Almost 11 years after we created CodePlex, it’s time to say goodbye. We launched CodePlex in 2006 because we, like others in the industry, saw a need for a great place to share software. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of amazing options come and go but at this point, GitHub is the de facto place for open source sharing and most open source projects have migrated there.
We migrated too. As many of you know, Microsoft has invested in Visual Studio Team Services as our “One Engineering System” for proprietary projects, and we’ve exposed many of our key open source projects on GitHub (Visual Studio Code, TypeScript, .NET, the Cognitive Toolkit, and more). In fact, our GitHub organization now has more than 16,000 open source contributors – more than any other organization – and we’re proud to partner closely with GitHub to promote open source.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched many CodePlex projects migrate. During the same period, we’ve had to address several issues, including a spam epidemic over several months in 2015, as spammers sought to take advantage of the CodePlex.com domain to boost their illicit activities. We’ve also seen a substantial decrease in usage: as of this writing, less than 350 projects saw a source code commit in the last 30 days.
The shutdown plan
So, it’s time to say goodbye to CodePlex. As of this post, we’ve disabled the ability to create new CodePlex projects. In October, we’ll set CodePlex to read-only, before shutting it down completely on December 15th, 2017.
The CodePlex archive
We’ll take a final, complete backup of the site before shutting down and decommissioning the existing CodePlex site and servers.
At that time, CodePlex.com will start serving a read-only lightweight archive that will allow you to browse through all published projects – their source code, downloads, documentation, license, and issues – as they looked when CodePlex went read-only. You’ll also be able to download an archive file with your project contents, all in common, transferrable formats like Markdown and JSON. Where possible, we’ll put in place redirects so that existing URLs work, or at least redirect you to the project’s new homepage on the archive. And, the archive will respect your “I’ve moved” setting, if you used it, to direct users to the current home of your project.
There isn’t currently any plan to have an end date for the archive.
Migrating your data
We’re providing two first-class ways to get your data out of CodePlex. First, we’ve partnered with GitHub to provide a streamlined import experience to help you bring your CodePlex source code, license, and documentation to GitHub. A migration tool for issues is also in the works and will be available soon – we’ll update this blog post with more details when it’s available. And, we’ve added a new option to your project to set an “I’ve moved” banner on your project that will direct your users to your new home. There’s a walkthrough on the CodePlex wiki to help you through the migration process.
Second, the CodePlex Archive will allow you to download an archive file, as described above.
If you’d like to migrate just your source code, you have a variety of options depending on your source control type. For Git users, many Git hosting services, including Visual Studio Team Services and BitBucket, offer an easy import flow to help you migrate. Bitbucket also offers import for Mercurial users.
We’re here to help
As you use these tools, CodePlex support is standing by to help via email. GitHub is also ready to help if you encounter any issues with the import experience.
Thank you,
Brian
This is really bad. And I thought I could invest into CodePlex. It is the only SVN provider out there that is still free. SourceForge is selling your data. Other providers are limited by time and then demand payment. And even others heavily limit the size of your codebase.
What was great of CodePlex was the social platform. I hope this is an early April Fools Joke and will be resolved tomorrow. :_)
>not sure if April Fool joke
and when will Visual Studio Online / VSTS shutdown ?
It is not an April fools joke.
Brian
@quiret
yes, let’s also re-release VB6, while we’re at it.
Dude, it’s 2017. Time to move on!
Link to walkthrough is broken (internal)
@ErikEJ, Thanks. Just fixed it.
Brian
Your walkthrough link is pointing to an internal resource.
What is the plan to sunset the domain name as compared to the content? There’s plenty of search engine results that point to Codeplex repos. I would be concerned if the domain slipped into the wrong hands and someone built up a virus filled phishing site in it’s place to continue handling those search inquiries.
While we are at it – any news about open sourcing Visual FoxPro?
@quiret github has had svn support since 2010 https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support
I think this makes a lot of sense TBH. VSTS and Bitbucket are less about social coding and more about enterprise team collaberation. Github, and gitlab trend toward more open and social systems. Looking around at the landscape its clear that codeplex has fallen by the wayside and that github is the future. I’m sure hosting codeplex is not without costs, and I support this decision.
Microsoft is not king anymore. He just seek to survive, not ask to be the top of every product line.
Finally.
There are plenty of alternatives for CodePlex users:
FOSSHUB
SF
GITHUB
BITBUCKET
Thank you CodePlex for all these years!
It makes sense and the stats support it.
But what will happen with abandoned projects (i.e. No one left to migrate to HitHub)? Will those files etc. be kept available for download via the archive site or is the archive only for project owners?
There are still some excellent programs I use frequently and recommend to others. Hate to lose them.
@quiret you can use an svn client with github
THANK YOU MICRO$OFT!
You force me to move to something better… Until now I was too lazy to do it after I moved from Google Code to CodePlex.
A lot of things like mail notifications didn’t work like it should, Mercurial support is below zero etc.
Thanks again!
Thank you for all the work over the years, in the early days especially you were a welcome alternative to sourceforge. If it wasn’t for codeplex the MS-centric development world would be dramatically more insular than it is today.
@Jim, Yes, we plan to keep the domain name for a long time to come.
Brian
@All, I published a non-trivial update to the post to address questions I’ve seen about the archive.
Brian
Sad, but not unexpected as the site hasn’t received any updates in such a long time.
@Brian I have 2 asks:
1. I hope you will send an email to all CodePlex users to inform them of the shutdown, or at least to users that have a Project on CodePlex.
2. Is it possible to leave the homepage editable so that if somebody doesn’t notice the shutdown until after Dec 15, 2017 they can still update the page to direct people to their project’s new home. Or perhaps add a new small feature for project owners to specify a link to the project’s new home, if you don’t want to leave the entire homepage editable.
> It is the only SVN provider out there that is still free.
“We’ve also seen a substantial decrease in usage”
of course because the SVN support is down for a loooong time.
If you choose to migrate to GitHub, they have great support for Subversion clients: https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clients/
I’d also like to add that SourceForge has an SVN importer as well here: https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/SVN%20Import/
Very sad to here. I am not in the ‘In Crowd’, but I don’t like Git Hub, and Git Hub doesn’t have any method to monetize projects. I have 20 projects on Code Plex, and I make $3 – 6 per month and spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours on open source. Now I will have to focus on becoming a billionaire.
I own a domain called Lava Pub (www.lavapub.com). It has been on my to do list for a few years to build a site designed to help open source projects find sponsors and make money. The one thing I know is if open source developers could make more money, there would be more open source development.
II had planned on hosting a project today (my goal was one per month for 2017), now I have to move a bunch of projects to Git Hub.
I am disappointed in Microsoft.
What about ClickOnce? Thx.