Apache Allura is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to the ...

software for managing source code repositories, bug reports, discussions, wiki pages, blogs and more for any number of individual projects. Allura graduated from incubation with the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...

in March 2013.

Features

Allura can manage any number of projects, including groups of projects known as Neighborhoods, as well as sub-projects under individual projects. Allura also has a modular design to support tools attached to neighborhoods or individual projects. Allura comes packaged with many tools, and additional external and third-party tools can be installed. There are tools to manage version control for source code repositories, ticket tracking, discussions, wiki pages, blogs and more. Allura can also export project data, as well as import data from a variety of sources, such as

Trac Trac is an open-source, web-based project management and bug tracking system. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Tr ...

, Google Code,

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, and, of course, Allura itself.

Features common to most tools

Most tools support

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used ...

formatting, threaded comments with integrated and configurable spam prevention, group or individual artifact level subscriptions via email or RSS, and powerful searching using

Solr Solr (pronounced "solar") is an open-source enterprise-search platform, written in Java. Its major features include full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, NoSQL features ...

. Additionally, the Markdown syntax supports cross-linking, such that a commit can refer to a specific ticket, a comment on a discussion thread can easily link to a commit, or a wiki page can even link directly to a specific comment in a discussion thread. Allura also has a powerful permissions system that gives fine-grained control over who has access to do what.

Version control

Allura comes packaged with tools for managing

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

and SVN repositories. There is also a tool for managing Mercurial repositories, which is packaged separately for license reasons. Version control integration includes: *Browser-based file and commit browsing *Color-coded unified or side-by-side diff viewing *

Syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that is used for programming language, programming, scripting language, scripting, or markup language, markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in differe ...

*Forking and merge / pull requests *Commit history graph view

Ticket / bug tracking

*Multiple trackers per project *File attachments *Milestones, labels, and custom fields *Saved searches for frequent use *Bulk editing of tickets

Threaded discussion forums

*Moderation *Reply-by-email *Spam prevention

Wiki

*Attachments *Syntax highlighting for code snippets *Browsing pages by name or tags *Custom macros for things like project listings, blog post listings, and adding a Gittip button

Blogs

*Pre-publish drafts *External feed integration *Optional discussion comments with spam prevention

History

Allura began in October 2009 as an

reimplementation in Python of the developer tools for

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

(previously written in

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

), and was first announced in March 2011. Allura became the default platform for new projects on SourceForge in July 2011. In June 2012, Allura was submitted to the

(ASF) and began incubation to become an Apache project. Allura was moved to the ASF to encourage community engagement and to ensure an open and community oriented development process. Allura graduated to a top-level Apache project in March 2013.

Notable installations

*Apache Allura *SourceForge.net *Open Source Projects Europe *DLR German Aerospace Center *DARPA's VehicleForge

References

External links

* {{Wiki software Bug and issue tracking software Free software programmed in Python Free project management software Free wiki software Free version control software Software using the Apache license Git repository hosting websites