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.
– Microsoft release Product X
– Microsoft heavily promotes Product X, promising its the wave of the future
– Microsoft devs want to work on cool new technology, pitch it to management
– Management agrees, pulls plug on Product X
– Microsoft avoids telling community Prodct X is being wound down, instead claims its “still supported”
– Without active development, Product X hemorrhages users and market share
– Microsoft publicly announces Product X is being discontinued because it has low market share
– Devs that invested time, knowledge, and money into Product X are screwed
Sound familiar? The story of just about every product Microsoft has touched over the past 15 years.
Just a few short years ago you were announcing on this very blog how you are the one in charge of CodePlex and the MSDN blogs. Months later, all active development stopped on CodePlex, all MS teams moved their projects to Github, and the site was left to wither over the past few years. And *shock* – people stopped using CodePlex. So instead of having alternatives to Github, we’re down to de-facto monopoly with a company that is unprofitable and could disappear eventually.
Plus- MSDN blogs are still as big a pile of garbage as they have been for a decade.
How is it exactly that you’re still in a management role?
+1 to Dave M Stork’s suggestion!!!
I’d also like to see abandoned/inactive CodePlex projects still made available in the archived version of this website.
It’s really sad to see this announcement. But I still want to say thank you to codeplex and team as it has been part of my earliest career journey even though it was just a very short time.
Any one knows a free clickonce alternative host, which codeplex provided (for free) and worked awesomely for my app that is used by about 30 people 😉
What is the plan and recommended approach for downloading the entire discussion, documentation and issues threads associated with a CodePlex project?
This is not an April fools joke
-April fools joke
I’m assuming one of the reasons you’re closing Codeplex is because you guys have Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) available now and it’s kind of an internal competitor – and the fact that you manage the TFS team as well as the Codeplex team it’s kind of a no-brainer that one has to go?
What about incorporating all the codeplex projects into VSTS? Add the missing features (discussions, wiki, downloads) of codeplex to VSTS and gobble it up? You’d be losing a brand but at least people would not feel like you’re dumping them totally.
The only thing is that VSTS marketing is failing just like codeplex – at least for open source, small projects. I haven’t heard anybody punting it since it opened up. I almost forgot it exists, and I don’t know of any open source projects actually using it. What I’m trying to say is, don’t let the same thing that happened to codeplex happen to VSTS – make it fun and hip – make people come to it. Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket are all competitors so treat them like it and actually give them a run for our money.
One thing I think that is sorely missing is the fact that pull requests are all single site things – you have to fork on github to do a pull request on github – I think some integration\standardization needs to happen here so that all these sites start working together. Then people won’t feel like they’re locked in, and they would use the sites they preferred for the features they linked instead of being forced.
Just don’t start closing off services willy-nilly like Google does. Nobody likes it and you lose people’s trust.
So sad to know the sad news, i hope it’s a Apr.1st joke
For those still using svn (why??) GitHub supports it. Although you really should switch to git.
For those not wanting GitHub, check out GitLab, I highly recommend it.
Codeplex needed to go.
Good to know!
For old abandoned project we can port by our self and have anew project in Github.
I’m bemused on your stats. You list Microsoft top but skew it by separating Angular from Google.
I guess this is what they mean by lies, damned lies and statistics…
@ Lloyd K Those stats are provided by github and not by microsoft: https://octoverse.github.com/
Besides that I don’t think you can combine Google and Angular since not everyone who works on Angular is part of Google. And many are in both organisations so.
This is a sad decision from Microsoft. I really enjoyed using CodePlex, because it is user-friendly for both developers and users and really fast. I really hope that you change your mind on shutting it down, it is a good web app!
Message from SourceForge regarding CodePlex shutdown: https://sourceforge.net/blog/codeplex-shuts-down-sourceforge-is-here/
Thank you and good bye, we won’t miss you!
P.S. Microsoft doesn’t own you anything, folks.
@Rudy Hartadi, @Tim Dams, GitHub recommends Squirrel as a ClickOnce alternative: https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows
@John Holliday, when the CodePlex archive goes live on 12/15, you’ll be able to download a ZIP archive that has your code, docs, downloads, issues, and license (no discussions). We’re still finalizing the exact format but the plan is to use all common formats like JSON and Markdown so that it’s easy to work with the data in tools of your choosing.
Sad to hear this. I did not get to put my CodePlex account to use at all. But I think that’s a good decision. I see many developers move their CodePlex Projects into GitHub. But CodePlex UX was great. I personally like CodePlex over GitHub or even SourceForge. Farewell CodePlex.
you wanted so.
Microsoft left codeplex few years ago. No you say the users want codeplex anymore.
Realy???
boo hiss. This is a horrible decision on the part of Microsoft.
Foreshadowing what’s going to happen in 5-8 years for VSTS.
Github has won. (period)
Atlassian has won in work item management
Amazon will win in hosted ALM Tools (AWS CodeCommitr, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy). Has anyone else missed that Jenkins is THE standard for CI/CD pipelines?
Microsoft will continue to use VSTS for Windows, Office and their own internal enterprise tooling…but it will fade into obscurity and will have decreasing internal resourcing/funding. Just look at TFVC, MTM, Lab Management for a view of the world to come in 5-8 years.
Now I do expect Microsoft to buy Github and Atlassian in the next 3 years…and lose money…while Amazon eats their lunch.
What was that about a burning platform again?
“Nokia’s chief executive to staff: ‘we are standing on a burning platform’”….just change Nokia to Microsoft DevDiv, change android\ios to github and AWS, and change chief executive from Stephen Elop to Brian Harry.
This move with codeplex foreshadows the future….if I can see it, why can’t you?
https://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/
————————————
Hello there,
There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.
As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.
He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.
We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.
Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.
I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.
And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.
For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.
In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.
Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.
While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.
At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.
At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.
And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.
The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.
This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.
On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.
Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.
How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?
This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.
Nokia, our platform is burning.
We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.
The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.
Stephen.
While I understand some aspects of the decision:
Diversity in free platforms is still important.
Replatform to Visual Studio – but don’t shut down.
So – it is not a good idea in the larger theme/scheme of things to divest from this.
What is remaining? Quasi-monopoly?
I hope you realize that all you’re doing is signaling that Microsoft is as unreliable as Google in providing Cloud solutions. (Doesn’t matter that CodePlex is free and Azure/Office365/VSTS aren’t).
Not keeping the site up (in read-only mode), is unforgivable. Please note that I’m not a CodePlex user and don’t particularly care about it, just someone who is a cloud skeptic who sees his worries confirmed over and over again.
Hello, I need to download the storefront end to end sample but the download link is not working for some reason. can you please send the link to this specific application in github because I already searched for it there and couldn’t find it. Best,
Thank you guys
Thank you Microsoft
And I just recently migrated all my project from GitHub to Codeplex due to my preference of using TFVC over git. Sigh… It’s a shame.
Many thanks to give us a place, more .Net specific, in those years.
Please, change the repo setting to put the auto “I’ve moved” link ASAP and please (really please) a way to convert the documentation of the package to Markdown files.
