub hosts for free, and decided that it was so good that they should pay money. Hosting such open-source projects was a brilliant marketing move. Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the results. I can't say that I'm mourning Google Code, and I think that the way in which they're sunsetting it is perfectly reasonable. But it demonstrates that free services are only going to stick around so long as it is serving another purpose, and that without such a purpose, you can't reasonably expect it to stick around.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to understand." It's really funny to hear this. If you look at press/reviews/OSS forum comments of it around launch time, people thought it had an excellent interface, because it was being compared to sourceforge. Then github came, and by comparison, the interface looked like crap. But you end up with this kind of weird history rewrite where the view becomes "it was always ugly", when it was probably best-around for at least 2 years, maybe more (depends on your view of early github) "Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the results." It was in fact, meant to be a better-than-sourceforge alternative, because Google viewed sourceforge as a harmful-to-opensource monoculture, and competition was desperately needed. github is a monoculture, but it doesn't seem, at least right now, to be harmful. As for "serious github competitor", it was never meant to be that. It predates github by over 2 years :)
  - fafner 12y ago
lnanek2 12y ago
That's unfortunate. I still regularly come across things on Google Code that are useful, usually just there because they were written before GitHub. There's very little chance the authors will bother moving after all this time and the resources will just disappear. Heck, I even have several projects on there like a virtual pet one that's a good demo of how to color game sprites dynamically in Android and another that's a good demo of using the YouTube APIs. I doubt I'll both moving them, but it's sad other people won't be able to use my code any more so that Google can save a trivial amount of money.
- yahelc 12y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if The Archive Team stepped in to backup everything that's left standing. That's sort of their MO.
pdknsk 12y ago
Does this mean Chromium is also moving away from Google Code? I'm curious how Google plans to migrate almost 500,000 bug reports. I'm expecting Google to purchase GitHub next in order to improve its deficiencies. In particular code search, which is really poor. Google Code search is good, so Google can then apply its search expertise "in-house". https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch Maybe it's just habitual, but I prefer the issue tracker on Google Code as well.
- jefftchan 12y ago
  Chromium is already on Github. https://github.com/chromium https://github.com/chromium
- daw___ 12y ago
  I guess they will be using their own tool to migrate issues: IssueExporterTool "How to export Google Code issue tracker data to other services" https://code.google.com/p/support-tools/wiki/IssueExporterTool https://code.google.com/p/support-tools/wiki/IssueExporterTo...
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    The problem is that last time I looked at these tools, they all sucked. I migrated code hosting and website for my project to github but left issue tracking on Google Code because the github API doesn't let you do any kind of high fidelity import of issues. I hope GH find a way to do some kind of reasonable issue import soon.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      The API doesn't, but if you contact the Github team, they have ways of doing much higher fidelity bug imports if you give them massaged data. Here is an example of a project we imported from Bugzilla: https://github.com/translate/pootle/issues?page=47&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/translate/pootle/issues?page=47&q=is%3Ais... (all issues below id ~3200 are imported). Here is the tool I wrote for the occasion: https://github.com/jleclanche/bugzilla-to-github/ https://github.com/jleclanche/bugzilla-to-github/
eco 12y ago
Glad to hear it. Every time I find a promising library and it's on Google code I groan a little.
pnathan 12y ago
In the last 1-2 years, whenever I saw a project on Google Code, I immediately opined that it was abandoned, and often I recall being right about that. Thanks, Google. It's been a good run!
espadrine 12y ago
Which big projects are still using Google Code I can at least think of <https://vim.googlecode.com> https://vim.googlecode.com>.
- jdlshore 12y ago
  Selenium.
sytse 12y ago
Hi Chris, GitLab CEO here. What do you think about mentioning Gitlab.com as an alternative for people to move to? It has unlimited (private) projects and unlimited collaborators. It is based the open source GitLab project.
- some_furry 12y ago
  I second this motion. GitLab is amazing. It's open source and easy to deploy on your own hardware so you don't need to trust another provider. Github is really great for the social experience, but I've been debating switching over to GitLab for all of my development projects.
  - sytse 12y ago
    Thanks for the love furry! We're seeing more people switch, including many from Gitorious. We try to combine the advantages of a good interface and free repositories.
    - gjtorikian 12y ago
      > including many from Gitorious That's a bit disingenuous. GitLab purchased Gitorious--of course people are switching.
      - sytse 12y ago
        Sorry, it would have been better to say we acquired them, thanks for noting this.
        xasos 12y ago
        BTW, One of your testimonials on your landing page bashes Gitorious (which no longer exists and is part of your company): > “Gitlab is an excellent option….. not only more user friendly than Gitorious but also easier to install.”
        12y ago
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
And that's why you should never ever rely on a Google service.
- MrZongle2 12y ago
  At least, not without a contingency plan that could be implemented in 30-90 days.
ocdtrekkie 12y ago
I'm not surprised, and yeah, I've assumed code on Google Code is abandoned by default. But, you know, just yet another Google product biting the dust.
- 51Cards 12y ago
  While I've been sad to see a lot of Google projects come to and end I think this one is justifiable. I don't know of any active projects still hosted there.
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    I think my only serious concern is that even this year, I've downloaded several projects off Google Code. I am worried that a lot will be lost if they are not archived somewhere.
  - rquirk 12y ago
    Here are a few: vim, waf, ttrss-reader-fork, gperftools, include-what-you-use, googletest and googlemock. All have had commits in the last few weeks, some in the last day or two.
jff 12y ago
Once we saw that Go had moved to Github, we decided Google Code was probably being shut down soon. And now, a week after we moved our own project from Google Code to Github, it gets shut down. Feels good to have called it :)
dasil003 12y ago
Meanwhile SourceForge just keeps limping along.
Animats 12y ago
What's the median lifetime of free cloud services? It seems to be around 5 years. Someone probably tracks that. With SourceForge putting ads in installers, they're no longer a good option. This leaves GitHub in a monopoly position, which is worrisome. Especially given the terms: "GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time." That could be a problem if GitHub's investors want more revenue generated. We need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least two services simultaneously, synched.
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  Eh, isn't this sort of distributed sync the point of Git? If GitHub turns evil it'd only really affect people using their Issues product.
- kristopolous 12y ago
  Look into gitlab
  - sytse 12y ago
    Thanks for mentioning GitLab!
- ericfontaine 12y ago
  "We need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least two services simultaneously, synched." google "git sync mirror" and a bunch of solutions appear.
  - shampine 12y ago
    We use GitLab Mirrors[1] to keep running syncs of our public repos on GitHub mirrored into our self-hosted GitLab server. Works really well and I highly recommend it. [1]https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-mirrors https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-mirrors
joewalnes 12y ago
This is a slightly modified snippet extracted from something I wrote last year predicting the Google Code shutdown. https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-predictions-1e78ff31cbfd https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-predictions-1e7... ------------ It's not about Mercurial vs Git. When Google Code added Mercurial support, Mercurial and Git were roughly equal in popularity. Git was more functional, but Mercurial was a lot simpler to use. In fact, almost everyone I spoke to at the time preferred Mercurial and honestly I thought it was going to be the winner. Project hosting sites that had typically used centralized source control systems like CVS or SVN scrambled to add Git and Mercurial support (including Google Code). Then GitHub happened. They realized that the it's not just the source control system that should be decentralized but every aspect of the project. Projects could be forked with a single click, pull requests created and tracked, network graphs explored. It created an organic and discoverable open-source ecosystem, the likes of which we never saw on Google Code, SourceForge, etc. Anyone could explore ideas in existing projects without having to gain committer access. It was magical. GitHub may have just as easily decided to bet on Mercurial instead. I believe if that would have happened, Mercurial would be the most widely used system today. BitBucket did something similar for Mercurial and did pretty well, but GitHub always had the lead. It was the project hosting sites that lead the source control systems, not the other way round So, back to Google Code. It could have been something huge and it could have made Mercurial the winner, but Google Code never grokked the importance of "social coding". Even though the source code was decentralized, the projects themselves were still centralized. Decentralized project concepts such as forking, network graphs, pull requests, etc - this was all from the new world of GitHub. Over the past two years we've seen Google release new open-source projects on GitHub, then existing projects starting to migrate. Recently, Go started migration too — this is no casual move because it affects the import paths used in a vast amount of user created Go code which will build breakages. Yeah, the writing is on the wall for Google Code. When SourceForge fell out of favor it was sold. It’s now filled with ads, especially deceiving ones on project downloads page which try to trick users into downloading some malware infested turd burner. In fact, for a while SourceForge were actively modifying genuine project releases to include spyware. Cocks. Google didn't do a SourceForge. If there's anything we’ve learned from Google over the years is that they’re not afraid of shutting down projects that don’t work out. By the way, I really respect Google for this — killing products takes guts. Google Code — I salute you. You did well, you made the open source world a better place, and above all you stepped aside when you knew the time was right.
micro_cam 12y ago
Myself and lots of other academics chose google code to host projects that are no longer actively contributed to but still used or of interest to the academic community as building blocks for future research. At the time it seemed like the safest place to leave something. I'll be moving my code and forking a few analytical projects I use appreciate but I hope they would leave the site up in read only or archive mode for longer then a year as i'm sure many authors have moved on and may not even be aware of this change.
