Shutting down CodePlex 03/31/2017

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

from:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-down-codeplex/