Monday, October 29, 2012

Free private hosting, howto

Recently, I came across this discussion of inexpensive alternatives for project source code hosting of private projects:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/109440/best-git-repository-hosting-for-a-commercial-project

I investigated, and of those with apparent substance, the cheapest (actually free of charge for five users) is Bitbucket:

https://bitbucket.org/plans

I thought someone might appreciate a free alternative to GitHub for their private projects. If so, I recommend you follow these steps:

1. Download a backup of the current version of the source code, and save it on your computer. It should be available here:

https://github.com/{your username}/{your private project}/zipball/master

2. Open a free account with Bitbucket and there create a free, private repository (under your control, for your safety).

Possibly BitBucket will let your developers themselves push to the original repository, just as they can on GitHub.

Copyright (c) 2012 Mark D. Blackwell.