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  > At the time it seemed like the safest place to leave something. Google is never the safest place to store anything, unless it's your personal data. Google sunsets products constantly.
  - jfoster 12y ago
    Correct. That's only become particularly relevant in the past few years, though. Sure, they retired projects before, but they are becoming increasingly ambitious with the retirements. By that I mean they are retiring things that lots of people still use (Reader), were not released that long beforehand (Helpouts), could be viable businesses with modifications (Wallet for Digital Goods), or contain large quantities of valuable content (Code). My point is that Code has been running for quite a while, and at one stage it probably did look like the safest way to keep a project online. Can't blame people for choosing it earlier on.
- abvdasker 12y ago
  Yes, this is also my biggest concern. I'm working in bioinformatics and smallish open-source repositories created by other bioinformaticians which haven't seen much maintenance but still get used a fair amount (like https://code.google.com/p/biopieces https://code.google.com/p/biopieces) will probably be the worst casualties from this transition. Guess we'll have to backup those dependencies somewhere else...
jfroma 12y ago
While I agree that Google Code, as it is right now, isn't needed anymore, I believe there is still room for innovation in this space and I wish there were more players than github, pushing the boundaries harder. As a software developer is a tool that we use all day.
- warbiscuit 12y ago
  Among others, there's gitlab.com and bitbucket.com (and also mercurial, as an alternative to git itself -- though the two can push/pull between each other's repos with the right plugin).
  - jfroma 12y ago
    Yes, I've installed a gitlab for my company and I'm extremely happy with it, I feel like I've much more control: authentication, authorization, how our projects are organised, etc. We are currently using both private repos on github and gitlab on aws. Regarding mercurial, I used it a lot and hosted lot of things on bitbucket 4 years ago, but now I use git a lot more, just because it is what most of the libraries and opensource projects I use are using.
    - sytse 12y ago
      Great to hear you like GitLab!
- pnathan 12y ago
  Take a look at Kallithea.
landr0id 12y ago
Anyone know how this will effect Google's Project Zero, or where they will post their findings in the future? GitHub doesn't offer the flexibility that Google Code has for marking issues as public/private which Project Zero relies on heavily.
swills 12y ago
I have to wonder, are we all really comfortable with GitHub being basically the only free code hosting option? Yes, SourceForge(t) is still around, but with the talk of them injecting adware into downloads, I'm sure many wouldn't use them. This leaves, what, BitBucket and running something yourself?
- icebraining 12y ago
  Bitbucket, Gitlab, Assembla, repo.or.cz and a bunch of others.
seagreen 12y ago
These migrations would be much easier if we specified dependencies by content, not location. Obviously not Google's fault, just something to think about as we build future systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM
mikelat 12y ago
This doesn't come off as much as a surprise, because there are better alternatives because google code stagnated and wasn't a priority. Google code still has very old looking interface (especially when contrasted to their active products like G+ and gmail), google code only declined because google didn't want to work on it. This doesn't do google any favours, as with every product they launch I'll be asking myself if it's worth investing time or money into just for it to stagnate.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lultimouomo 12y ago
Between this and gitorious, I forsee a lot of dead links in the future. Hasty times we are living; a lot of useful information will be lost in the cloud age as services shut down. Of course, that information wouldn't probably have been available at all if it weren't for those services, but it's still sad.
rdtsc 12y ago
Anyone else scared of the Github monoculture? I am. For all the touted distributed version control advantages we now have one world global centralized repo. Yeah, yeah, I know you can clone it locally. But of course if all the issues, and testing, and build tools are tied to Github. Isn't it a bit disconcerting? Maybe I am just paranoid. And not saying that Google code was going anywhere, I saw more and more projects switch to Github and Google code receiving less and less attention.
- perakojotgenije 12y ago
  It's not monoculture, there is also bitbucket which IMHO is much better product. Problem is that all the cool kids are now using github and if you want to look cool you also have to use github. Or you could just ignore the hype and use bitbucket.
  - VieElm 12y ago
    In addition to BitBucket there's also Unfuddle which is pretty great.
  - javajosh 12y ago
    I'm genuinely curious, what do you like better about bitbucket?
    - kryptiskt 12y ago
      Free private repos is the outstanding item.
    - danielsamuels 12y ago
      For us it would be the free private repos.
    - dancryer 12y ago
      I really love the branch-level access control on Bitbucket. Being able to say that developers A,B,C have access to the repo, but only A can push to master, is incredibly useful.
ericfontaine 12y ago
I'm sticking to self-hosted fossil-scm. Very simple, lightweight, C, but has full wiki and issue tracker and code trees. The one thing self-hosting lacks is the social network. What is really needed for self hosted sites is a federated network (maybe with something like pump.io and openID) to allow coders from other self-hosted or sass hosts to seamlessly login and contribute and display their profile, and to help mitigate spam.
kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
There goes my PageRank. Thanks Google. Does anyone know of a way to make the landing page at GitHub look less confusing than the default? That is the #1 reason I went with GC. I want first time users to see descriptive text not an activity log.
- gerbal 12y ago
  make a gh_pages branch and build a descriptive jekyll page. Or just have a good Readme.md and hope people scroll down.
- cdibona 12y ago
  A redirect should send the right signals to search engines to move ranking with work. We actually do a lot of work at google to help people find things even after a move. (independent of our own projects/products, esp..)
chemodax 12y ago
My favorite comment: "Google I hope someday you close your search engine and company at all. Welcome to Google Cemetery."
xasos 12y ago
Sure, services like GitLab and BitBucket are cool, but GitHub is the superior option. Take away the fact that they are open source/have unlimited free repos, and there isn't much else. GitHub has a superior UI, a waaaaaay bigger community, a great API, offers student discounts (5 free repos), and other goodies.
- sytse 12y ago
  The GitLab UI is improving at a rapid pace, have you tried it recently? Is there anything you miss from our API? http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ With GitLab.com your free repos will never expire.
comex 12y ago
Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object to is that the site will only be preserved in read-only mode for 5 months, despite its popularity and the resulting large number of deep links into it on the Web. Why not forever? git, hg, and I believe svn can all provide read-only access (with some bandwidth overhead) by publishing static files over HTTP. With the addition of a static export of the Google Code pages (mostly doable by crawling; some pagination issues would need to be worked out), Google could host the site going forward on a simple HTTP server without needing to maintain its server-side codebase. And Google is lacking in neither HTTP servers or bandwidth... Belated abuse complaints would remain a problem, but it's easy enough to delete things on request. Google is obviously not legally obligated to keep the site up, and under current mores I suppose it's not socially obligated either. But I think that when the owning company continues to be highly financially successful and maintenance is easy enough, there should be a social obligation for some kind of archival. Or at least redirect the subdomain to whatever Archive Team comes up with...
- k3n 12y ago
  Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would require even more hands-on humans, so they scrap it. As for the deep links, one of the Google Code devs did mention[1]: > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. His comment also contains a link to a wiki with more information on how to opt-in to this service. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701 http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go...
  - aikah 12y ago
    > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".
jrochkind1 12y ago
It's easy to migrate to some other repo, but I'm thinking about the tons of abandonware projects currently hosted there, that will probably disappear. Every once in a while, googling for a solution, I find something on google code. That looks like it's no longer maintained, but is still useful for me to see how they've done it or copy-paste code (if licensed appropriately).
aikah 12y ago
I knew it ... what a shame. You know what killed that product? BAD basic UI/UX. it was horrible to use an naviguate in,so people moved to something with better UX, better design and better visual. Google puts 0 efforts in these things, at least in the browser. Funny how then Google comes with "material design" , but can't update a few CSS on its old apps... Github didn't get popular because it was written in Ruby(though it allowed them to iterate fast),it became popular because devs actually put some effort into the UI/UX and it made it easy to use ... You know what else sucks? google app engine console , google apis console ... look at Heroku console , simple clean and usable, are you going to drop app engine too ? So what's next after Google reader, and Google code? Google app engine ?
- fixermark 12y ago
  If by "Google app engine console" you're referring to https://appengine.google.com/ https://appengine.google.com/, that's already in fact "dropped." Check https://console.developers.google.com https://console.developers.google.com. The App Engine UI is getting an overhaul; App Engine as a product is probably going to stick around.
lucb1e 12y ago
> We were worried about reliability You don't say? After pulling the plug on all the products I liked, I'm worried too.
I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago
I8ZYPEYXSQ
I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago
I8ZYPEYXSQ
I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago
Oi
mooreds 12y ago
Just ported a project I was involved in a couple of years ago to github. Thanks for the heads up. ( https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-crypto/ https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-crypto/ )
gnachman 12y ago
Is there any alternative that supports issue attachments? That's the one feature that I really need to live for iTerm2 but github and gitlab don't support it except for images.
- DouweM 12y ago
  GitLab developer here, and happy to let you know that support for arbitrary attachments to issues and comments was contributed by a member of community earlier this month, and will be included in GitLab 7.9, due to be released on the 22nd :)
sebastiank123 12y ago
Hi, Sebastian from RhodeCode here. We do a fully-featured, behind-the-firewall SCM for Git, Mercurial and SVN - used by some of the world's largest organizations and also some well known Silicon Valley startups. If you want to host your source code on your own (virtual) server then please contact us at https://rhodecode.com https://rhodecode.com and mention Google Code - we are giving away free licenses for startups and smaller teams.
