CollabNet reworks SourceForge pricing and tooling

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By P. J. Connolly

August 1, 2008 — CollabNet has updated the SourceForge development platform to help development teams incorporate preferred ALM processes into their work.

SourceForge Enterprise 5.0, released Wednesday, includes new project page features that allow developers to model and document the different phases of their processes, such as nested pages and dynamic, portlet-like components.

The new version also offers new project template functions that can capture and reuse the content and structure from saved projects; the items that can be repurposed in this way range from discussion forums and project pages, down to custom tracker fields, saved searches and defined workflows. This, notes the company, allows development teams to jump-start new projects while standardizing their life-cycle processes as well as their tooling. The aim is to improve efficiency and organizational flexibility, and to ease the integration of new team members.

As well, the new release of SourceForge Enterprise includes a number of changes made to improve its usability. For starters, the UI has been overhauled, with a visual HTML editor that allows users to add rich content, or by editing the HTML source and other complex content, such as JavaScript to project pages. The reworked interface now has mouse-over menus and more shortcuts to recent artifacts and commands.

A new global grouping feature allows the creation of site-wide groups and the collective assignment of their users to project roles. This is especially useful in smaller shops that can’t squander a lot of time managing and provisioning users, CollabNet noted.

The update also allows for easier site branding, allowing customization by simply checking in new CSS, HTML, image, JavaScript or Apache Velocity template files as desired to promote a corporate identity. This can take the form of custom logos or messages on working pages, personalizing welcome e-mails, or modifying the domain landing page.

CollabNet believes that ALM isn’t just for the largest businesses anymore, and in hopes of attracting shops with equal needs but smaller budgets, the company reduced the price of SourceForge Enterprise to US$4,995 per year per server license, with basic support for up to 25 users.

As part of the SourceForge update, the company also announced new releases of the CollabNet Desktops for Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio. The add-ons for the development frameworks now offer developers access to SourceForge Enterprise artifacts such as documents, issues and Subversion repositories, while remaining within the friendly confines of their IDE. The Desktop editions are free and can be downloaded from CollabNet’s Web site.

Related Search Term(s): ALM, CollabNet

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