When you have done send us an e-mail.
I’ll move to BitBucket with Hg.
Thanks again.
BTW… DCVS where almost everything is in GitHub, is distributed but not so much 😉
TFS is a great product and was supported by CodePlex, but the world is embracing Git, and GitHub. So now I have to use Git for source control. My important intellectual property in a product with no real company behind it, based on incomprehensible unix logic, and atrocious usability, and no database to backup for disaster recovery. But sure, I want to the in-crowd. So GitHub here we come. Push, pull, sync, commit, and whatever. Good chance my sourcecode will get lost somewhere along the way. But no fear, it safely backed up in TFS.
Oh, and markdown as the new standard for documentation. All this open source hobby projects will by the downfall of the software industry. Anyone remember knockout …
Is GitHub that good for binary releases, which I used Codeplex for? I doubt.
SourceForge is great for binary releases. All downloads are https and all projects are scanned for malware.
Why say “thank you” to Microsoft for such a horrible decision ?
What’s the problem to them to leave the site even in readonly
state for more few years to come ?
First, they killed gotdot.net, now they are killing CodePlex …
What will they will kill next ? VisualStudio code ? The whole NET ?
Hi,
How about making code-plex site code on GitHub. That way if some one wants a private instance can be created on internal network.
Regards,
Prasad K
Great. Yet another act that shows Microsoft cannot be trusted. Get developers on and then kill it, typical MS philosophy. It happened to VFP, it happened to Silverlight … What is next? I, for one, having worked with MS technologies heavily in the past and still do, trying to learn non-MS technologies.
Is there any support available if problems are encountered during the migration? I’m trying to move my one and only project only but GitHub keeps on asking for my CodePlex credentials when it is checking something and it doesn’t like what I provide, even though they are correct.
What an awful decision. You go, inspect the competition, add what’s missing, launch some campaigns, make people aware of the super CodePlex and you have a good strategy. This way you can afford buying GitHub later for 50 billion dollars. ROFL.
For binary distribution, I recommend FOSSHUB https://www.fosshub.com
For code, GITHUB https://github.com/
For anything else, you will have to do it yourself: https://github.com/etix/mirrorbits
Still waiting for VB6 to come back, so CodePlex loves – it *will* be a while.
@englishextra
GitHub has also releases for binary files
https://help.github.com/articles/about-releases/
Why We as a community make a new codeplex, if others agree we can do that, why not
11 years of “wasted” effort.
Surely your web engineering teams saw GIT coming…and saw the need for a GIT hosting service years ago, right?
Surely your work item tracking teams saw Trello coming and saw the need for a FREE super easy to use Kanban system, right?
Why the failed execution and the misalignment on priorities across the board?
Codeplex\TFS\VSTS could have and SHOULD have been Github before Github even existed.
Codeplex\TFS\VSTS could have and SHOULD have been Trello before Trello even existed.
As for the dozens/hundreds(?) of engineers and hundreds/thousands(?) of man-hours that went into building, running, and maintaining CodePlex, will any of that be of value for VSTS or is it just being written off and chucked into the garbage bin…if that’s the case why not open source the code on github? Sure that’d be ironic…but at least something of value would be created.
I always thought that the goodness of codeplex would be spread to TFS Online and eventually there would be 1 offering that was the BEST of both worlds…and now to find out that instead of 1 GREAT offering….Microsoft is essentially taking their ball and going home, tail between their legs mind you, and handing the field to Github….that just makes me question our small company’s interest in moving to a cloud-based engineering system and the whole Microsoft “gets” the cloud.
Sure codeplex was a small failure…but the reasons for CodePlex’s failure seem to just be the tip of the iceberg…of failed vision, failed execution, and failed leadership.
Time will tell…but this decision speaks volumes.
@Jeroen Frijters All CodePlex data, except discussions, will remain available in read-only mode indefinitely. We want to ensure that every CodePlex project, even those that are unmaintained and/or don’t choose to migrate to GitHub, remains available as a reference.
@Maulo Fabio The “I’ve moved” setting is available now – go to https://.codeplex.com/settings to enter in your project’s new home. For documentation, when you click the “Download Wiki” button the Documentation or Home tabs, we’ll do a best-effort conversion to Markdown for all of your documentation, if you used the CodePlex wiki markup. If you used the HTML editor, we’ll just give you your HTML.
@englishextra GitHub provides a great experience for distributing binaries with their Releases: https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software.
@Philip Colmer it sounds like GitHub needs your TFS credentials, which is your CodePlex password (not your Microsoft Account password, even if you use that to sign into CodePlex). Check out step 5 in the migration guide: https://aka.ms/codeplex-guide. If you’re still stuck, let us know here: https://www.codeplex.com/site/contact.
I can’t help but comment on the abundance of armchair quarterbacking that is going on. All of these people who don’t run their own businesses commenting about something they know nothing about. If you think CodePlex is such a great solution why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and start a new company to provide the same service. Maybe Microsoft would sell you the codebase and domain name? Otherwise, STFU.
Codeplex was fun. It is simple and did not have the complexities of git. Now, everyone knows git and sees its power; so codeplex lost its relevance. It was fun but life happens.
It would of had been a great idea if codeplex was given a second aspect/feature that is basically git. Codeplex could of had been the TFS Git source control for open source software and a rival to Github.
@diodin and others who don’t grok git. Strongly recommend you check out the “Git for ages 4 and Up” video on youtube. It’s about an hour and a half but well worth your time and makes things make a whole lot more sense. Git really is a good VCS, and once you have the new mental model that git uses, what it does and why is a lot easier to understand.
When do you want to open source Visual FoxPro ?
I have been telling my student do not waste time learning any MS technologies. This closure bis another classic example.
OMG this is sad news indeed.. Don’t go.
Sad news. It is the time to say goodbye. Thank you CodePlex. Programmers keep calm and github on.
TERRIBLE NOTICE =(
In the famous words of Luke Skywalker: “No. Nooooooooo, that’s not true! I’ts impossible!!!”
@Alex Mullans
“All CodePlex data, except discussions, will remain available in read-only mode indefinitely”
Groundhog Day –
we’ve heared that statement several times in the past and it took not a long time til that decision was reverted by 180.
I bet that CodePlex – readonly mode – will dropped in less than 2 years after switching to readonly with the arguments that nobody is using CodePlex anymore and therefore it would be a waste of resources for MSFT to keep the archive only.
As already noted by Kobian – first gotdotnet, than codeplex,
next the unattended social.msdn.microsoft.com forums
and in 2-3 years VisualStudio.com (VSTS) as everybody is using GitHub anyway and nobody is using VSTS as it is not really a competitor to GitHub and because it does not allow anonymous access – ups I forget TFS will be dropped before to force people to switch to VSTS.
I forgot about that burning platform email…and the whole windows phone debacle.
Reminded me of a good song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfCOJLRk2D4) about these things:
“I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire”
Keep calm and GitHub on.
Keep your head up Brian!
Before long Microsoft will buy Github…remember if you can’t beat ’em buy ’em.