rlx0x 12y ago
They could atleast work together with the internet archive to conserve it, but no of course not that would require be a bit of an effort, google can't do that, because google doesn't care if thousands of open source projects are going to be lost forever to the world. Don't be evil my ass. Archive team is now our last hope as usual.
myohan 12y ago
GitHub wins! I think it's good that Google indirectly admitted their service is not as good as Github, now they need to do the same thing about Google+. Google, you are an amazing company but sorry you can't possibly be the best at everything.
zatkin 12y ago
GitHub has a user GoogleCodeExporter that is publicly logging all of the repositories that are being transferred from Google Code to GitHub. The number of commits might break GitHub! https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from=2015-03-12 https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from...
SixSigma 12y ago
I wonder how Uriel will move his code, what with him being dead and all. There must be other projects too. Goodbye history.
Apocryphon 12y ago
This is Google's "Yahoo! shutting down GeoCities" moment, isn't it?
zmmmmm 12y ago
This makes me question: how important does Google see developers as being as part of their ecosystem? I mean, I understand all the rational logic of what they are saying. Sure, there are other services etc etc, the world will keep turning. But doesn't Google see any kind of benefit from having developers using their service? In terms of mind share, having developers think positively about Google, having them regularly come to and work with a Google service? Even in purely commercial terms, it would be something that Google could leverage to expose developers to their cloud services and other platforms. Traditionally, staying close to developers in any way they can is something platform companies strive to do. But it seems like Google doesn't see any value in any of that. So my basic question is, does Google still care about developers? Or have they simply moved on as a company?
- Andrex 12y ago
  Google wants developers contributing to their projects, so they go where the developers go. The developers have moved onto GitHub and have effectively abandoned Google Code, therefore so has Google. Stubbornly maintaining their own service no one wants just breeds confusion and and a division of resources. As the article says: > To meet developers where they are, we ourselves migrated nearly a thousand of our own open source projects from Google Code to GitHub. Nearly a thousand open-source Google projects have been migrated to GitHub already.
  - zmmmmm 12y ago
    That all sounds weak to me. Google largely abandoned Google Code before all the developers fled to Github. One of the reasons people went to GitHub because it was clear that Google was no longer investing in Google Code. You're painting a picture where Google is just a passive entity that has no control over what developers do, it just meekly follows them around. That is hardly giving an impression that developers are a high priority to Google. If they were a high priority, Google would want them all using a Google service, and be willing to invest in that to keep them there, not cede them to third party.
perdunov 12y ago
Acquiring GitHub would seem like a pretty natural move by Google, wouldn't it?
nadams 12y ago
I predicted this a long time ago and I've moved my projects off. I would recommend migrating to self hosting to prevent an issue like this in the future. It's not too much of a hassle if you only have a couple of projects but when you have 10+ migrating to another source code hosting service is a real pain. If you are looking for a good list of what's out there check out this stackexchange post: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-hosted-replacements-for-mercurial http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-ho... I tried rhodecode - it's very basic but upgrading was always a pain (~1hr/upgrade). And when I did manage to get an upgrade to go through there was always some problem. Gitlab looks interesting but their community edition is lacking. The one benefit of indefero/srchub is that it supports SVN, hg and git and private projects. So people can request a project in whatever SCM system they want and it's all managed from the same place. Also it's fairly easy to setup and maintain - no real external dependencies such as rabbitMQ or something. I have read of people even installing it on shared hosting. I've personally tried http://phabricator.org/ http://phabricator.org/ but after installing it - it seemed like it was missing major features that you would assume would be there. Disclaimer: I am the forker/owner of srchub.
- sytse 12y ago
  What are you missing from GitLab Community Edition?
- epriest 12y ago
  What are you missing from Phabricator? https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feature_requests/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feat...
  - nadams 12y ago
    I think I was looking for a way to "hide" a project/make it private. And after about 30 minutes of clicking around trying different settings/features I felt like it was too bloated for me. For me - I love the simplistic nature of Google Code.
    - 12y ago
cpks 12y ago
Honestly, while it makes sense to shut down Google Code, it is mindboggling that Google destroys information. Public projects on Google Code ought to be archived and the archives and redirects ought to be kept up in perpetuity. People may not be reached by the announcements. Some projects, the authors may be dead, in a coma, etc. Some may just not care. This is the #1 reason I fear the cloud. When Google shuts a project down, unless you act fast, you lose data. Would it be rocket science for Google to set up a service which provides: 1. DNS hosting 2. Static page redirects 3. Static page hosting 4. Secure static page hosting (available only to authenticated accounts) in perpetuity? This would be a read/delete-only service. When Google Reader shuts down, I could access my data forever. When Google Code shut down, the project archives would stay up as read-only. Etc. No maintenance, and a one-time migration with Google Takeout for each dying service.
devsaysstuff 12y ago
A canary in the mine moment - relying solely on a single third-party for your hosting is always a risk - you are there at their grace, nothing more. Migrate to Github? Hmm... they are becoming the defacto single monopoly platform - and no one seems to notice or care?
boyter 12y ago
I wonder if there will be a feed for the list of projects currently inside Google Code. I would very much like to grab the lot and preserve them inside searchcode.com Anyone know if this is possible? Last time I checked it didn't have a public API other then the tracker and I was performing some rather ugly crawling/scraping to get a list of projects.
dingdingdang 12y ago
This is why http://redecentralize.org/ http://redecentralize.org/ and other similar efforts are so important - the centralized model is functionally unfit for long term usage or relying upon. How to capitalize these newer decentralized technologies are key for next leap in the web industry.
jamiesonbecker 12y ago
It may not be valuable to the author. That does not mean it's not valuable to some future searcher. This is not the right way to bid goodbye to a lot of open source code that will disappear from the world forever. Perhaps Google could partner with Internet Archive to preserve this history before it is lost forever?
louwrentius 12y ago
What took it so long? That's my question honestly. Google code was already dead for at least two years.
doktrin 12y ago
> abuse management The article gives the impression that they were combating some sort of systemic (malicious?) abuse. I don't doubt the statement, but I'm having trouble picturing exactly what they're going through. What kind of abuse do project hosting providers face on a recurring basis?
jheriko 12y ago
It was not competing with bitbucket or github, but still a shame to see.
DigitalSea 12y ago
I think we all saw this coming when Google started moving their projects over to Github away from Google Code. This is definitely the right move to make. However, I find it quite disturbing that Google is closing the service down entirely. Surely it would be more beneficial to keep the site in read only made for a good while longer given how deeply linked some parts of the web are to Google Code repositories. Perhaps somehow clean up the platform and hand over the reigns to the Internet Archive instead so it can be preserved and then 301 redirect any request to the archive. Google really needs to get some kind of procedure in place for retiring their applications and services. Surely they realise that being the largest Internet company out there they have responsibilities to do the right thing by the millions that rely on their services daily? You can't just throw something away even if many moved on to Github and Bitbucket quite some time ago. Why not some kind of automated service that attempts to redirect to projects that have moved to Github and Bitbucket? Google has a trove of data, surely they can achieve something like that with pretty close accuracy and then use their manual approach for the projects that they could not automatically link.
max0563 12y ago
This is a sad day, all of my early projects were hosted on Google Code. I'm sad to see it go.
nperez 12y ago
Honestly, I thought plans to sunset it had already been put in place. I hate every moment that I want to check out a project and find that it's hosted on Google Code. The web has moved extremely fast in the last decade (and will probably move even faster in the next decade), and I can tell that I'm looking at 2006 code. There was never a push to give it the love it needed to compete with Github. I hope there is some level of cooperation with those who want to archive it. It's important enough to be archived. The UX is not up to standards in 2015, though, so I will bid farewell to it with some amount of satisfaction and some amount of regret.
soapdog 12y ago
they should keep it on read only form. Lots of good FOSS will be lost if they pull the plug.
tjdetwiler 12y ago
The email I received made me look at some long lost repositories of mine that I did while learning in school. It's always fun to be able to look back on work you did when you were less experienced. It's unfortunate how transient the internet can be. How much information is created and lost over such a short period of time.
stuaxo 12y ago
Just going to join the people asking that you speak to archive.org to get these old projects hosted. Sure I can move my own old projects, but there is plenty of stuff out there that will be lost. Part of what makes modern coding efficient is being able to not just look up working libraries but also to find old solutions to similar problems.
Untit1ed 12y ago
Is anyone else finding that the Github importer just stalls at 0%? I don't really want to have to redo the whole wiki manually :(.
pellanti 12y ago
Shame to see it go but hey ho!
diminoten 12y ago
Makes perfect sense, but I'm surprised the answer is to shut it down, rather than to build a competitor to GitHub.
nercury 12y ago
I was surprised to find my old project there from 2009: a simple lib for utf8 font rendering with OpenGL. I exported it into github, only to find that it never had any source hosted in source control - all my source was in a tarball inside "downloads". I guess there are many authors like me who don't even remember they are hosting something there - it would be sad to loose all that code.
scanr 12y ago
I find the consolidation in repository hosting surprising. It feels like it should be the kind of ecosystem that supports lots of competing repository hosting providers that cater to various niches. This may be because I quite like bitbucket.
tam000 12y ago
I am glad its shutting, i just hoped it did a lot earlier. I love GitHub.. Please Google make it user friendly..

