I have had a small project project on my homepage long ago, but since I began to use it in some general education schools, interest in it has grown and I decided not only to significantly improve it, but also to choose some proper open source hosting .

What we have

Before telling about the real state of affairs, I will briefly repeat everything that can be read without me on Google.
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Qualitative restrictions

• It is forbidden to host not opensource (as well as child porn and everything else,
  which is contrary to humanistic ideals)
• There is no localization (yet), but you can write in Russian for everything in UTF.
• You can post only wiki-pages. (To hack your site with blackjack and whores will not work.)

Opportunities

• The project has a title page.
• There is a dump for distributions (download).
• There is a wiki with a somewhat reduced set of features.
• There are "Issues" where you can write something, so as not to forget.
• SVN with external access via HTTPS and the ability to view via the web-interface.

Quotas

I didn’t quite understand the quotas, they grow in me, but nothing changes in the Google documentation. When I last read the FAQ, 100Mb was written there (“if you need more, write to us”). However, I now have quotas for SVN 1Gb and download 2Gb. They jumped sharply, about a month after the project was posted; logged into the admin area once again, and it says “your quota is now 2G”; and everything; without explanation.

How it all works

First, what did you like?

The nice thing is that everything is very simple and very friendly.

Everywhere hangsaminki, links to various explanatory and other help. I never had the desire to "google" - everything is at hand.

The project is created in five minutes. You don't have to worry about anything. It is captivating and the first impression is just very pleasant.

Separately, it should be noted that Google is friends with other hosting open source projects. This is expressed for example in the fact that he will not let you want a project with a name that is already used elsewhere. It is very useful. If your name clashes with another, it will be very difficult for you to post links to your project on all sorts of links.

And now about the second impression.

A lot has not been completed

For example, there is a web-interface for editing a wiki, but it has no possibilities but to correct the text in <textarea>. To elementary upload a picture - use SVN.

By the way, the pictures are a separate topic. You can use the <img> tag, but where to place files with a picture is not clear. Most people (and me too) lump them together with wiki files.

And what is completed, works intermittently

Interruptions are of several kinds.

Sometimes Google warns in advance: “They say - because of the work on the line, everything will be available only for reading then and then” (usually we are talking about half a day). This is the least evil.

Quite often there are glitches, which no one warned, but the diagnosis is clear. Starting at 502 with SVN running ((usually lasting a minute), ending with amazing pearls like this:


I assure you that I did not press the button twice, and no one works in parallel with me. Obviously, my request has doubled somewhere in google computing clouds. For cloud computing, such situations are absolutely normal, but, gentlemen, you need to process them correctly ... although this is still the correct case.

The third kind of oddity is unexplained.

For example, right after a commit, files may have incorrect (but new) editing dates. Then these dates themselves are corrected. Or a wiki page may appear in SVN, but not appear in wikipedia. Delays in these cases can be hours and then you do not receive warnings either in advance or even after the fact.

It remains only to wait, to think that you could have done something wrong ... These are the most unpleasant glitches and they happen very often.

Total

So I would say that all of these hosting projects are in deep, deep betta (and maybe even in alpha), which Google’s marketing specialists are silent about.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the project is developing. Moves to new hardware, constantly adds new features, increases various quotas ...

In addition, it is clear that Google is trying to take care of the user's comfort. At least, Google does everything a lot more friendly, which is the same sf.net.

In a word, I'm not going to get off Google yet :-)

PS about Scato

Yes Yes! I remember, I remember, that I promised to tell more about Scato in the pages of Habra. I will definitely do it. Just today, released a new stable version 0.2.0, got a lot of impressions and decided to write about them until they were dulled.

In addition, I can write how to promote open source projects, how to write PAD-files, where to put them together ... Is it interesting? If you have any wishes, I will blackmail :-)

PPS about Habré

Here I am picking with this post and I think how much interface Google has is simpler than that of Habr !!! And there are as many more opportunities, but everything is very clear, and most importantly - it behaves as you expect from it. In this sense, Habra was lucky - there is someone to learn :-)

UPD: I was advised to pay attention to www.devprom.net . (I wonder why the most constructive things are always written in private? Perhaps the author of this idea has reason to encrypt; I will also keep it on the inside; although I don’t understand this)