Wow!! Just saw the banner and linked over to this from https://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/
So GitHub is becoming the standard. Neeto!
ACox
very unfriendly
What would people like do because codeplex quite a lot. Please you can’t shut it down
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.
Please don’t shut down. please
Please don’t remove CodePlex. Depricate it?…yes. Make it read only?…absolutely. Mark it as obsolete?….for sure! But don’t remove it from the web. It is still a resource and still holds valuable content to .NET developers. Just because code is old or not being maintained it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Places like the Internet Archive are struggling against the decay of information on the web please don’t contribute to the problem.
I get that GitHub is now the standard and it makes sense to stop providing CodePlex as a “service”, but CodePlex as a “web resource” still holds a lot of value. It’s not just CodePlex that is affected. There are a great deal of old posts and blogs out there that link to content and projects on CodePlex which will now be rendered useless if the links go dark.
Part of advantage of .NET being a mature platform this the wealth of content, documentation and sample code that is available. Much of this has historically been on CodePlex. Expunging all of this content for just because most have moved to GitHub does a disservice to all .NET developers. So I would appeal to you to consider that out in the real world developers in the trenches sometimes still have to use old tools or maintain old code bases. Working on the new and shiney isn’t always an option. Consider leaving CodePlex as a historical archive rather than removing it from the web all together.
Will there be any way to download, archive or otherwise extract discussions? When we moved to GitHub this was one of the things we missed. We are currently self-hosting a Discourse based site which works well – but there is rich data in our original CodePlex discussion boards I would truly hate to lose. I still point people to search there when they have questions.
Shocking! The Internet without CodePlex! Hey, thanks for 11 years of GREAT SERVICE!
@brian @brianharry @brianharrryms It sort of makes sense to keep it running just in case a massive hack or some other kind of breach occurs on the other competing platforms.
The user interface as it is, is simple and all the discussions and issues raised and how it is displayed and the flexibility for the developers I’m sure will create further issues, once, if, migrated.
It’s clearly obvious that many want to keep it running so I think it would be a kind gesture for such an entity as Microsoft to give it away rather than destruct it.
Can’t you possibly speak to HR about offering CodePlex for free to one or two of the proprietary software in use and in development, such as VeraCrypt and or any other participants that would like to collaborate in keeping it functional and online. To be honest I’m sure many would also like seeing it of Microsoft’s hands.
That being said, I read below that you intend on keeping the domain for a long time to come which sort of indicates that you won’t respond to my suggestion, albeit, I think most people here would have been flabbergasted by the fact of Microsoft giving something away for free.
Also I don’t like you argument of some of ‘less than 350 projects saw a source code commit in the last 30 days. ‘ You just should have left it at you’ve seen a substantial decrease because to be honest I don’t think everybody here would want to be bothered with weekly updates for some applications. I mean, did it occur to you that there aren’t many experts who can’t or don’t offer there help for such open source software so one or two people have to manage it all alone and intentionally wait until they fix issues previously issued and other critical ones.
Thanks for reading if you did.
I get that usage has declined in the face of “GitHub is the de facto place for open source sharing”, but is that the reason? There is also value to be found in diversity and offering choice.
Is it the costs (in terms of people and server resources) of keeping CodePlex up and maintained? Given the stated commitment to keep the site read-only – is there really that much of a difference in keeping it fully active?
It’s not like CodePlex was set-up as a money making venture, right? Surely the kudos in standing by CodePlex is still worth something.
Will you deploy to Github or any other source provider before you shut it down? Or we have to deal 404 pages on Google?
@codetao @boyner indirim kodu please take a look at the “The CodePlex archive” section that Brian added late on Friday. For the indefinite future, all CodePlex projects and their source code, documentation, license, issues, and downloads will be available from the CodePlex Archive. This means no broken links. Where possible, we’ll redirect you to the correct page in the project’s archive; at least, we’ll get you to the home page of the project in the archive so you can find what you came for.
@J Ritchie Carroll archiving or exporting discussions isn’t currently in the plan. We assumed that most discussions would be stale and not that valuable years into the future, so it’s interesting to hear that you’ve found value in old discussions. As we continue the shutdown process, I’ll make sure we evaluate the cost of archiving discussions in some form and see if we can add that functionality to the archive.
I use VS for C# and VB development. Not larger public projects but smaller internal stuff. While I work in high tech as my career I am not solely a programmer. I’m a “casual programmer”
I don’t think most of the developers complaining about this change really understand the value that a single central repository brings to people like me. I daresay that the single reason that Windows has survived as an operating system today is due to the fact that it’s the only viable option in the paid operating system market.
When I put together an internal use tool I do it by the time-honored practice of stealing as many Lego blocks of code from other people’s open source projects and only actually writing code for the chunks where nobody else has written anything remotely like what I need. If it’s a windows desktop program I use the free VS download from Microsoft to do it and I leverage .NET as much as I can. If its an Android project I use Android Studio and leverage what I can find out of there. I don’t care about SVN vs git, and I don’t have time to learn how to use a dozen different source control systems. or spend hours scavenging around the Internet on different code sites looking for what I need.
I see this move as pushing more “serious developers” into all doing the same thing with their open source and that’s great for me and people like me.
Hey @Craig, how do you know for certain that all these people “dont run their own business”? Geez. Perhaps you should take your own advice.
R.I.P. CodePlex!
I thought it was only a 1st of april joke. I cannot believe it’s real 🙁
As a follower for years, it is sad to see that you want to down. As a developer; I can understand your message. And many thanks to your beloved support…
I have seen this happen so many times over the years. Why can’t Microsoft take a migrate the entire Codeplex inventory over to GitHub? Not that big of lift? I am sure they could find community volunteers. Then all the code is still available for the future. I recently had to work on a SharePoint 2010 workflow and more than half the links to older supposedly archived MSDN content didn’t work. This will be the case again with Codeplex archives. This is very short sited on Microsoft’s behalf…
We came to Codeplex to download and install NodeXL.
Will NodeXL downloads still be available somewhere?
Thank you, John B
Very sorry about this news.
Do you have any alternative for the partnership with DeveloperMedia ads publisher program ?
I’m wondering what will happen to non .Net Core source on CodePlex (eg MVC5, Unity, etc). Will those projects be moved over to Github as well? AFAIK the .Net Core projects are on Github, while the non Core projects remained on CodePlex.
Hay Brian, with the CodePlex archive, have you thought about giving the inactive projects to the internet archive and saving history of CodePlex projects?, the site maybe gone but the memory of its impact on open source software dose not need to die
Hello Guys, Can you move this to Github http://powercollections.codeplex.com/
let me know if it’s already hosted somewhere else.
What will happen on those project that didn’t get too much attention and developer of those repos doesn’t have enough time to think about these thing that they have put on codeplex earlier. Is these project will be deleted or we can still have it accessible somewhere.