880 points by cdibona 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Hi everyone. I wanted to let you know (and I know this isn't a huge surprise) that we will be shutting down the Google Code project hosting system over the next year. Wired did a nice story about Github that touches on the shutdown: http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microsoft-everyone-else/ http://www.wired.com/2015/03/github-conquered-google-microso... I'll be hanging around answering questions, but the short form of 'why' is that it just isn't used much anymore, ourselves included, in favor of Github or bitbucket.

hsgeyfjw 12y ago
how do you (google) get away with being such asses? i know a bunch of developers will come to your defense, and say things like it is a free service, but it's not really, because for google, users are the product, and you guys have developed a rep for constantly shutting those users down. switching costs are very real, and people just don't trust you anymore. i don't care about google code in particular, but i hate google by this point. just hate you.
- baldfat 12y ago
  This is one service that needed to be shut down.
- gtaylor 12y ago
  Edit: The parent comment was flagkilled, but he was ranting about how Google should be expected to keep Google Code (and their other failed services) on life support indefinitely out of the kindness of their heart, because negative public perception. This is pretty ridiculous. It is a free service, sustained only by how long corporate wants to foot the bill. This is why it's so important to keep in mind how sustainable your dependencies are longer term (if having to move away from them would be such a big deal). Not only that, but Google Code lost the mindshare battle and hasn't been getting much development attention for some time now. It has fallen way behind, is now sub-par, and there has been a mass exodus of projects away from it. It had a nice year or two, but it's time to put it down. It's simple: Stop wasting developer manpower, money, and time on something that no longer offers much utility. Close shop, figure out how those resources could be better spent doing things that are useful.
  - f055 12y ago
    Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products? What if Gmail switches to paid-only model? What if the next-big-Google-thing will be closed down after a year, again? What if free Google Apps will close down, and only paid version exists? What's the point of getting involved into any free Google stuff? What's the point of using Google at all?
    - gtaylor 12y ago
      > Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products? You just listed a bunch of projects that failed to get traction or lost mindshare battles. I expect an innovator to move on from failures, which is what all of your examples are. Reader: Failure, Google Code: Failure, G+: Failure, Wave: Failure. The reasons for each failure differ, but said reasons are irrelevant to this discussion. The fact is that Google attempted something, maybe enjoyed a little bit of success, but the results didn't meet their expectations. Rather than continue running these things with skeleton crews (to what effect?), they've done the right thing and closed them down. The only exception is Glass, which was an experiment that already is impacting other current and future products. It never had a guaranteed future. It never reached consumer "1.0".
      - hackuser 12y ago
        > I expect an innovator to move on from failures That's great if you are an investor or employee, but if you are a user it kind of sucks. Google just needs to be up front about it (and maybe they are): We make no commitment to supporting this application or maintaining it as is. We might make radical changes, we might shut it down. If we do shut it down, we'll warn you at least 9 months ahead of time. I'm not going to invest much in those applications, but others might.
- itsbits 12y ago
  it was expected by many people..infact there was discussion about same happening... Why to run a project when it is not being used?..nothing bad in that...People are angry about Glass..not this..
- baggachipz 12y ago
  I might be feeding here, but the lesson is that you can't count on things Google releases to be around very long. Even APIs for popular products, like Google Maps. Just don't expect anything they release to have a long shelf life. It's annoying and it sucks, and it is now laughable when they tag things with phrases like "free code hosting forever" and so on. For them to change, they'd have to either: 1) Support everything into eternity, which given their propensity to release new things frequently would grow to be impossibly expensive, or 2) Be more disciplined in what they release, so that it can be supported in perpetuity. I don't see either happening, so we end up where we are now. They have to keep innovating or they'll stagnate and die.
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    They kind of get a bad rap for this because of how large and visible they are. The funny thing is that many of the people here on HN have worked on projects that had very finite lifetimes as well, often closing them down for some of the same reasons. Someone has to invest the time and money to keep services running, even if only limping along. Google likes to experiment and test the waters. It's part of why they've been so successful. I hope they keep killing off their underperforming/underused services so they can keep on pushing other things forward. However, closing down stagnant projects is very different from locking down access to previously open APIs (Google Maps). Since we're discussing the closure of Google Code, I won't get distracted with that controversial topic.
    - jdmichal 12y ago
      I also find a certain level of humor in the oft-espoused "release and pivot" ideology, accompanied with the pleas for mercy found in these Google product shutdown threads. What is different? Why is Google not supposed to release and pivot like everyone else?
      - gtaylor 12y ago
        It is puzzling, but I think their rapid ascension has led to some people setting their expectations for Google too high. Others seem to hold them to some golden moral standard (of their own design), for some reason. In the end, they are a for-profit business. Not a charity.
lloydde 12y ago
I got a kick out of the CmdTaco cameo in the Wired article: “GitHub is just really smooth,” says Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda, who lived through the open source revolution as the editor-in-chief of the tech site Slashdot. “It’s a sexy, modern interface.” These are some captions in need of a meme generator.
- timgws 12y ago
  Consider it done. http://i.imgur.com/Xdmlj6v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Xdmlj6v.jpg In all seriousness, though, I started my own open source project hosting website back in the day. It was the first to offer public Mercurial and Git hosting. Google Code existed then and the interface and functionality has not really changed since I released the first version of the site.
shubhamjain 12y ago
While true that no one uses Google Code. Every now and then, I bump into some obscure but a little useful project being hosted on Google Code. Maybe, makers of those projects have grown out of them and don't wish to put any more effort but still, there is a bit of value, I am able to derive from them. What will happen, if those projects are not migrated because their developers have simply forgotten about them?
- AnkhMorporkian 12y ago
  Perhaps archive.org will take it upon themselves to archive all the projects.
- btown 12y ago
  Someone needs to do an Internet Archive style project on all these repositories, put them up on Github, and make sure that they are indexed properly by search engines (i.e. intro pages become README.md, wikis are migrated, etc.).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - nothrabannosir 12y ago
      Not at all, that's 100% the point of most open source licenses. Which are compulsory for a project on GC. E.g. MIT: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Specifically, note "Permission is granted" and "distribute". Comply with those terms (i.e. include that piece of text when you redistribute) and you satisfy MIT. GPL, &c, they all have similar clauses. In fact, MIT goes much further. I could take all those projects, mirror them, and charge people insane amounts of money for it. If you can't even rehost on Github, what good would copyleft be?
mherdeg 12y ago
It sounds like Google hasn't committed to serving this content in any form past 2016. But there is a plan to provide archival-style info throughout 2016 (tarballs per project). Is Google in touch with someone like the Intenet Archive to make sure that these data are still available after Google stops hosting them? I'm sure there's some group that's willing to take on the work of hosting the project metadata and associated files. I personally, occasionally use a handful of "orphaned" libraries that haven't been touched in years and only live on Google Code. Gonna be a bummer when those links break.
raverbashing 12y ago
From the comments "What will happen to things that are hosted on google code, like jquery and the google font set? Thousand, if not millions of pages link to these directly - will they all be invalidated? "
- richardwhiuk 12y ago
  That's Google CDN, not Google Code, as the follow on comment says
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Apparently it's called Google APIs or something https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  I hope those millions of pages are not linking into Google Code URLs, which are repos for developers. I don't think popular libraries like jquery core and fonts even have Google Code URLs. They should be linking into Google's Hosted Libraries, which are separate and will continue AFAIK: https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/devguide
jnewland 12y ago
Hi cdibona! I'm primary on-call at GitHub today, and I wanted to say thanks to everyone that worked on https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ https://code.google.com/export-to-github/ and worked with us to load test it before this announcement. It's really cool to see so much work put into making it easy for folks to easily move their data.
wldcordeiro 12y ago
I had my hopes up that you guys would update Google Code to be more of a contender with GAE and Compute integration.
- cdibona 12y ago
  I have a secret desire to reuse the code domain in this manner.
  - oaktowner 12y ago
    Well...it was a secret.
lake99 12y ago
Thank you for taking questions. Can you give me a rough idea when you'll have the bitbucket migration tools in place?
dudus 12y ago
It's true that Google does not use Google Code for any coding project anymore, but it's still used as a support interface. For instance if you want to file bugs for AppEngine the official way is through Google Code https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/list What are the plans on moving this and other issue lists for different Google products out of Google Code?
- ajessup 12y ago
  PM on App Engine here. We'll continue to be using (and monitoring) the Google Code issue tracker until we have a robust alternative available. We have plans for this, we're just not ready to talk about them yet.
  - dudus 12y ago
    Is this a plan just for AppEngine or for all other Google Products that use Code as an external Issue Tracker?
    - ajessup 12y ago
      Not sure about other products
eranation 12y ago
One thing that might be nice to do - if you see a project with high recent download stats (I'm sure there are a few) but their developers seem to have abandoned them, will you please do a courtesy backup to github, or perhaps notify people who starred it that the owners didn't mograte it to GitHub and the data will be lost unless someone does.
rogerbinns 12y ago
Please can you add a way for projects on google code to do a redirect to wherever they have gone. I moved all my projects late 2013, put notices on all pages I could etc, but still searching for the project often shows the google code site first. https://code.google.com/p/apsw/ https://code.google.com/p/apsw/ Google Code did one thing very well - each project could have one wiki and issue tracker, but any number of source code repos. This is fantastic for projects where there are multiple parts - eg an Android client, an iOS client, multiple server parts etc. Github for example only lets you have one source repository per project, and as a result the wikis and issues are useless since they are almost always filed against the wrong sub-project. Every startup I have been involved in over the last many years used Google for business (users, groups, office stuff etc), but then for code hosting we were forced to go elsewhere, needing yet another set of user accounts, groups, admin, billing etc. There was a ticket begging to let folks pay for google code, but it never came to pass. All the startups would have gladly paid, especially to avoid dealing with multiple accounts, sites and admin. Some features like the issue tracker were quite good. Heck you could even prioritise issues - something github still didn't have the last time I looked.
- tjohns 12y ago
  Google Code already has an option to flag a project as moved. From your project: Administer > Advanced > Project Moved For an example of what this looks like: http://code.google.com/p/iosched http://code.google.com/p/iosched
  - rossj 12y ago
    That's great, until code.google.com no longer resolves, at which point it won't help :( Would be nice if they used that info to automatically redirect to the new site.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      They also should be returning a 301 and the new URL so crawlers can follow it and delete the old site from their records...
eveningcoffee 12y ago
Have you considered that Google Code hosts amount of code that is related to the research papers and are not actively maintained (many probably since uploading). This wast valuable resource will be gone forever.
- Moru 12y ago
  Mabe someone will finally get it. You can't trust third-party sites to keep your stuff up. Host it yourself if you want to be sure it's around somewhere. Use free hosting as a backup plan.
  - skagedal 12y ago
    Looking at my own and others actual behavioral patterns, I'd say the opposite is more closer to the truth. Dead links often go to someone's old server that they at some point probably planned to keep online forever. But you are of course right in that redundancy is a good thing!
frik 12y ago
This wired article tries to rewrite the history: > rather geeky and sometimes unreliable internet site called SourceForge Wtf. SourceForge was for a long time very decent. It wasn't geeky nor unreliable, it offered CVS and later Subversion, web hosting, mailing list hosting, forums and downloads. GoogleCode itself was geeky with its very basic "Wiki", but it had a leaner "GMail style" UI, with only basic features so newer projects used it over SourceForge. "Bidding farewell to Google Code", that's a rather nice wording for closing down a web service. Please archive orphan open source projects to a read-only SVN/GIT repo or donate the data to archive.org. It reminds us that more open source projects should host the code on their servers, e.g. using Gitlab. In some years SourceForge and GitHub may get closed down too. Some orphan project of great value may get lost of the digital dark age.
- sytse 12y ago
  If any open source projects want to self host with GitLab CE we will be glad to provide free consulting to help them migrate and provide a free instance. Contact me at sytse@gitlab.com to get started.
- innocenat 12y ago
  I haven't read the source article, but SourceForge at some point was real slow. Like, it would takes minutes alone to Log In at SourceForge, let alone checking out SVN repo. Accessing website hosted on SourgeForge was real slow too. I think during that year (not sure which year), tons of projects migrate either to Google Code or to GitHub. It was later that sourceforge improve.
  - frik 12y ago
    Sourceforge was really good and as big in the open source world (between 1999 and 2006) like Github today. Later Google Code took over a larger part but never become as popular as Sourceforge or Github. Sourceforge is still used by many open source projects as download hosting provider (binary files). Google Code already stopped the download functionality several months/years(?) ago. Google Code was a 20% project created by Google devs in their 20% free-project-time, though it never improved beyond its first MVP stage, but was for many years very successful nevertheless.
rwallace 12y ago
As someone who used Google Code a while back (and did indeed end up moving to Github): it's a pity it had to end, but thank you for hosting it while it lasted. In its day, it was a service of unequaled quality.
jfoster 12y ago
What will happen to the bug trackers of large Google projects like android, chromium, app engine, etc?
boyter 12y ago
Hi Chris, Would it be possible to get a list of all the projects inside Google Code? I would very much like to grab the lot and preserve them inside searchcode.com Codeplex provides this sort of data and GitHub and Bitbucket have an API. I could write a crawler/scraper to do so but I would probably miss something. Please don't let this become similar to Geocities and have it all lost forever.
blakeyrat 12y ago
Are there any alternatives that allow the use of SVN? I use Google Code to store my Skyrim mods-- because Skyrim mods heavily depend on being in the Skyrim folder structure, I need to have them on SVN (or TFS, I guess) so I can create "sparse" repos. Git doesn't allow this.
- SSLy 12y ago
  Would git-annex (avaiable on gitlab.com) together with vcsh and mod-organizer cover you?
  - blakeyrat 12y ago
    I can BARELY figure out how to work Git itself, I'm guessing combining it with 3 other systems is not going to be a good idea.
    - SSLy 12y ago
      I've just remembered that github does offer access to its repositories via the svn protocol. what aobut that?
- eli 12y ago
  Doesn't github provide svn access? Bitbucket too, I think.
  - blakeyrat 12y ago
    Does it? I dunno. Honestly, I'll probably just download the archive and take it offline. I don't want to think about this shit.
    - eli 12y ago
      https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clients/ https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clie...
haosdent 12y ago
Would you migrate Chromium Project to Github?

