Moving to create a collaborative environment for .NET developers similar to
what SourceForge offers for open source, Microsoftlast
week opened the doors to GotDotNet Workspace 1.0.
GotDotNet is Microsoft’s community site related to its Microsoft Developers
Network (MSDN). “GotDotNet’s focus is definitely on community features and
content driven by the community,” Katherine Lagana, MSDN team, general
manager of GotDotNet, told internetnews.com.
Workspace is an online collaborative development environment where .NET
developers can create, host and manage projects throughout the project
lifecycle. The free service offers team-focused development tools,
including:
- Source control, allowing teams to store source code updates by
different developers and keep a history of previous versions; it is
available to teams as a Web interface, a Windows Forms client, and through
the source control features of Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET development
environment - Bug tracker, allowing teams to record code defects, work items and
suggestions, and track progress and changing ownership
- Team communication, in the form of message boards for community
discussion and project-specific news through an RSSfeed.
Any developer interested in developing an application through Workspace can
create a micro-community on GotDotNet. As the owner, that developer has
full permissions and can invite members, delete members, change members’
roles, add files and releases, add/resolve/close bugs, etc. The owner can
also appoint administrators, who also have full permissions. Members have
partial permission, with the ability to add files and releases, and
add/resolve/close bugs, but not the ability to manage member lists. Owners
can make their Workspaces public, where files and releases and news may be
downloaded or read by anybody, or private, where only the title and
description of the Workspace is available to the public and the rest is
only available to owners, administrators and approved members.
When owners create a Workspace, the creation wizard requests a license that
will cover reuse of the code. Any license can be submitted, and GotDotNet
provides two sample licenses for reference — one which allows commercial
derivative products and another designed for use in private Workspaces.
Lagana said that even open-source licenses are welcome, if the community
wants them. “We’re not enforcing any particular type of licensing,” she
said. “The community decides.”
The source control system is a custom implementation, according to
Microsoft, and the team has also implemented a version running against
Visual SourceSafe. The Windows Forms control requires the .NET Framework
(v1.0 or v1.1) and Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1. Microsoft said the HTML
interface is compatible with most recent browsers. To integrate with Visual
Studio, users need either Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio .NET 2003.
Projects get a default storage space of 30MB, though this is based on
active size (the total size of the latest version) and not the history or
previous versions. Projects can request additional storage space if
necessary.
While many of the features of Workspace are similar to those offered
through Microsoft’s Sharepoint Services, Lagana said Workspace is not based
on Sharepoint Services. “The origins are different,” she said. “We’re
focused on hardcore coders who want to access each other across companies
and continents. Sharepoint is targeted at all audiences. Workspace is
dedicated to the developer.”
Microsoft initially rolled out a beta release of Workspace in September
2002.
“It was very much a work in progress,” said Andy Oakley, MSDN team, project
manager for GotDotNet Workspace. “We had a lot of features in place but
they were nowhere near finished. At that time, we had a number of reports
of people having difficulty installing the Windows Forms interface.”
But with the official release, which debuted on Tuesday, June 24, Oakley
said those problems have been ironed out. The service now features built-in
error handling, and a step-by-step process guides developers through
getting up and running.
“In just under a week, we’ve seen 200 workspaces created,” Oakley said.
Lagana added, “That’s doubling our traffic from last year.”
Developers are now working on about 2,500 applications through GotDotNet,
with anywhere from four to 250 developers working on each application.
Oakley said that, going forward, the Workspace team will focus on improving
access controls to manage the number of spectators and testers allowed on
each project. “There is no real restriction on size at this point,” he
said. “It can become difficult to manage large projects.”
The team is also looking to incorporate .NET Alerts to notify users on
particular projects when changes or updates have been made to that project.
Also, the team is working on turning each of the key components of
Workspace into Web services.