Thanks
i thought that, this is an april fool joke
I’m sorry to see this happen, but understand why it is happening. I’ve been a member of CodePlex for many years. I’ve used code from here and have learned from several posts on CodePlex. I guess what I’ll do is try to figure out what projects I’m following and then try to figure out where they’ve going on GitHub. I hope there will be help to figure that out.
Are there any plans to open source CodePlex? I would love to see the behind-the-scenes bits for the Wiki editor, the integration of the different SCMs, and other features.
Will VSTS ever get support for Mercurial like Codeplex has? Please…..pretty please?
Discussions are valuable documentation (design rationale) on how and why some feature was implemented etc. and often provide useful links. So please try to archive them too.
Also, please don’t break links where possible, it is really sad story what is happening with MSDN (e.g. archiving of older Windows Server documentation in downloadable batches instead of keeping the pages and just marking them as older ones) and previously with Silverlight discussions. Tons of broken links and lost discussions/content
Hello, Brian! Very much I ask to organize automatic transfer on githab of all inactive projects because it is the huge contribution to the open code and it can be lost! Inactive projects are projects that have not been updated for a long time (for example, from 3 months) for various reasons:
– the project is finished;
– the project is abandoned;
– the author of the project has come to a standstill;
– the author was missing a beast (or died).
To do this, make it possible for authors to mark the project transfer type: automatic and manual (independently). By default, the transfer type must be automatic.
@Trevor, I’m afraid that’s not likely unless we see a significant increase in demand for Mercurial. Adding good support for it would be a major undertaking (we’re probably 2 years into adding Git support) and adoption of Mercurial is just very small. I know there are die hard fans for some legitimate reasons but we’d have to see enough of them to justify significant investment.
Brian
Hi,
What if the codeplex project is somebody else’s; not ours?! I don’t see the github button in this case…
@Julian Stevens we discussed that option with GitHub as we planned for this announcement, but decided not to do a mass migration. We had concerns around logistics – what GitHub user would “own” all those repos – and around ROI. I appreciate your skepticism about our ability to build an archive; please know that keeping links working, or at least getting you to the root of the project you were looking for (i.e. not a “content not found” page) is a key priority for us in that work.
@John Bergin If the NodeXL project chooses not to move, their CodePlex releases will be available from the CodePlex archive when it replaces the current CodePlex.com site.
@Timothy in addition to the CodePlex archive, we’re in discussions with some other software archives to explore what a non-Microsoft-hosted archive might look like. I should have more details to share soon.
@Anirudha please take a look at the “The CodePlex archive” section that Brian added late on Friday. For the indefinite future, all CodePlex projects and their source code, documentation, license, issues, and downloads will be available from the CodePlex Archive. This means no broken links. Where possible, we’ll redirect you to the correct page in the project’s archive; at least, we’ll get you to the home page of the project in the archive so you can find what you came for.
With the money Microsoft has, and with the revenue from advertisement they collect, shutting down this site is like telling Google, you demonstrated we are losers. Since codeplex was free and it provided services for Microsoft developers, then it speaks awful bad from
Microsoft. The fact that some people moved their projects to other sites is no ground for shutting this down. Maybe its a yellow light to start doing this different or advertising this one more. (I never used CodePlex, in fact just know I learned about it existence.), or letting things go as is and wait for it to get better. Like it happened to apple that was at the verge of extinction and then iphone miracle happened.
To me some times I see Microsoft has a defeatist mentality. If they can’t successfully copy others, they shut down regardless of their users, supporters and “DEVELOPERS” who help and have helped their main products succeed.
Does it mean sharepoint learning kit (SLK) will also be shutdown and won’t be available.
@Lucas Vogel unfortunately, we have no plans to open source the CodePlex.com codebase. It’s fairly old and intermixes a lot of Microsoft-specific infrastructure code (that predates Azure by a number of years) with the actually interesting parts of CodePlex itself.
@Dharmendar I can’t speak to the future of a particular project, but all projects will continue to be available indefinitely from the CodePlex archive. Please see the relevant section in the original post for more details.
Perhaps Microsoft might close the door on XAML as well; there was no need to rewrite SVG as an overly -verbose embarrassment – just send XAML to the same forgotten, binary pastures as SilverLight.
why not improve,
instead of just giving up
@deostroll right now the GitHub button will only appear if you’re a project contributor. We wanted to give project contributors a first shot at moving their projects. When CodePlex goes read-only later this year, we’ll show the button on all projects to all users.
I have been using CodePlex since it first opened and still have hundreds of visitors every week to multiple projects. I am sad about this announcement, but understand the cost of maintaining software. Please provide a mechanism to _migrate_ documentation, issues and discussions with rich text or at least provide a mechanism to extract them all in a reusable format. Each provide a valuable reference for users of my libraries and will be critical in whichever location the projects end up in.
I would like to point out that on GitHub is missing social features like on codeplex. Where we can exchange ideas, suggestion and help requests about the projects on GitHub?
btw, what are the stats about visitors on Codeplex, downloads, svn pulls etc?
you can’t expect code projects to be always evolving – some are uploaded and frozen, but are of value to people
the wiki conversion could be a bit more clever when one hosts photos in it from their repository
e.g. tried to migrate
http://arduinocolormsg.codeplex.com
to
https://github.com/Zoomicon/ArduinoColorMsg
and my Home.md file now has links for images that don’t work instead of GitHub detecting and fixing them:
Home_http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download/SourceControlFileDownload.ashx?ProjectName=arduinocolormsg&changeSetId=e73e5a5b9a4a5916bd2ef2e187168ff1efadfdf0&itemId=Photos%2fColorMsg_Breadboard_20160207b.jpg
so removing the Home_ manually from those image URLs made it work ok for now, but I’d prefer if it could convert the url to a GitHub one (grab the images from the new repo location)
btw, why make a Readme manually when I have Home page in my project? Could export the home page as a readme
And home come the Wiki area at a GitHub project doesn’t have anyway to upload .md files to it?
I see that if I make a new page there and copy-paste the raw markup from the Home.md I had uploaded to the repo (after exporting from Codeplex), it shows. So why import into the main repo the codeplex Wiki exported files instead of GitHub’s Wiki area allowing you to drag-drop .md files there? (seems to use a separate repo for the wiki which is nice)
btw, I hate it that a GitHub project’s main page shows this code changes list at the top instead of showing your readme first, so at the settings page of my arduinocolormsg codeplex project (at we’ve moved setting) I set it to redirect to
https://github.com/Zoomicon/ArduinoColorMsg/wiki
instead of
https://github.com/Zoomicon/ArduinoColorMsg
a little gotcha though: if you rename your Home page in the GitHub wiki to say Documentation (so that you see a more decent label at the top of your wiki home page), then the /wiki url will point to just a list of wiki pages instead of detecting and showing the root page (wonder if they don’t have a page hierarchy) or detecting and showing your single page. So unless you are ok with using a more ugly/long url like https://github.com/Zoomicon/ArduinoColorMsg/wiki/Documentation, don’t rename the Home page in the GitHub wiki
btw I ended up using a Readme.md (renamed Home.md imported from GitHub) and had its raw markup manually copied to my Home wiki page (since I couldn’t find how to import .md files to the wiki repo from the browser and was too lazy to use git to make updates to the wiki from outside the browser)
I also added topics (tags) and description to my project via GitHub’s browser UI (apart from the description being in the Readme.md file for completeness – for those who download the repo). Renamed license.md to License.md and readme.md to Readme.md too (can easily rename a file at the edit page it has in GitHub, although one might initially search for a standalone rename file action that would be handy for renaming binary files I guess too)
There is another issue too with import of markup like
converting the url manually (since GitHub’s import isn’t clever enough to fix those urls) to:
[%5D(http://bubble.is/site/cpa)
still doesn’t work and needs to manually change to this:
[%5D(http://bubble.is/site/cpa)
so that you get an image that when clicked goes to some given url. BTW, the image tooltip in the markdown seems to be ignored by GitHub
%5D above is / – seems it was changed automatically while posting here
Sadly, GitHub does not encourage devs to “present” their project in the same way that CodePlex does. If you look around CodePlex, you find the majority of projects to be “pitched” in the form of a project page explaining the need, use cases etc.. Further, documentation, screenshots and samples are also often presented.