dawson 12y ago

CodePlex will be next is my guess.

itsbits 12y ago
Codeplex will stay some more time..but I am expecting around 2016-17..
- talles 12y ago
  Why? Microsoft itself already jumped to GitHub... https://microsoft.github.io https://microsoft.github.io
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

gtaylor 12y ago

I'm sure some are going to immediately say "Yet another Google casualty", but I feel like this one probably needed to happen. It's been stagnant for years, and they have been on the mindshare decline since the first two years. I dread having to deal with open source software that is still on Google Code. Admit failure, provide plenty of notice (like they're doing), and close up shop so resources can be spent on more impactful projects.

cdibona 12y ago
Basically, this. In case others didn't read the post, you'll have almost a year to take your projects off. We wanted the handful of projects that were still active to have plenty of time to migrate.
- samatman 12y ago
  Is it possible, when code goes cold, to redirect URLS to archive.org rather than 404ing them? I have been known to make use of ancient, forgotten code from geocities pages, and keeping the integrity of hyperlinks together matters to me. Think of the blog posts that currently link to Google Code pages; those will never be updated.
Igglyboo 12y ago
I agree, a lot of google shutdowns are really awesome products that just have a small userbase. Stuff like Reader didn't even have good alternatives when it shutdown. Google Code isn't that great of a product, it has a small userbase, and there are many alternatives.
serve_yay 12y ago
Yeah. I don't think anyone is surprised by this, and it's very different from a Google Reader situation. The writing was on the wall when Google projects started moving off of it and onto Github.
munificent 12y ago
How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for several years. Now it's not. That doesn't eradicate the time in the past where it provided real value to millions of users. A party isn't a failure just because everyone eventually has to go home. It just means even successful things have ends.

baldfat 12y ago

So the move to GitHub by Google's open source code is the next step? I kept hearing from people "in the know" that moving to GitHub was a real possibility a long time ago.

kllrnohj 12y ago
Most of Google's open source code is already on GitHub and has been for quite a while: https://github.com/google https://github.com/google
- baldfat 12y ago
  If you ever read any of my comments and down votes from Hacker News it was always this. The code on GitHub is a mirror and not an actual GIT repo that is accepting merges and being worked on.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    This is true for some projects, like Chromium and golang, but AFAICT not true for the majority of projects on that page. e.g. the currently most recently updated repo that doesn't have a "mirrored from..." subtitle is [1], and you can go see all the pull request activity on it (though I'm sure there are also lots of code dump repos in that list). [1] https://github.com/google/trace-viewer https://github.com/google/trace-viewer
  - skj 12y ago
    wrong. https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/oauth2client https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/oauth2client and https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes, just to list two that I deal with.
  - oaktowner 12y ago
    Googler here. Depends on the project. github.com/grpc is being developed github first (and accepting contributions), as are several of the projects on github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform.

stephen 12y ago

Seems like one of the better (best?) shutdowns Google has done IMO. There are several compelling (also free) alternatives (GitHub/etc.), so this isn't like Reader (which had previously killed a lot of viable/non-free competitors in its market). They even have automated migration setup. Looks pretty well done.

sjs382 12y ago
Agreed. There are viable alternatives, there are migration tools, and the "sunset" is staged nicely. You can't create any new projects on the service. You have 5 months to continue using the service while you work on finding an alternative. In 10 months, it's shut down, except that tarballs of project source, issues, and wikis will still be available. For ~12 more months (until the end of 2016), tar balls will be available for download. A 2-year shutdown is more than reasonable. Hopefully by then I'll catch all of the orphaned projects that I may want to use, and be able to save them elsewhere myself. Kudos, Google!

apendleton 12y ago

I think this will invite comparisons to, e.g., killing off Google Reader, but they won't be deserved in my opinion. Google Reader was the leader in its niche, and when they announced the shutdown everyone had to scramble to find alternative services before all their stuff disappeared. By contrast, this is a niche where the community has clearly moved on to other things that everyone acknowledges as being better in basically every respect. There's just no need for Google to continue to provide this service.

reuven 12y ago

GitHub's success is due, in no small part, to their excellent interface. Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to understand. (This, of course, ignores the many features that GitHub offers, which Google Code doesn't.) I know of many companies that learned about GitHub via open-source projects, which GitHub hosts for free, and decided that it was so good that they should pay money. Hosting such open-source projects was a brilliant marketing move. Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the results. I can't say that I'm mourning Google Code, and I think that the way in which they're sunsetting it is perfectly reasonable. But it demonstrates that free services are only going to stick around so long as it is serving another purpose, and that without such a purpose, you can't reasonably expect it to stick around.

