

Meet Atlassian Stash: Git Repository Management For Enterprise Teams - plunchete
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2012/05/atlassian-stash-enterprise-git-repository-management/

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languagehacker
Okay, Atlassian, we get it. You think that GitHub is your biggest competitor.
You're worried about the idea of source control being the focal point of
developer productivity, because it makes issue tracking a secondary feature,
and not a primary ure. And this threatens your biggest product, Jira, which is
already kind of a mess to configure for source control. It's the reason why
you want to own BitBucket and directly compete with Git, and it's the reason
why you're adding this to your ecosystem -- so that you can own these aspects
customers' projects. Customers who need source control hosting first would
start with BitBucket, and customers who need it after they've project-managed
and roadmapped everything in advance would realize late in the game that they
need something like Stash.

It seems like trying to capture every kind of use case with a smattering of
different products will ultimately be Atlassian's undoing. Yeah, you capture
more of the market in total by taking this approach, but it also means that
you have to maintain additional products, many of which are at odds with each
other. There are so many technology businesses failed that tried to be
"everything to everybody" that it's not even worth getting into here. I think
they're better off identifying a strong, unified voice and promoting a single
right way to handle end-to-end software productivity. But if it works for
them, whatever.

~~~
gouranga
They are undoing themselves quite happily with shitty products.

Yes JIRA I'm looking at you...

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nemesisj
As a current Jira user and customer, I find this announcement and the idea
that they've been working on this really annoying. There are already way too
many products in the Atlassian ecosystem, and the Jira product offering is
like a cautionary tale for all aspiring enterprise software systems out there
- slow, big, ugly, very customisable, but really tedious. I wish they would
just focus on Jira, cede this idea of source control software to Github (which
already has a firewall product, most people don't know this) and make
everything work together really well.

My two cents.

~~~
jimsperry
There is also a nice price delta between the two. Stash is $9000 (currently)
for 500 users/yr. GitHub Enterprise is $125,000 for 500 users/yr. That might
win over some

~~~
fsckin
Disclaimer: I work in the game industry. In the last few years I've worked on
projects with Valve, EA, Blizzard, Bungie, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, id,
NCSoft, etc... the list goes on and on. They all use Perforce.

Perforce is double the cost of GitHub Enterprise, at $350,000 for 500
users/yr, including their (amazing) support for when the server wont restart
in the middle of the night after routine maintenance.

Regardless of how sweet their support staff is, P4 has relatively painful
branching, so all of these companies who have multiple teams developing on
separate branches (fairly common in companies who outsource large chunks of
work), an entire engineer is dedicated to concocting epic change lists for a
week at a time every time you want to merge.

GitHub Enterprise could make that issue a bit more bearable for engineers
(binary files get checked in regularly, but rarely are two people branching
the same binary that would need merging later) and save a nice chunk of money.

Developers would probably enjoy using a DVCS and apparently don't mind loosing
an entire guy who is doing merges all day, while artists, designers, and other
not-so-technical folks who also contribute to the repo would have a hard time
migrating from a workflow that is ingrained from internship onward. Tech-heavy
companies and those who develop solely on Mac or iOS are the rare exception.

A big problem is that Git has no concept of what Perforce calls "exclusive
checkout" where only one person can claim and file and work on it. That's a
deal breaker for most. Communication is hard. Make it apparent that someone
has claimed a file.

Retraining users from Perforce to GitHub (however enlightened that may be) has
a real cost. I would estimate thousands of dollars per employee in lost
productivity. Gotta make way, way easier to start working in the git workflow,
especially on Windows. All game console development happens on Windows.

Fixing the issues above could crack the entertainment industry nut (and
probably many others) and likely reap some nice rewards for other groups who
can't afford to switch.

~~~
mullr
> A big problem is that Git has no concept of what Perforce calls "exclusive
> checkout" where only one person can claim and file and work on it. That's a
> deal breaker for most. Communication is hard. Make it apparent that someone
> has claimed a file.

Is this a problem particularly in the games industry for some reason? Because
in "regular" development, people always think it'll be a problem before they
try it. Turns out not to be, especially with the great merge support you get
from git.

I could see it being an issue for binaries though. If anything, I'd expect
people to balk at having to clone the entire history of large binary files,
which don't typically delta-compress very well.

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luser001
Atlassian keeps it at $10 for 1-5 users. Awesome!

And they give the source code to commercial and academic customers for
customization.

Transparent pricing. They may be the least enterprisey of the enterprise
vendors. :)

~~~
gouranga
There will be a maintenance contract - there always is with Atlassian.

~~~
luser001
_will be_ meaning mandatory? No, there isn't.

I've downloaded and used the 5-user version of the wiki (Confluence) and I
didn't pay anything more than $10. I expect this to be the same.

~~~
gouranga
The moment it breaks you will need one...

~~~
nirvdrum
The maintenance contract is another $10 for the next year (assuming you're
still < 5 people). And you get software updates during that period. It's not
particularly devious.

------
jbottigliero
Anyone else think the naming of a product after a command used in the
technology it represents seems a little strange?

See: git stash --help

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bchhun
GitStack[1] has been quite an awesome Windows-only solution for the company I
work for.

[1] <http://gitstack.com/>

~~~
maratd
Nice solution for Windows. If you're on the Linux end, there's this:

<http://gitlabhq.com/>

Which actually kinda does all the Atlassian Stash stuff for free.

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mullr
Gerrit (<http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/>) addresses some of the same problem
space and comes with an awesome code review system. It also has one of the
world's strangest access control systems. But it works and it's free, and the
code review makes it all worth it.

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mh-
> Stash fits into your environment and doesn’t force you to use a pre-packaged
> appliance which you don’t have any control over.

zing.

 _(for those unaware, this is directed at GitHub's enterprise offering - which
is a VM "appliance" that boots into a menu)_

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ckdarby
Gitweb + Gitolite = free & does everything this does

~~~
darklajid
Gitorious. Gitlab.

~~~
ckdarby
Two paid services :(

~~~
adestefan
Gitorious is AGPL. You can find the source code at
<https://gitorious.org/gitorious/>

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quicksilver03
Another open source (Java-based) alternative is Gitblit <http://gitblit.com/>
.