GitHub is more like: “here’s some code, figure out what it does for yourself.” As a result, when one searches for a library that achieves xyz, GitHub often fails to come up oin search results because no one takes the time to explain that their project My_Cross_Xamarin_Mono_Portable_Gizmo is designed to achieve XYZ.
I find GitHub to be severely lacking in terms of overall content when compared with CodePlex. I’m sad to see CodePlex go and sincerely hope that something else will crop up that rapidly obsoletes GitHub.
Software has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It’s part of the lifecycle of software.
For all the aforementioned reasons, CodePlex is coming to the end of its lifecycle.
Thank you for having done it. Thank you for the lessons learned, both from CodePlex’s strengths and GitHub’s strengths.
I’m just hoping that GitHub can shore up its weaknesses and learn from CodePlex’s strengths.
I noticed that old projects that are no longer maintained by its authors for whatever reason can’t be migrated elsewhere if you’re not the owner. Is this expected?
Are there any plans to make the source code of CodePlex open source?
Thank you for the work you have done over the years. Sadly, if that job must stop!
@Alex Mullans (MSFT)
I support @codetao, that CodePlex urls should be available in read-only mode for a long time, *including* discussions.
Many external discussions(e.g on stackoverflow and MS forums) have links to individual codeplex discussion threads. If you really worry about not creating broken links, please consider to make referenced discussions available.
How about monitor access to discussions and keep available (in read-only mode) those that were accessed during the last year? Drop only those that no one accessed for a long time.
The github import procedure does not always work – it reports it had errors (two of three projects I’ve tried had this problem). Restarting the import does not solve it.
Workaround: Just use the import from github (not from codeplex) it then seems to do its business.
Not all wiki tags are correctly translated to .md – I saw some code block tags {{}} that were missed.
For small amounts of documentation this may not be a big issue, but it would be nice if it were fixed.
@Scippy most GitHub projects use Issues as a place to discuss, handle feature requests, etc.
@Marc Jacobi can you be more specific with the error message you’re seeing? CodePlex’s “GitHub” button just provides the source control URL as a parameter to pre-populate https://github.com/new/import – there’s no custom logic on our side.
@George Birbilis we’re aware of the manual effort that’s sometimes required for complex wikis. The CodePlex wiki export is best-effort but has some known challenges where there isn’t a 1:1 correspondence between CodePlex wiki markup and Markdown.
Farewell CodePlex.
Fu…… Microsoft! Stop!!!!!!
I just started using the Head First C# book.
What will happen to all of the resources that I am supposed to come here to download?
It’s very sad.
CodePlex should be updated to match GitHub.
I was started on CodePlex, but migrated to GitHub because CodePlex feels outdated and GitHub is much more user friendly.
But I think, CodePlex should be improved instead of shut down.
PLEASE BRING IT BACK SOMEDAY…
Finally!
This announcement is for project owners. I don’t see much for users of projects. I see the comment:
the archive will respect your “I’ve moved” setting
but nothing much more for users of projects, not owners.
I suggest writing an announcement for users and from that announcement link to this article. The announcement should answer the question of what to do when we find a project we are interested in? Is the “I’ve moved” setting relevant to us? if so, then where is the “I’ve moved” setting? Can we assume that if we don’t see something in the project’s home page saying it has moved that it has not yet been moved?
For example, Gardens Point LEX at: http://gplex.codeplex.com
GPLex has moved to: https://github.com/deAtog/gplex
Yet I see nothing in the GPLex home page in CodePlex saying it has moved. How do we know it has moved? Also, I don’t see a convenient way to find projects in GitHub. I can’t find it by searching for it in GitHub. So it would make things more convenient if CodePlex were to point to the new location.
Ok, I see… codeplex move to github, and while continue links in mode readonly.
…but the URL: http://vshelpdownloader.codeplex.com don’t go.
I thought I had a copy of the help for VS2010 in an ISO, but in the end it turns out that it was from the 2008 version. And searching for an alternative, only found this URL, but don’t go.
The local download dont’ go jump this error: “An error occurred while the BITS service was transferring…”
I used codeplex for years and all I wntát to say is
THANK YOU, for all you’ve done, I almost started crying, when I saw the announcement!
This is the end of an excellent platform that has helped me for years.
Thanks for the great work Microsoft, I’m still a fan.
I think everyone realizes that traffic may be down. But, searching for cool, new and innovative projects on GitHub sucks. Developers dump a lot more useless stuff there than anyone ever did here. The reason I think folks use it, I guess it comes down to the ease of use as a developer is able to keep the underlying references and framework updated. Git helps keep the framework updated and makes it easier to switch a project that focuses on SPOnline to SP2013 or SP2016..
However, I still look through all SharePoint and SQL Projects on Codeplex every month. After I saw the notice I tried reviewing projects on GitHub, Maybe, I don’t know how to se their search engine. But as I said previously its not fun looking for new and innovative SharePoint stuff as their is too much stuff that’s never going to work and it almost ends up being a waste time..
I would have liked to have seen Codeplex host the developers output and use GitHub for collaboration. This has been how I used GitHub until recently…. Anyhow….
THANK YOU, thank you for keeping Codeplex up and running for all these years, time flies. I first starting using Codeplex in 2003 as it was the only place to find examples of SharePoint code and to get to know who’s stuff always worked and whos did not…
GUYS i am going to miss this so much… damn i wish i had enough space to host all the stuff this website can offer! I saved so many time and did so much cool stuff with those tools!
I would like to point out that on GitHub is missing social features like on codeplex. Where we can exchange ideas, suggestion and help requests about the projects on GitHub?
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.
CodePlex the name has/had such a nice ring to it – GitHub, with Git being the first word, sounds like RISC in CPUs – bound to go down simply because it sounds unsightly in English.
