A software forge is a collaboration platform allowing collaborative software development over the Internet. A forge platform aggregates a set of applications with integrated Web interfaces, and generally hosts multiple independent projects. Software developers who are registered as contributors to the hosted projects can then use the various project management tools, and software development tools.

Software forges have become popular and have proved successful in allowing development of a large number of free software projects in recent years.

The term forge refers to a common prefix or suffix adopted by the various software development management systems created after the example of the SourceForge

SourceForge

SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...

 platform.

Technology

Two different kinds of concepts are commonly referred to by the term forge:

• a service offered on a Web platform to host software development projects;
• an integrated set of software elements which produce such platforms, ready for deployment in an organization or on the Internet.

All these platforms provide similar tools helpful to software developers working in the hosted projects:

• source code management
  Revision control
  Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files...
  
   systems
• mailing-lists
  Electronic mailing list
  An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to...
  
   or forums
  Internet forum
  An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
  
  
• wikis
• software archives download services
  File hosting service
  A file hosting service, online file storage provider, or cyberlocker is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. Typically they allow HTTP and FTP access. Related services are content-displaying hosting services A file hosting service, online file storage provider, or...
  
  
• bug tracking system
  Bug tracking system
  A bug tracking system is a software application that is designed to help quality assurance and programmers keep track of reported software bugs in their work. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system....
  
  

Examples

Examples of such hosting services are:

• BerliOS
  BerliOS
  BerliOS is a project founded by FOKUS, a Fraunhofer Institute located in Berlin, to coordinate the different interest groups in the field of open source software and to assume a neutral coordinator function...
  
  
• CodePlex
• Gna.org
  Gna.org
  Gna! is a centralized location where software developers can develop, distribute and maintain free software.- History:In the beginning, GNA stood for "Gna's Not Axis"...
  
  
• GNU Savannah
  GNU Savannah
  GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for Free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, mailing list, web hosting, file...
  
  
• Google Code
• JavaForge
  JavaForge
  JavaForge.com is a non profit and free open source software development community with a hosting portal for open source projects. It hosts software development services such as Project related Web hosting, Document Management, Wiki, Forum, Online chat, Issue tracking integrated with optional Git,...
  
  
• Launchpad.net
  Launchpad (website)
  Launchpad is a web application and website that allow users to develop and maintain software, particularly free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd....
  
  
• OATS
  OATS
  OATS - Open Source Assistive Technology Software - is a source code repository or "forge" for assistive technology software. It was launched in 2006 with the goal to provide a one-stop “shop” for end users, clinicians and open-source developers to promote and develop open source assistive...
  
  : Open Source Assistive Technology Software
• Project Kenai
  Project Kenai
  Project Kenai is a collaborative hosting site for free and open source projects, launched by Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle. The service will be discontinued move the existing Kenai.com projects over to the Java.net domain for public use as part of Oracle's restructuring of...
  
   : Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
  
  
• SF.net
  SourceForge
  SourceForge Enterprise Edition is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. It provides a front-end to a range of software development lifecycle services and integrates with a number of free software / open source software applications .While originally itself...
  
  
• Tigris.org
  Tigris.org
  Tigris.org is an open source software development community. It hosts software development services such as web hosting, mailing lists, issue tracking, wiki, download, and revision control with Subversion or Concurrent Versions System . It is hosted by CollabNet, the initiators and stewards of...
  
  

Examples of software available to set up a forge:

• CodeBeamer
  CodeBeamer (software)
  codeBeamer is a web based Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management tool for distributed software development, written in Java. It is developed and marketed by Intland Software. Its license is proprietary, but free versions and free hosting options are available...
  
  
• FusionForge
  FusionForge
  FusionForge is a free software application descendant of the forge originally created for running the SourceForge.net platform...
  
  
• GForge
  GForge
  GForge is a free software fork of the web-based project-management and collaboration software originally created for SourceForge, called Savane...
  
  
• Gitorious
  Gitorious
  Gitorious is a Web site hosting collaborative open source projects using the Git distributed revision control system. The name also refers to the server software that the Web site is developed and hosted on...
  
  
• KForge
  KForge
  KForge is enterprise application architecture for project hosting.Distributed under the GNU General Public License KForge is free software. KForge is written using the Python programming language and integrates existing best-of-breed tools.-Features:...
  
  
• LibreSource
  LibreSource
  LibreSource is a collaborative development platform for open-source software, groupware, community interaction, electronic archiving and Web publishing....
  
  
• Redmine
  Redmine
  Redmine is a free and open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. It includes calendar and Gantt charts to aid visual representation of projects and their deadlines. It supports multiple projects...
  
  
• Savane (powering GNU Savannah
  GNU Savannah
  GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for Free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, mailing list, web hosting, file...
  
  )
• SourceForge Enterprise Edition
• Trac
  Trac
  Trac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. The program is inspired by CVSTrac, and was originally named svntrac due to its ability to interface with Subversion. It is developed and maintained by Edgewall Software....
  
  
• Tuleap
• VHFFS

Many free software projects now use their own forges to host development of their sub-projects, and add custom quality-assurance tools in particular. Examples are:

• Alioth (Debian)
  Alioth (Debian)
  Alioth is a FusionForge system run by the Debian project for development of free software and free documentation,especially software or documentation to do with Debian....
  
  
• Freedesktop.org
  Freedesktop.org
  freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free software desktop environments for the X Window System on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Havoc Pennington from Red Hat in March 2000.The organisation focuses on the user....
  
  
• Ubuntu
  Launchpad (website)
  Launchpad is a web application and website that allow users to develop and maintain software, particularly free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd....
  
  
• Mozdev.org
  Mozdev.org
  mozdev.org is a website that offers free project hosting and software development tools to the Mozilla community. Many Firefox extensions are hosted on the site, but Thunderbird and SeaMonkey extensions and stand-alone Mozilla-based applications can also be found. It is free to set up a project...
  
  
• Openmoko
  Openmoko
  Openmoko is a project to create a family of open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system. The project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc....
  
  
• OW2 Consortium
• RubyForge
  RubyForge
  RubyForge is a collaborative software development management system dedicated to projects related to the Ruby programming language. It was started in 2003 by Ruby Central in an effort to help the Ruby community by providing a home for open source Ruby projects....
  
  
• TYPO3
  TYPO3
  TYPO3 is a free and open source web content management framework. It is released under the GNU General Public License. It can run on several web servers, such as Apache or IIS, on top of many operating systems, among them Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and OS/2.-History:TYPO3 was...
  
  

See also

• Comparison of open source software hosting facilities
• List of free software project directories
• PlanetForge, a community focused on collaboration between forge engines