GitHub v/s BitBucket
Both at Mavrix and Janaagraha we have projects that run in public and private collaboration modes. DVCS plays a major role in easy collaboration. Choosing a great DVCS hosting provider is very important for the success of collaboration. After a few days of comparative studies and research, we reached a point where we had decide between GitHub and BitBucket. I created this table to make that easy for us.
| Service | GitHub | Bitbucket | ||
| Type | Private | Public | Private | Public |
| DVCS | Git | Mercurial and Git | ||
| Disk space | No free private repos. | 0.30GB soft limit. | Unlimited free space | |
| Collaborators | No free pvt Collaborators | Unlimited | 5 free collaborators | Unlimited |
| Clients in Windows | GitHub for windows. | TortoiseHQ is great. | ||
| Clients in Linux | Good tools. Many options. | TortoiseHQ works really well. | ||
| Issue trackers | Free | Free | ||
| Wiki | Free | Free | ||
| Custom Domains | No Such options | Free | ||
| Authorizations | Good permissions control | Great control. Has groups. | ||
| Hooks | Has web and mail hooks | Has web and mail hooks | ||
| API | Yes, JSON too | Yes | ||
| People/Community | Social and big community | Not so big community | ||
| Academic/NGO support | Nothing special. | Free offers of unlimited pvt repos etc | ||
| Pro account | Yes. Seems expensive. Charge on space, no of pvt Repos and no of pvt collaborators | Yes, very affordable. Charge only on the basis of no of pvt collaborators | ||
| Results | No so good | Great | Great | Good |
Verdict:
- Place for your startup to collaborate and develop private projects - Bitbucket
- Place for your startup to collaborate and develop public projects - Github takes first place until unless the project is really big and has dedicated developers. In that case Bitbucket is an obvious choice.
- Where you need to be - Github for sure and you will end up at Bitbucket anyway.
References:
1. Choosing a distributed VCS for the Python project
2. Git based source control in enterprise
Great comparison, but there is a free private option with GIT as well with http://www.gitenterprise.com/ . I found it to be good actually.
I hope we are meeting for BCB10. It will be great to have your inputs at my session on personal code versioning http://barcampbangalore.org/bcb/bcb10/personal-code-versioning
I might come though I am not sure at this point. The session looks very interesting.
Actually, Git Extensions is a very good Git client for Windows. Try it out.
The only problem with GitHub right now is the very slow dev cycle. They take forever to add the smallest of features that already exist in their competitors.
Also take a look at CodeBaseHQ.com – they are quite good too. The only reason I haven’t gone codebasehq yet is because their interface feels kludgy right now. After that gets better, GitHub and BitBucket won’t hold a candle!