What about projects like “Live Geometry” that only exist only on Codeplex? If it were not for codeplex I still would not have a clue on how to do things like gridview in WPF 3.0. stackoverflow is helpful, but it is very limited because of their strict rules about what you can ask and what constitutes a duplicate question (which is often flagged incorrectly). I depend on codeplex for good working examples of how to do things. Just because a project is four years old, does not make it obsolete. Microsoft already has made a huge mistake in dropping future support for Silverlight browser plugins.
MSFT wake up, you are no more in leading role and unless you come out of your bubble you know its only matter of time when Sine graph shows starts its going down journey. This is becoming a never ending story with Microsoft, one product after another.. Super angry right now.. i think you guys must stay away from Github or you will kill it too.. Github is not the platform of choice for many.. btw are you having plans for your cloud like this, let us know early and not surprise us.
– Microsoft release Product X
– Microsoft heavily promotes Product X, promising its the wave of the future
– Microsoft devs want to work on cool new technology, pitch it to management
– Management agrees, pulls plug on Product X
– Microsoft avoids telling community Prodct X is being wound down, instead claims its “still supported”
– Without active development, Product X hemorrhages users and market share
– Microsoft publicly announces Product X is being discontinued because it has low market share
– Devs that invested time, knowledge, and money into Product X are screwed
Sound familiar? The story of just about every product Microsoft has touched over the past 15 years.
Just a few short years ago you were announcing on this very blog how you are the one in charge of CodePlex and the MSDN blogs. Months later, all active development stopped on CodePlex, all MS teams moved their projects to Github, and the site was left to wither over the past few years. And *shock* – people stopped using CodePlex. So instead of having alternatives to Github, we’re down to de-facto monopoly with a company that is unprofitable and could disappear eventually.
@Sam Hobbs The I’ve moved setting allows individual project owners to indicate where they’ve moved to. In this case though, it sounds like Gardens Point LEX may have moved before that setting was available. If it’s a project you follow, consider asking the owners on GitHub to return to CodePlex, go to the project’s Settings tab, and put the new GitHub repository URL in the New Project Location textbox.
@AndroideHow many projects use GitHub Issues as a central way to discuss bugs, feature requests, etc.
@Dan Randolph An archive of all projects will continue to be available indefinitely from the CodePlex archive. Please see the relevant section in the original post for more details.
Teste
This is a difficult decision to understand. The fiancial cost of simply maintaining the site surely can’t be more than the reputational cost to Microsoft of pulling the rug from under our feet here.
I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you for all of your hard work over the past 11 years. You are a true friend of the developer community on this planet, and we are sad to see such a juggernaut go away. “Thank you” just isn’t quite enough, but it’s all we have. So thank you.
Eric
@Duncan, There have been a lot of comments here and I haven’t replied to many of them (though I’ve been reading them and had Alex monitoring and trying to help/clarify). I wanted to comment on this one though. The issue has nothing to do with the cost of hosting the Codeplex site. That’s negligible and we’d pay that in perpetuity. The issue is supporting the site. As we all know, things decay. Without active care and feeding, over time, things stop working or become unsatisfying. Over time, engineers who worked on Codeplex moved on to work on other things (most, not even in my team any more) so we’ve lost a lot of the expertise. We’ve shifted our investment towards Team Services and “private” code/development hosting. Codeplex has been coasting for a while now and over the past 6 months, we’ve been watching an increasing trend in performance issues, outages, spam/attacks, etc. We’ve realized that the quality of the service we can provide is gradually declining and we are faced with a decision – either up the investment meaningfully or plan for shutting it down. Because continuing to offer a solution with declining quality isn’t an option. We chose the latter path. Clearly not everyone agrees and I respect that but it’s the path that we’ve chosen. We’d like to do what we can to minimize the negatives from that decision but it’s unlikely we’d reverse it.
Brian
what about us?
we r the new generation where do we get these?
Thank you CodePlex for your invaluable contribution to the community all these years
@Brian
See Brian with your reply to Duncan you have neatly demonstrated the biggest problem with Microsoft. We simply cannot look at any of your company’s products and feel confident that it will still be there if we choose to invest our time into it.
Now it has always been true that technology evolves and that change is a natural, and necessary, part of our industry. But Microsoft no longer evolves its technologies, it abandons and replaces them with a new flavor of the month and leaves customers unable to make reliable long term plans that include Microsoft. This problem has been around for a while but with the new headlong plunge release schedules the problem has grown in magnitude so that developers are risking their careers if they recommend using a Microsoft solution that may or may not still exist by time it is fully implemented.
Your description of what happened with CodePlex perfectly demonstrates Microsoft’s tendency to lose interest in a product and just let it fade away. This problem is an order of magnitude bigger today, again due to the accelerated release schedules, but still the same process plays out.
I used to think that Microsoft had lost focus on the customer, but today I believe that Microsoft views itself as the customer and we are disposable.
Microsoft, you’re the Breaking Bad of public / open source control systems. Gave us plenty of great years but left on a high note before you outstayed your welcome.
Maybe Sourceforge will take a hint. They’re like The Simpsons of source control sites, should have been done long ago…
@Brian, Thanks for your considered and courteous reply to my comment.
You are quite right to point out that there’s no such thing as ‘simply’ maintaining any service as visible and complex as CodePlex. I made it sound trivial. It’s not absolutely trivial, but I meant it as a comparison. Compared with the reputational cost, I suggest that it’s *relatively* trivial. I fear that you’re underestimating the negative impact of discontinuing the service.
I agree that, in isolation, this decision makes sense. The service is hard to maintain, not attracting much interest, and there are alternatives which seem good enough. Why not close it down?
But if you read the comments above, you’ll see that many posters are not seeing this as an isolated decision, but as part of a disturbing pattern which is eroding our faith in Microsoft as a platform provider for our development work. When we are already worried about our investment in existing MS technologies, and already downright sceptical about some of the latest MS initiatives, then it’s a really bad time to kill off another ‘old’ service.
As Charles Ryan noted above, evolution is fine, but is not the same as replacement. Innovation without stability is just fashion. There are lots of developers out here away from the US west coast, getting real work done with unfashionable but trusted platforms and tools. When we make a technical investment, it’s often long-term. When we hear the word ‘legacy’ we don’t just hear ‘uncool’, we also hear ‘tried and tested’. We see a new, almost hysterical Microsoft, and it doesn’t inspire confidence.
Everyone laughed at the big guy in a sweaty shirt jumping up and down and shouting ‘Developers! Developers! Developers!’, but those days look quite good in retrospect. It seems like Microsoft has somehow lost faith in itself. How can we trust what we’re hearing today if what we heard just a couple of years ago is all forgotten? The CodePlex shut-down just adds another chapter to a depressing narrative.
D.
I have been a developer for decades using Microsoft products and I can only think about how solid Microsoft was at one time. Sure no company is perfect, but if you’re going to offer a service, application, etc. that people are going to invest their time, money, etc. into then you should have a solid future for that product or service. It didn’t really affect me until I was developing an XNA application. The time it took to learn it and the production (worked on the project for over a year) all for nothing. Just gone. Now we have this on top of the other projects that have been abandoned by Microsoft. I have recently started a project using ASP.NET Core and I will be honest and say it took me a long time to finally decide to use Microsoft and not move on to another solution. A lot of things are moving to the web and it will no longer matter if it’s Windows, Linux, Android, etc. As others have said, Microsoft is tarnishing their reputation and people are moving on because of it. People can’t be expected to invest their time, money, etc. into a gamble… Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice then shame on me.