DannyBee 12y ago
"Google Code was, by contrast, always ugly, hard to navigate, and hard to understand." It's really funny to hear this. If you look at press/reviews/OSS forum comments of it around launch time, people thought it had an excellent interface, because it was being compared to sourceforge. Then github came, and by comparison, the interface looked like crap. But you end up with this kind of weird history rewrite where the view becomes "it was always ugly", when it was probably best-around for at least 2 years, maybe more (depends on your view of early github) "Google Code, by contrast, didn't seem to have a clear purpose other than hosting open-source projects. It was a kind of souped-up SourceForge, rather than a serious GitHub competitor. Google certainly had the resources to improve it, but didn't have the motivation that GitHub did -- and we see the results." It was in fact, meant to be a better-than-sourceforge alternative, because Google viewed sourceforge as a harmful-to-opensource monoculture, and competition was desperately needed. github is a monoculture, but it doesn't seem, at least right now, to be harmful. As for "serious github competitor", it was never meant to be that. It predates github by over 2 years :)
- fafner 12y ago

lnanek2 12y ago

That's unfortunate. I still regularly come across things on Google Code that are useful, usually just there because they were written before GitHub. There's very little chance the authors will bother moving after all this time and the resources will just disappear. Heck, I even have several projects on there like a virtual pet one that's a good demo of how to color game sprites dynamically in Android and another that's a good demo of using the YouTube APIs. I doubt I'll both moving them, but it's sad other people won't be able to use my code any more so that Google can save a trivial amount of money.

yahelc 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if The Archive Team stepped in to backup everything that's left standing. That's sort of their MO.

pdknsk 12y ago

Does this mean Chromium is also moving away from Google Code? I'm curious how Google plans to migrate almost 500,000 bug reports. I'm expecting Google to purchase GitHub next in order to improve its deficiencies. In particular code search, which is really poor. Google Code search is good, so Google can then apply its search expertise "in-house". https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch Maybe it's just habitual, but I prefer the issue tracker on Google Code as well.

jefftchan 12y ago
Chromium is already on Github. https://github.com/chromium https://github.com/chromium
daw___ 12y ago
I guess they will be using their own tool to migrate issues: IssueExporterTool "How to export Google Code issue tracker data to other services" https://code.google.com/p/support-tools/wiki/IssueExporterTool https://code.google.com/p/support-tools/wiki/IssueExporterTo...
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  The problem is that last time I looked at these tools, they all sucked. I migrated code hosting and website for my project to github but left issue tracking on Google Code because the github API doesn't let you do any kind of high fidelity import of issues. I hope GH find a way to do some kind of reasonable issue import soon.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    The API doesn't, but if you contact the Github team, they have ways of doing much higher fidelity bug imports if you give them massaged data. Here is an example of a project we imported from Bugzilla: https://github.com/translate/pootle/issues?page=47&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/translate/pootle/issues?page=47&q=is%3Ais... (all issues below id ~3200 are imported). Here is the tool I wrote for the occasion: https://github.com/jleclanche/bugzilla-to-github/ https://github.com/jleclanche/bugzilla-to-github/

eco 12y ago

Glad to hear it. Every time I find a promising library and it's on Google code I groan a little.

pnathan 12y ago

In the last 1-2 years, whenever I saw a project on Google Code, I immediately opined that it was abandoned, and often I recall being right about that. Thanks, Google. It's been a good run!

espadrine 12y ago

Which big projects are still using Google Code I can at least think of <https://vim.googlecode.com> https://vim.googlecode.com>.

jdlshore 12y ago
Selenium.

sytse 12y ago

Hi Chris, GitLab CEO here. What do you think about mentioning Gitlab.com as an alternative for people to move to? It has unlimited (private) projects and unlimited collaborators. It is based the open source GitLab project.

some_furry 12y ago
I second this motion. GitLab is amazing. It's open source and easy to deploy on your own hardware so you don't need to trust another provider. Github is really great for the social experience, but I've been debating switching over to GitLab for all of my development projects.
- sytse 12y ago
  Thanks for the love furry! We're seeing more people switch, including many from Gitorious. We try to combine the advantages of a good interface and free repositories.
  - gjtorikian 12y ago
    > including many from Gitorious That's a bit disingenuous. GitLab purchased Gitorious--of course people are switching.
    - sytse 12y ago
      Sorry, it would have been better to say we acquired them, thanks for noting this.
      - xasos 12y ago
        BTW, One of your testimonials on your landing page bashes Gitorious (which no longer exists and is part of your company): > “Gitlab is an excellent option….. not only more user friendly than Gitorious but also easier to install.”
        12y ago

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

And that's why you should never ever rely on a Google service.

MrZongle2 12y ago
At least, not without a contingency plan that could be implemented in 30-90 days.

ocdtrekkie 12y ago

I'm not surprised, and yeah, I've assumed code on Google Code is abandoned by default. But, you know, just yet another Google product biting the dust.

51Cards 12y ago
While I've been sad to see a lot of Google projects come to and end I think this one is justifiable. I don't know of any active projects still hosted there.
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  I think my only serious concern is that even this year, I've downloaded several projects off Google Code. I am worried that a lot will be lost if they are not archived somewhere.
- rquirk 12y ago
  Here are a few: vim, waf, ttrss-reader-fork, gperftools, include-what-you-use, googletest and googlemock. All have had commits in the last few weeks, some in the last day or two.

jff 12y ago

Once we saw that Go had moved to Github, we decided Google Code was probably being shut down soon. And now, a week after we moved our own project from Google Code to Github, it gets shut down. Feels good to have called it :)

dasil003 12y ago

Meanwhile SourceForge just keeps limping along.

Animats 12y ago

What's the median lifetime of free cloud services? It seems to be around 5 years. Someone probably tracks that. With SourceForge putting ads in installers, they're no longer a good option. This leaves GitHub in a monopoly position, which is worrisome. Especially given the terms: "GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time." That could be a problem if GitHub's investors want more revenue generated. We need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least two services simultaneously, synched.

tree_of_item 12y ago
Eh, isn't this sort of distributed sync the point of Git? If GitHub turns evil it'd only really affect people using their Issues product.
kristopolous 12y ago
Look into gitlab
- sytse 12y ago
  Thanks for mentioning GitLab!
ericfontaine 12y ago
"We need some way to distribute open source projects so they're on at least two services simultaneously, synched." google "git sync mirror" and a bunch of solutions appear.
- shampine 12y ago
  We use GitLab Mirrors[1] to keep running syncs of our public repos on GitHub mirrored into our self-hosted GitLab server. Works really well and I highly recommend it. [1]https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-mirrors https://github.com/samrocketman/gitlab-mirrors

joewalnes 12y ago

This is a slightly modified snippet extracted from something I wrote last year predicting the Google Code shutdown. https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-predictions-1e78ff31cbfd https://medium.com/@joewalnes/some-2015-tech-predictions-1e7... ------------ It's not about Mercurial vs Git. When Google Code added Mercurial support, Mercurial and Git were roughly equal in popularity. Git was more functional, but Mercurial was a lot simpler to use. In fact, almost everyone I spoke to at the time preferred Mercurial and honestly I thought it was going to be the winner. Project hosting sites that had typically used centralized source control systems like CVS or SVN scrambled to add Git and Mercurial support (including Google Code). Then GitHub happened. They realized that the it's not just the source control system that should be decentralized but every aspect of the project. Projects could be forked with a single click, pull requests created and tracked, network graphs explored. It created an organic and discoverable open-source ecosystem, the likes of which we never saw on Google Code, SourceForge, etc. Anyone could explore ideas in existing projects without having to gain committer access. It was magical. GitHub may have just as easily decided to bet on Mercurial instead. I believe if that would have happened, Mercurial would be the most widely used system today. BitBucket did something similar for Mercurial and did pretty well, but GitHub always had the lead. It was the project hosting sites that lead the source control systems, not the other way round So, back to Google Code. It could have been something huge and it could have made Mercurial the winner, but Google Code never grokked the importance of "social coding". Even though the source code was decentralized, the projects themselves were still centralized. Decentralized project concepts such as forking, network graphs, pull requests, etc - this was all from the new world of GitHub. Over the past two years we've seen Google release new open-source projects on GitHub, then existing projects starting to migrate. Recently, Go started migration too — this is no casual move because it affects the import paths used in a vast amount of user created Go code which will build breakages. Yeah, the writing is on the wall for Google Code. When SourceForge fell out of favor it was sold. It’s now filled with ads, especially deceiving ones on project downloads page which try to trick users into downloading some malware infested turd burner. In fact, for a while SourceForge were actively modifying genuine project releases to include spyware. Cocks. Google didn't do a SourceForge. If there's anything we’ve learned from Google over the years is that they’re not afraid of shutting down projects that don’t work out. By the way, I really respect Google for this — killing products takes guts. Google Code — I salute you. You did well, you made the open source world a better place, and above all you stepped aside when you knew the time was right.

micro_cam 12y ago

Myself and lots of other academics chose google code to host projects that are no longer actively contributed to but still used or of interest to the academic community as building blocks for future research. At the time it seemed like the safest place to leave something. I'll be moving my code and forking a few analytical projects I use appreciate but I hope they would leave the site up in read only or archive mode for longer then a year as i'm sure many authors have moved on and may not even be aware of this change.

