Gitter 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 ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

and chat room system for developers and users of

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

and

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 ...

repositories. Gitter is provided as

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

, with a free option providing all basic features and the ability to create a single private chat room, and paid subscription options for individuals and organisations, which allows them to create arbitrary numbers of private chat rooms. Individual

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

s can be created for individual

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 ...

repositories on GitHub. Chatroom privacy follows the privacy settings of the associated GitHub repository: thus, a chatroom for a private (i.e. members-only) GitHub repository is also private to those with access to the repository. A graphical badge linking to the chat room can then be placed in the git repository's README file, bringing it to the attention of all users and developers of the project. Users can chat in the chat rooms, or access private chat rooms for repositories they have access to, by logging into Gitter via GitHub Gitter is similar to Slack. Like Slack, it automatically logs all messages in the

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

. In late 2020, New Vector Limited acquired Gitter from GitLab, and announced Gitter's features would eventually be moved to New Vector's flagship product,

Element Element or elements may refer to: Science * Chemical element, a pure substance of one type of atom * Heating element, a device that generates heat by electrical resistance * Orbital elements, parameters required to identify a specific orbit of o ...

, thereby replacing Gitter entirely. On February 13, 2023, Gitter migrated their service to a custom-branded Matrix instance that uses Element for its web interface.

Features prior to Migration to Matrix

Gitter supports: * Notifications, which are batched up on mobile devices to avoid annoyance * Inline media files * Viewing and subscribing to ("starring") multiple chat rooms in one web browser tab * Linking to individual files in the linked git repository * Linking to GitHub issues (by typing # and then the issue number) in the linked git repository, with hovercards showing the details of the issue * GitHub-flavored

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 ...

in chat messages * Online status for users * User hovercards, based on their GitHub profiles and statistics (number of GitHub followers, etc.) * Browsable and searchable message archives, grouped by month * Connection from IRC clients * Gitter on iOS support authentication using GitHub or Twitter

Integrations with non-GitHub sites and applications

Gitter integrates with

Trello Trello is a web-based, kanban-style, list-making application developed by Atlassian. Created in 2011 by Fog Creek Software, it was spun out to form the basis of a separate company in New York City in 2014 and sold to Atlassian in January 2017 ...

Jenkins Jenkins may refer to: People * Jenkins (name), history of the surname * List of people with surname Jenkins * The Jenkins, country music group Places United States * Jenkins, Illinois *Jenkins, Kentucky * Jenkins, Minnesota * Jenkins, Missour ...

Travis CI Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration service used to build and test software projects hosted on GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Perforce, Apache Subversion and Assembla. Travis CI was the first CI service that provided services to open-sourc ...

, Drone (software),

Heroku Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. As one of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now also suppo ...

, and

Bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git-based source code repository hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of private repositories. Services Bitbucket Cloud Bitbucket Cloud (pre ...

, among others.

Apps

Official Gitter apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android are available.

Account registration

Like other chat technologies, Gitter allows clients to

instant message Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate (real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involvin ...

each other. It allows people to authenticate using a GitHub account and join a chatroom from a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

, thus not requiring one to install any software, or create additional online accounts.

History

Gitter was created by some developers who were initially trying to create a generic web-based chat product, but then wrote extra code to hook their chat application up to

to meet their own needs, and realised that they could turn the combined product into a viable specialist product in its own right. Gitter came out of

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

in 2014. During the beta period, Gitter delivered 1.8 million chat messages. On March 15, 2017,

announced the acquisition of Gitter. Included in the announcement was the stated intent that Gitter would continue as a standalone project. It was published as open source under an

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

as of June 2017. On September 30, 2020, New Vector Limited acquired Gitter from GitLab, and announced upcoming support for the Matrix protocol in Gitter, which went live by the end of the year. Gitter's features would eventually be moved to New Vector's flagship product,

, thereby replacing Gitter entirely. On February 13, 2023, Gitter migrated their service to a custom-branded Matrix instance that uses Element for its web interface.

Implementation prior to Migration to Matrix

The Gitter

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

is implemented entirely in

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, with the back end being implemented on Node.js. The source code to the web application was formerly proprietary (it was open-sourced in June 2017), although Gitter had made numerous auxiliary projects available as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

, such as an IRC bridge for IRC users who prefer using IRC client applications (and their extra features) to converse in the Gitter chat rooms.

Notes

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References

Instant messaging server software Chat websites Web applications Open-source cloud applications Programming tools Business chat software Internet properties established in 2013