NEVER invest time and money with microsoft products.
I began using old Visual Studio suite, microsoft abandoned it.
I used the ASP, microsoft abandoned it.
Microsoft products are closed and limited, switch to something else, the world over is huge.
There are tons of consolidated framework which evolve and dont dead just because someone a day wake up in a bad moon not care about customer investments.
Fuck Github, I can’t understand the enviroment of that shitty website, Codeplex is very simple, WE DON’T WANT CODEPLEX TO SHUT DOWN!!!!! YOU HEAR THAT!!!!
So I am overall ok with the choice to shutdown codeplex with the competition there is out there, I moved to a Github/Bitbucket along time ago, but I wan’t say that i feel the timeline here is a bit rushed…
Being a huge and well-established service, i feel like there should be given more time the the read-only period, obviously that is because we lack information on what the “Archive” is exactly. So perhaps the team could expand on what features it exactly offers, will it still be possible to migrate the repository from the archive to e.g. Github or will it be more of a “Latest Version Snapshot” kind of thing?…
If the full source history etc. is available in the archive, then I think my worries are none.
Any solutions to migrate discussions?
@Jeme When the archive launches, you’ll be able to download the head revision of the project’s source (i.e. the source as of the day CodePlex goes read-only). For Git and Mercurial, we’ll keep the .git and .hg folder, so you’ll be able to migrate with history by downloading the repo and adding a new remote for GitHub or wherever else you choose to migrate to. For TFS, we’ll be shutting down the TFS servers as part of the move to the archive, and only the head revision will be archived.
@Hzj_jie archiving or exporting discussions isn’t currently in the plan. We assumed that most discussions would be stale and not that valuable years into the future, so it’s interesting to hear that you’ve found value in old discussions. As we continue the shutdown process, I’ll make sure we evaluate the cost of archiving discussions in some form and see if we can add that functionality to the archive.
PLEASE DON’T DO IT!!! Many programmers may not move their projects! Please.
Nice, just when I got fed up with the retarded braindamanged GIT on Github and wanted to migrate to something sane like TFS, I just got registered then noticed this warning. Sad. The most retarded source control system has won. OK. Speaks volumes about the users who like it.
This decision is certainly going to affect many programmers who depend on your site. I wish you well on your new venture.
Really bad… but thankyou Codeplex, i found many useful info. Thanks!
Hope submitted patches (including those not accepted/merged or under review by the author of a project) will be kept in the archive too.
Sometimes they fix important things, btw guess those are lost when migrating to GitHub?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO :'(
At least we’ll have the archives. Thanks CodePlex!
@Alex & @Brian – regarding: “A migration tool for issues is also in the works and will be available soon.” Is this available yet? I’ve been playing with some complicated python scripts but they’re using old GitHub API’s or aren’t great at migrating (lots of bugs). A tool to push them over and have them linked to releases, etc would be amazing.
@George Birbilis For Git and Mercurial projects, these will be included. For TFS, only the state of the code as of the day CodePlex goes read-only are included.
Visual Studio Dev Essentials is free, people, and you get visualstudio.com access and a bunch of other stuff. And yes, you can use TFS instead of Git. For free.
As for SVN, you should join the rest of us in 2017, because SVN is over, and it was crappy Apache software to begin with.
I’ll be sad to see CodePlex go, too, but frankly visualstudio.com is way better. MS now offers a better product, and the older product is being retired. Happens all the time.
It was fun while it lasted, thanks for the memories!
Thank you for CodePlex. It’s so sad that it’ll shutdown by end of the year…
But C’mon. Really? Shutdown? Where’d all those hardworks go?
This is my stupid idea but it’s much better for everyone to keep it online or have somebody do that, like give-it-up to archive.org.
Don’t know anything about how this works and the programs used to make the software work the way it does, I just hope that the switch-over is easy, painless and can be done without much to see and how it will work going forward. This tool is something I need, not want, need, so it is invaluable to me. I’m sure you will keep us updated and in plain English for us numpties, and look forward to being able to use the tool as if nothing had happened.
Really bad, CodePlesk is a usefull place for sharing work together, we can found pretty good help.
Terrible decision. Just awful. GitHub… *smh*
Pretty sure I was there around day 1, and now here we are at the sunset.
Appreciate you keeping up the archives while possible. Big props to everyone who committed and got involved.
Waves from here to there.
Thank you CodePlex for all your work!
Thanks for CodePlex. It was great. I am a little bit sad that it is shutting down. anyway thanks for providing us CodePlex.
where is the ajax toolkit – links are broken.
If you are going to disable your samples by not have the things they rely upon available, you may as well just shut it all down today.
@Tim M sorry the samples aren’t working for you. Nothing has changed on the CodePlex site, but it’s possible the project author rearranged or removed files. Can you get in touch with support (https://www.codeplex.com/site/contact) and share the specific project that’s not working (.codeplex.com) as well as the links/samples that aren’t working?
Dear VeraCript Tram!
I am to sad what I hear. Moreover I am glad you for many years toghether. You had done a lot of pice a good work. Thank you for your hard work!! We will always keep you in the minds.
Please tell us what program do you recomend like veracript!!
What about the rest of us? Those who are standing on a “burning platform” with no place to jump.
A deception for the Community, that’s how it looks.
You talk about business, we talk about passion. You talk about jumping, we talk about fighting the fire
and Gotdotnet was the previous attempt to embrace projects and OSS
– can’t please all the people all the time
Please don’t shut down. Or release any alternative to it.
Yo.. THIS IS NOT FUN.
OMG this is not good… please don’t… 🙁
@Alan Mullans – Any progress on the migration tool or a solution for migrating (or at least capturing) Discussion forum content?
Real problem, since I need some SVN-only features. GIT is no alternative at all. It’s overcomplicated for the purpose and lacks critical functionality.
So now what? There isn’t even a free service around anymore that does it. SourceForge is no option either, due to their changes in policy of the last couple of years. Guess I will have to check what’s in the cookie jar and start paying for SVN. Which sucks, because like many other Open Source projects there is no funding to cover the expenses. Not just time, but also money all comes out of my/our own pockets.
@dahmaninator We’ll be starting that work in the next sprint (which starts on 6/19), so I’d expect it to be available ~3 weeks after that.
Why don’t you keep the Read-Only mode forever? You could simply put a banner at the top of the website that says that the website is in Read-Only mode. The costs associated to the servers and to maintenance are very small for a company like Microsoft, whereas the benefits for the .NET community and, in the end, for Microsoft are big: search engines can keep pointing to this huge quantity of .NET source code, the possibility to search within the database is preserved, etc. The benefits for Microsoft and for the .NET ecosystem are in my opinion much greater than the costs. Really, why don’t you keep the Read-Only mode forever?