BrainInAJar 12y ago
> At the time it seemed like the safest place to leave something. Google is never the safest place to store anything, unless it's your personal data. Google sunsets products constantly.
- jfoster 12y ago
  Correct. That's only become particularly relevant in the past few years, though. Sure, they retired projects before, but they are becoming increasingly ambitious with the retirements. By that I mean they are retiring things that lots of people still use (Reader), were not released that long beforehand (Helpouts), could be viable businesses with modifications (Wallet for Digital Goods), or contain large quantities of valuable content (Code). My point is that Code has been running for quite a while, and at one stage it probably did look like the safest way to keep a project online. Can't blame people for choosing it earlier on.
abvdasker 12y ago
Yes, this is also my biggest concern. I'm working in bioinformatics and smallish open-source repositories created by other bioinformaticians which haven't seen much maintenance but still get used a fair amount (like https://code.google.com/p/biopieces https://code.google.com/p/biopieces) will probably be the worst casualties from this transition. Guess we'll have to backup those dependencies somewhere else...

jfroma 12y ago

While I agree that Google Code, as it is right now, isn't needed anymore, I believe there is still room for innovation in this space and I wish there were more players than github, pushing the boundaries harder. As a software developer is a tool that we use all day.

warbiscuit 12y ago
Among others, there's gitlab.com and bitbucket.com (and also mercurial, as an alternative to git itself -- though the two can push/pull between each other's repos with the right plugin).
- jfroma 12y ago
  Yes, I've installed a gitlab for my company and I'm extremely happy with it, I feel like I've much more control: authentication, authorization, how our projects are organised, etc. We are currently using both private repos on github and gitlab on aws. Regarding mercurial, I used it a lot and hosted lot of things on bitbucket 4 years ago, but now I use git a lot more, just because it is what most of the libraries and opensource projects I use are using.
  - sytse 12y ago
    Great to hear you like GitLab!
pnathan 12y ago
Take a look at Kallithea.

landr0id 12y ago

Anyone know how this will effect Google's Project Zero, or where they will post their findings in the future? GitHub doesn't offer the flexibility that Google Code has for marking issues as public/private which Project Zero relies on heavily.

swills 12y ago

I have to wonder, are we all really comfortable with GitHub being basically the only free code hosting option? Yes, SourceForge(t) is still around, but with the talk of them injecting adware into downloads, I'm sure many wouldn't use them. This leaves, what, BitBucket and running something yourself?

icebraining 12y ago
Bitbucket, Gitlab, Assembla, repo.or.cz and a bunch of others.

seagreen 12y ago

These migrations would be much easier if we specified dependencies by content, not location. Obviously not Google's fault, just something to think about as we build future systems. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZMoY3q2uM

mikelat 12y ago

This doesn't come off as much as a surprise, because there are better alternatives because google code stagnated and wasn't a priority. Google code still has very old looking interface (especially when contrasted to their active products like G+ and gmail), google code only declined because google didn't want to work on it. This doesn't do google any favours, as with every product they launch I'll be asking myself if it's worth investing time or money into just for it to stagnate.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lultimouomo 12y ago

Between this and gitorious, I forsee a lot of dead links in the future. Hasty times we are living; a lot of useful information will be lost in the cloud age as services shut down. Of course, that information wouldn't probably have been available at all if it weren't for those services, but it's still sad.

rdtsc 12y ago

Anyone else scared of the Github monoculture? I am. For all the touted distributed version control advantages we now have one world global centralized repo. Yeah, yeah, I know you can clone it locally. But of course if all the issues, and testing, and build tools are tied to Github. Isn't it a bit disconcerting? Maybe I am just paranoid. And not saying that Google code was going anywhere, I saw more and more projects switch to Github and Google code receiving less and less attention.

perakojotgenije 12y ago
It's not monoculture, there is also bitbucket which IMHO is much better product. Problem is that all the cool kids are now using github and if you want to look cool you also have to use github. Or you could just ignore the hype and use bitbucket.
- VieElm 12y ago
  In addition to BitBucket there's also Unfuddle which is pretty great.
- javajosh 12y ago
  I'm genuinely curious, what do you like better about bitbucket?
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    Free private repos is the outstanding item.
  - danielsamuels 12y ago
    For us it would be the free private repos.
  - dancryer 12y ago
    I really love the branch-level access control on Bitbucket. Being able to say that developers A,B,C have access to the repo, but only A can push to master, is incredibly useful.

ericfontaine 12y ago

I'm sticking to self-hosted fossil-scm. Very simple, lightweight, C, but has full wiki and issue tracker and code trees. The one thing self-hosting lacks is the social network. What is really needed for self hosted sites is a federated network (maybe with something like pump.io and openID) to allow coders from other self-hosted or sass hosts to seamlessly login and contribute and display their profile, and to help mitigate spam.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

There goes my PageRank. Thanks Google. Does anyone know of a way to make the landing page at GitHub look less confusing than the default? That is the #1 reason I went with GC. I want first time users to see descriptive text not an activity log.

gerbal 12y ago
make a gh_pages branch and build a descriptive jekyll page. Or just have a good Readme.md and hope people scroll down.
cdibona 12y ago
A redirect should send the right signals to search engines to move ranking with work. We actually do a lot of work at google to help people find things even after a move. (independent of our own projects/products, esp..)

chemodax 12y ago

My favorite comment: "Google I hope someday you close your search engine and company at all. Welcome to Google Cemetery."

xasos 12y ago

Sure, services like GitLab and BitBucket are cool, but GitHub is the superior option. Take away the fact that they are open source/have unlimited free repos, and there isn't much else. GitHub has a superior UI, a waaaaaay bigger community, a great API, offers student discounts (5 free repos), and other goodies.

sytse 12y ago
The GitLab UI is improving at a rapid pace, have you tried it recently? Is there anything you miss from our API? http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ With GitLab.com your free repos will never expire.

comex 12y ago

Ugh. No, not that Google Code is shutting down, per se. The alternatives are better and for active projects there is plenty of time to migrate. What I object to is that the site will only be preserved in read-only mode for 5 months, despite its popularity and the resulting large number of deep links into it on the Web. Why not forever? git, hg, and I believe svn can all provide read-only access (with some bandwidth overhead) by publishing static files over HTTP. With the addition of a static export of the Google Code pages (mostly doable by crawling; some pagination issues would need to be worked out), Google could host the site going forward on a simple HTTP server without needing to maintain its server-side codebase. And Google is lacking in neither HTTP servers or bandwidth... Belated abuse complaints would remain a problem, but it's easy enough to delete things on request. Google is obviously not legally obligated to keep the site up, and under current mores I suppose it's not socially obligated either. But I think that when the owning company continues to be highly financially successful and maintenance is easy enough, there should be a social obligation for some kind of archival. Or at least redirect the subdomain to whatever Archive Team comes up with...

k3n 12y ago
Google hates anything that requires a human's touch, and per the article: > Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management. They see Google Code as a time-sink, and they're probably right, and it's not surprising to me that they'd drop something that is no longer serving it's intended purpose, but instead has negative implications for their model. Keeping it going forward would require even more hands-on humans, so they scrap it. As for the deep links, one of the Google Code devs did mention[1]: > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. His comment also contains a link to a wiki with more information on how to opt-in to this service. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-google-code.html?showComment=1426178913316#c6979343460978972701 http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/03/farewell-to-go...
- aikah 12y ago
  > I work on Google Code, and we will be putting a service in place to redirect deep links to project homepages, issues, etc. to their new locations. And this is an opt in service, nothing is automated. They could ,AT LEAST, partner with Github or someone else to have the whole thing automated... Seriously... the really want to put 0 money in that stuff,they don't give a damn. There are seriously good projects that will be lost no question.Open source code is a community wealth,even in funky languages nobody use anymore. What Google is doing makes sense from a business stand point but totally shameful from a company that boasts itself doing "no evil".

jrochkind1 12y ago

It's easy to migrate to some other repo, but I'm thinking about the tons of abandonware projects currently hosted there, that will probably disappear. Every once in a while, googling for a solution, I find something on google code. That looks like it's no longer maintained, but is still useful for me to see how they've done it or copy-paste code (if licensed appropriately).

aikah 12y ago

I knew it ... what a shame. You know what killed that product? BAD basic UI/UX. it was horrible to use an naviguate in,so people moved to something with better UX, better design and better visual. Google puts 0 efforts in these things, at least in the browser. Funny how then Google comes with "material design" , but can't update a few CSS on its old apps... Github didn't get popular because it was written in Ruby(though it allowed them to iterate fast),it became popular because devs actually put some effort into the UI/UX and it made it easy to use ... You know what else sucks? google app engine console , google apis console ... look at Heroku console , simple clean and usable, are you going to drop app engine too ? So what's next after Google reader, and Google code? Google app engine ?

fixermark 12y ago
If by "Google app engine console" you're referring to https://appengine.google.com/ https://appengine.google.com/, that's already in fact "dropped." Check https://console.developers.google.com https://console.developers.google.com. The App Engine UI is getting an overhaul; App Engine as a product is probably going to stick around.

lucb1e 12y ago

> We were worried about reliability You don't say? After pulling the plug on all the products I liked, I'm worried too.

I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago

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I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago

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I8ZYPEYXSQ 12y ago

mooreds 12y ago

Just ported a project I was involved in a couple of years ago to github. Thanks for the heads up. ( https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-crypto/ https://github.com/mooreds/gwt-crypto/ )

gnachman 12y ago

Is there any alternative that supports issue attachments? That's the one feature that I really need to live for iTerm2 but github and gitlab don't support it except for images.

