14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has added support for Mercurial in its repository of open source projects, as of January 25th, 2010. According to the Redmond company, the introduction of support for the Mercurial distributed source control management system was catalyzed by feedback from members of the CodePlex community. Sara Ford, the program manager for CodePlex, explained that it was the growing popularity of DVCS for open source development that sparked requests from CodePlex users, and ultimately convinced Microsoft to add distributed version control support to its open source repository.
“For new projects created on CodePlex.com, you will be able to choose from either Team Foundation Server or Mercurial as your source control repository,” Ford explained. "Mercurial is one of the most popular distributed version control systems and offers great support for Windows based tools as well as works very well as a hosted service.”
Ford added that current members of the CodePlex community that wished to port their projects from Team Foundation Server to Mercurial would be not only able to switch but would also get assistance from the software giant. CodePlex users that want to migrate their projects to Mercurial, will need to contact Microsoft Support and the Redmond company will provide the necessary help, Ford promised. As far as new projects created on CodePlex.com are concerned, Microsoft informs that developers will be able to leverage either Team Foundation Server or Mercurial when opting for a source control repository.
“Mercurial is a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) and, unlike Team Foundation Server, DVCS has a very different model for collaborating on an open source project: Anyone can clone. (Create local repository, Get all change sets from repository). Anyone can commit. (Check-in to their local repository). Anyone can pull. (Get all change sets from repository). Only team can push. (Check-in of local repository to CodePlex),” said Peter Galli, the Open Source Community manager for Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group.