Should I use a software hosting solution for my personal projects?

Question

Right now, I keep all of my projects on my laptop. I'm thinking that I shouldn't do this, but instead use a version control system and check them in/out from an external hosting repository (Google Code, SourceForge, etc). I see several benefits here - first, I don't have to worry about losing my code if my computer crashes and burns or my external HDD crashes and burns; second, I can share my code with the world and perhaps even get more help when I need it.

Is this a good idea? If so, what are some other project hosts that I should investigate (other than Google Code and SourceForge)?

Answer 1

Assembla is awesome.

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EDIT: Yes, this is a good idea - I used to use a personal copy of Vault and found it was more than I cared to manage (in case my server went down or hard drive crashed - not only was it painful to worry about losing and backing up data, but the downtime). Of course, it doesn't hurt to have your own backup as well. Cover all your bases!

Answer 2

@JasonBunting: Should I assume that you think that software hosting sites are a good idea, even for personal projects?

Answer 3

Online backup is cheap and easy. Why would you not?

Answer 4

After losing some freelance work to a hard drive crash, I've become keen on the philosophy that "It doesn't exist until its in source control". As I don't want to necessarily share the source for my projects with the rest of the world, I pay for webhosting (using Dreamhost who have great deals on basic shared hosting and easy one-click installs for things like subversion) and store my data that way. They don't claim to be any sort of backup service, but all I really want is a second copy offsite somewhere.

If I do decide to share the code I can always make it public later. Do note that sourceforge does not allow private/personal projects, and Google Code forces you to license your code using an open source license. Both have some limitations on the number of projects you can create (and aren't really intended to store everybody and their brother's personal projects).

Assembla looks pretty slick although it is hard to tell what all you get for free. I'm definitely going to try it out.

There is an extensive list at wikipedia.

Answer 5

+1 for Assembla.com

Answer 6

1. GitHub is a really great option for git.

2. Most of the free, public hosting sights will insist that you license your code with an OSS license (and, possibly, your documentation). That's potentially a different thing that you're talking about (backups).

3. For just backups, you may want to try a for-pay service or even something like mozy.

Answer 7

@Everyone At this point in time, I'm not concerned with who sees and uses my code, so I'll look at Assembla, Google Code, and SourceForge.

Answer 8

I use Assembla - You can share your code if you want, but you are not required to. That's a big plus to me.

Answer 9

There are two separate issues here: 1) revision control and 2) backups.

1) For revision control, I haven't found anything better than Perforce. You can use it with two users for free, and it kicks the stuffing out of Subversion. Like, CVS users looked at Perforce, and realized how bad CVS was, so they started working on Subversion. But they only got halfway to Perforce.

2) Now you need to backup your repository. Periodic backups somewhere offsite would be good, but it doesn't actually have to host your repository server. It could be any online backup service to which you upload your repository. To protect yourself between backups, you could consider a RAID in your workstation. It's cheap and easy to set up, and will protect all of your files, not just your code.

Answer 10

I host most of my non-code backups on Amazon's S3 service.

Code goes on a Slicehost virtual server that has automated snapshot backups (daily as well as weekly) and runs Subversion and the Trac web interface to it.

Answer 11

@Anyone who uses Assembla - Is it 200MB per project or 200MB per account? If it's per account, then that's awfully small.

Answer 12

Github is a really great hosting service if you use Git; and of course everyone should use Git. The default is free public project hosting, but if your stuff is proprietary (or perhaps embarrassing) you can get private hosting from them for some cost per month.

Answer 13

If you want to make your projects in some form public, than a hosting-solution may be useful for you.

I made a listing of project-hosting-sites at this question. Of these list only Origo allows you also to host a closed-source-project. As long as you want to open up your source, you can choose everyone on this list.