Its really sad…
Thank you for the information, this is the reality!
thanks for the virtual router 🙂
Unfortunately! I hope you have chosen the right direction. Good luck!
GG. Broken solutions everywhere 🙁
Thank you for your dedication. Wish you success on the new road!
This post gives me lots of advice it is very useful for me.
Thank you CodePlex for all these years!!
@quiret, Github is and will always remain entirely free for open source (public) projects. They provide support for both Git and Subversion repositories.
I second the comment to keep Codeplex readonly for longer than just the end of 2017.. It seems a waste to throw away thousands or millions of hours of manpower working on these projects just to toss the work in the proverbial trash dump. Granted that most of active development has moved to Github, there are a lot of “project completed” applications that will not make the move due to being orphaned yet that can still provide value.
It is too bad.
Thanks God, Finally it shut Down.
It is not an April fools joke?
What is the alternative to this resource?
Can you share the source code of Codeplex, please.
I want to soure code mvc 4. can you give me
Thank you for your Service
Well it’s sad to have this. However, on long term it’s still good step, so all resources could be find in single please. Yet I believe there will be thousands of projects not migrated just because their owners are not following up with them, yet they are still valuable. We’d appreciated if you auto migrate them to Github or at least keep them as readonly for couple two years…
Thanks
If I want to download just the installer, but not the source code, can I do that at GitHub?
@Cliff it depends on the individual project. There’s no automated way to move releases, so for now unless the project owner has created new releases on GitHub, you’ll still download old releases from CodePlex. The CodePlex Archive, when it goes live in December, will also continue to serve old releases.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I do not need or want to use GIT. Please don’t do it.
I am really sad to see this go, but I understand. My first major foray into true .Net development began in 2005. Shortly after that CodePlex was born. For a long time it was a great resource to inspect code and learn how the community was building applications. Thank you for the good times!
Sorry to see you go. I found a number of interesting projects and ideas on the site. Many people will carp about this change, but with age and perspective they will learn that all things end in their time.
Best wishes on your future plans.
now iam fresher in the leading IT industry ,i suddenly joined a startup company there is no one to help in my web api project ,so i want some help in my web api project .
any one is here who could help me to create registration desk in asp.net web api for android app.
Hope with help you,ll rresurect, and the simplicity and ease of the Borland screen could reincarnate in Linux. gg++ code blocks developmental C++ are to bloated for those who just want to start ! Thank you for ……!
Meh, that’s too bad. Might say end of an era. Git kids occupied my internets, no place for oldschool guys. Anyways, it was good knowing you, codeplex. I want to thank you and people behind you for everything! Thank you guys and let the sun follow your path!
Hi, Since May 2017 I duplicated my CodePlex project to GitHub, marked to project as moved and added additional reminders any and all changes would be available on GitHub. The result: 121 downloads from CodePlex, 2 from GitHub since. In addition if I search for ‘CRM PowerShell Library’ (using Bing) my project on CodePlex is the second result. In the first 10 pages no results from GitHub. Not for my project or any project. Google are roughly the same, although it seems Google doesn’t index CodePlex.
Conclusion: The result of CodePlex shutting down will be a major downer for the open source community, as projects can’t be found anymore. If GitHub is the way to promote open source, I would be nice if they showed up in search results on Google and/or Bing.
For once in 11 years as a Microsoft Partner, I totally agree with Bill Gates. If in fact, that comment from 5months ago is really Bill Gates.
@Arjan M Thanks for migrating early :). When we launch the archive site, it will continue to have the “I’ve moved” banner that will take users to your GitHub project, which should help users find you until the web indexes catch up. We’ll also look into ways to speed up this process.
@Brian Harry MS I for one completely support this decision. It’s an inconvenience sure, and CodePlex will certainly be missed, but GitHub has clearly become the de facto source repository, and BitBucket right behind them. Thanks for the memories Microsoft. Hopefully the others will learn from what you did well. 🙂
GitHub?
Git? LOL
Git means GO.
GoHub? WTF? LOL
It makes no sense whatsoever and their site looks like it was organized by a kindergartener with a rock designing it in the dirt!
What about the people who has passed away but their projects are still in here?
thanks for everything…
Microsoft’s strategy is to ruin everything good.
A few examples:
– Shutting down CodePlex
– Removing custom Skype names, now you can only register a live: name.
– Buying Skype
Basically the next thing is probably Windows. Oh wait! Windows 10 S (or whatever it was) – where you can’t open .exe files.. Seriously? You’re working exactly like Apple (removing the headphone jack) – “It’s old, we’re removing it”. Google does the same thing. We need some company (perfer MS and GOOGLE tbh) to stop doing this and start listening to US!
Hi,
Don’t shutdown CodePlex ! There are many old useful source code, keep it in readonly.
Please.
Weird:
Microsoft’s MSDN AND TECHNET sites still point to Codeplex for download of sample files.
For me, Microsoft is undependable now.
They close everything technically good (with potential but non profit currently).
They seem have no Strategy for the future expect money and “cloud”.
It’s not just codeplex.
It’s also windows phone (yes it was great in Europe, but msft calculates the whole world only),
It’s XNA, Silverlight etc.
New technologies from msft I will distrust now until they are very big. I cannot recommend anyone to use new Microsoft technologies because they may be shut down after a view years they behave as if it had never been there.
The alternatives are very powerful to mantein source code, but they are a bounch of trash about to share real knowlege, for me it was the escense of CodePlex, MSDN is just a technical reference of Microsoft products, but CodePlex was a powerfull tool to transmit and créate more and new knowledge about anything. I Think this is a very bad idea.
In my opinion, that’s a good step.
There were hints of including the Discussions in a downloadable format or some other alternative. However, with the read-only deadline approaching it seems like this is not going to happen.
In case anyone wants to download their Discussion Forum content I wrote a small utility that downloads and saves the Discussion Forum HTML pages as well as creating a JSON archive of the Discussion Forum threads. See https://github.com/randylevy/CodePlexDiscussionDownload
@ Randy Levy Thanks for taking the time to help out the community! We will be pulling in the discussions as well, within the archive file of the project. We are moving everything on the Codeplex site to read only as of November 27th, and will be launching an archive site as of late January. The Codeplex site will remain in a read-only state until we launch our archive site, however. There will be no gap between the two.
The blog says “In October, we’ll set CodePlex to read-only, before shutting it down completely on December 15th, 2017.”
It’s now January 2018 and the codeplex site is still live and in readonly mode. My own project was a click once install and old users of the program won’t know automatically there’s new version on GitHub unless they hear about it somehow.
However what will make them sit up and listen is when they start the app and the codeplex site is no longer there. Is there an updated date when the site will be shutdown?
On a related note I see that the DNS will expire on 9th June 2018. Are there plans to extend this as it would be hacker heaven to get hold of this domain name.
@Alexander Bisset the CodePlex Archive is now set to launch on Monday, January 29th.
We’ll be continuing to use the CodePlex.com domain as the location of the archive site, which has no planned end date.