DouweM 12y ago
GitLab developer here, and happy to let you know that support for arbitrary attachments to issues and comments was contributed by a member of community earlier this month, and will be included in GitLab 7.9, due to be released on the 22nd :)

sebastiank123 12y ago

Hi, Sebastian from RhodeCode here. We do a fully-featured, behind-the-firewall SCM for Git, Mercurial and SVN - used by some of the world's largest organizations and also some well known Silicon Valley startups. If you want to host your source code on your own (virtual) server then please contact us at https://rhodecode.com https://rhodecode.com and mention Google Code - we are giving away free licenses for startups and smaller teams.

rlx0x 12y ago

They could atleast work together with the internet archive to conserve it, but no of course not that would require be a bit of an effort, google can't do that, because google doesn't care if thousands of open source projects are going to be lost forever to the world. Don't be evil my ass. Archive team is now our last hope as usual.

myohan 12y ago

GitHub wins! I think it's good that Google indirectly admitted their service is not as good as Github, now they need to do the same thing about Google+. Google, you are an amazing company but sorry you can't possibly be the best at everything.

zatkin 12y ago

GitHub has a user GoogleCodeExporter that is publicly logging all of the repositories that are being transferred from Google Code to GitHub. The number of commits might break GitHub! https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from=2015-03-12 https://github.com/GoogleCodeExporter?tab=contributions&from...

SixSigma 12y ago

I wonder how Uriel will move his code, what with him being dead and all. There must be other projects too. Goodbye history.

Apocryphon 12y ago

This is Google's "Yahoo! shutting down GeoCities" moment, isn't it?

zmmmmm 12y ago

This makes me question: how important does Google see developers as being as part of their ecosystem? I mean, I understand all the rational logic of what they are saying. Sure, there are other services etc etc, the world will keep turning. But doesn't Google see any kind of benefit from having developers using their service? In terms of mind share, having developers think positively about Google, having them regularly come to and work with a Google service? Even in purely commercial terms, it would be something that Google could leverage to expose developers to their cloud services and other platforms. Traditionally, staying close to developers in any way they can is something platform companies strive to do. But it seems like Google doesn't see any value in any of that. So my basic question is, does Google still care about developers? Or have they simply moved on as a company?

Andrex 12y ago
Google wants developers contributing to their projects, so they go where the developers go. The developers have moved onto GitHub and have effectively abandoned Google Code, therefore so has Google. Stubbornly maintaining their own service no one wants just breeds confusion and and a division of resources. As the article says: > To meet developers where they are, we ourselves migrated nearly a thousand of our own open source projects from Google Code to GitHub. Nearly a thousand open-source Google projects have been migrated to GitHub already.
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  That all sounds weak to me. Google largely abandoned Google Code before all the developers fled to Github. One of the reasons people went to GitHub because it was clear that Google was no longer investing in Google Code. You're painting a picture where Google is just a passive entity that has no control over what developers do, it just meekly follows them around. That is hardly giving an impression that developers are a high priority to Google. If they were a high priority, Google would want them all using a Google service, and be willing to invest in that to keep them there, not cede them to third party.

perdunov 12y ago

Acquiring GitHub would seem like a pretty natural move by Google, wouldn't it?

nadams 12y ago

I predicted this a long time ago and I've moved my projects off. I would recommend migrating to self hosting to prevent an issue like this in the future. It's not too much of a hassle if you only have a couple of projects but when you have 10+ migrating to another source code hosting service is a real pain. If you are looking for a good list of what's out there check out this stackexchange post: http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-hosted-replacements-for-mercurial http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3506/self-ho... I tried rhodecode - it's very basic but upgrading was always a pain (~1hr/upgrade). And when I did manage to get an upgrade to go through there was always some problem. Gitlab looks interesting but their community edition is lacking. The one benefit of indefero/srchub is that it supports SVN, hg and git and private projects. So people can request a project in whatever SCM system they want and it's all managed from the same place. Also it's fairly easy to setup and maintain - no real external dependencies such as rabbitMQ or something. I have read of people even installing it on shared hosting. I've personally tried http://phabricator.org/ http://phabricator.org/ but after installing it - it seemed like it was missing major features that you would assume would be there. Disclaimer: I am the forker/owner of srchub.

sytse 12y ago
What are you missing from GitLab Community Edition?
epriest 12y ago
What are you missing from Phabricator? https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feature_requests/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabcontrib/article/feat...
- nadams 12y ago
  I think I was looking for a way to "hide" a project/make it private. And after about 30 minutes of clicking around trying different settings/features I felt like it was too bloated for me. For me - I love the simplistic nature of Google Code.
  - 12y ago

cpks 12y ago

Honestly, while it makes sense to shut down Google Code, it is mindboggling that Google destroys information. Public projects on Google Code ought to be archived and the archives and redirects ought to be kept up in perpetuity. People may not be reached by the announcements. Some projects, the authors may be dead, in a coma, etc. Some may just not care. This is the #1 reason I fear the cloud. When Google shuts a project down, unless you act fast, you lose data. Would it be rocket science for Google to set up a service which provides: 1. DNS hosting 2. Static page redirects 3. Static page hosting 4. Secure static page hosting (available only to authenticated accounts) in perpetuity? This would be a read/delete-only service. When Google Reader shuts down, I could access my data forever. When Google Code shut down, the project archives would stay up as read-only. Etc. No maintenance, and a one-time migration with Google Takeout for each dying service.

devsaysstuff 12y ago

A canary in the mine moment - relying solely on a single third-party for your hosting is always a risk - you are there at their grace, nothing more. Migrate to Github? Hmm... they are becoming the defacto single monopoly platform - and no one seems to notice or care?

boyter 12y ago

I wonder if there will be a feed for the list of projects currently inside Google Code. I would very much like to grab the lot and preserve them inside searchcode.com Anyone know if this is possible? Last time I checked it didn't have a public API other then the tracker and I was performing some rather ugly crawling/scraping to get a list of projects.

dingdingdang 12y ago

This is why http://redecentralize.org/ http://redecentralize.org/ and other similar efforts are so important - the centralized model is functionally unfit for long term usage or relying upon. How to capitalize these newer decentralized technologies are key for next leap in the web industry.

jamiesonbecker 12y ago

It may not be valuable to the author. That does not mean it's not valuable to some future searcher. This is not the right way to bid goodbye to a lot of open source code that will disappear from the world forever. Perhaps Google could partner with Internet Archive to preserve this history before it is lost forever?

louwrentius 12y ago

What took it so long? That's my question honestly. Google code was already dead for at least two years.

doktrin 12y ago

> abuse management The article gives the impression that they were combating some sort of systemic (malicious?) abuse. I don't doubt the statement, but I'm having trouble picturing exactly what they're going through. What kind of abuse do project hosting providers face on a recurring basis?

jheriko 12y ago

It was not competing with bitbucket or github, but still a shame to see.

DigitalSea 12y ago

I think we all saw this coming when Google started moving their projects over to Github away from Google Code. This is definitely the right move to make. However, I find it quite disturbing that Google is closing the service down entirely. Surely it would be more beneficial to keep the site in read only made for a good while longer given how deeply linked some parts of the web are to Google Code repositories. Perhaps somehow clean up the platform and hand over the reigns to the Internet Archive instead so it can be preserved and then 301 redirect any request to the archive. Google really needs to get some kind of procedure in place for retiring their applications and services. Surely they realise that being the largest Internet company out there they have responsibilities to do the right thing by the millions that rely on their services daily? You can't just throw something away even if many moved on to Github and Bitbucket quite some time ago. Why not some kind of automated service that attempts to redirect to projects that have moved to Github and Bitbucket? Google has a trove of data, surely they can achieve something like that with pretty close accuracy and then use their manual approach for the projects that they could not automatically link.

max0563 12y ago

This is a sad day, all of my early projects were hosted on Google Code. I'm sad to see it go.

nperez 12y ago

Honestly, I thought plans to sunset it had already been put in place. I hate every moment that I want to check out a project and find that it's hosted on Google Code. The web has moved extremely fast in the last decade (and will probably move even faster in the next decade), and I can tell that I'm looking at 2006 code. There was never a push to give it the love it needed to compete with Github. I hope there is some level of cooperation with those who want to archive it. It's important enough to be archived. The UX is not up to standards in 2015, though, so I will bid farewell to it with some amount of satisfaction and some amount of regret.

soapdog 12y ago

they should keep it on read only form. Lots of good FOSS will be lost if they pull the plug.

tjdetwiler 12y ago

The email I received made me look at some long lost repositories of mine that I did while learning in school. It's always fun to be able to look back on work you did when you were less experienced. It's unfortunate how transient the internet can be. How much information is created and lost over such a short period of time.

stuaxo 12y ago

Just going to join the people asking that you speak to archive.org to get these old projects hosted. Sure I can move my own old projects, but there is plenty of stuff out there that will be lost. Part of what makes modern coding efficient is being able to not just look up working libraries but also to find old solutions to similar problems.

Untit1ed 12y ago

Is anyone else finding that the Github importer just stalls at 0%? I don't really want to have to redo the whole wiki manually :(.

pellanti 12y ago

Shame to see it go but hey ho!

diminoten 12y ago

Makes perfect sense, but I'm surprised the answer is to shut it down, rather than to build a competitor to GitHub.

nercury 12y ago

I was surprised to find my old project there from 2009: a simple lib for utf8 font rendering with OpenGL. I exported it into github, only to find that it never had any source hosted in source control - all my source was in a tarball inside "downloads". I guess there are many authors like me who don't even remember they are hosting something there - it would be sad to loose all that code.

scanr 12y ago

I find the consolidation in repository hosting surprising. It feels like it should be the kind of ecosystem that supports lots of competing repository hosting providers that cater to various niches. This may be because I quite like bitbucket.

tam000 12y ago

I am glad its shutting, i just hoped it did a lot earlier. I love GitHub.. Please Google make it user friendly..