It was 11 years ago that Microsoft's CodePlex repository opened its doors, but now, the firm has decided to shutter the website, citing the popularity of competing platform GitHub.
The software giant has stated that over several months in 2015 there was a "spam epidemic" on the site, with spammers seeking to "take advantage of the CodePlex.com domain to boost their illicit activities". What's more, in the last month, fewer than 350 projects saw a source code commit on the platform.
As of this writing, the site no longer accepts new projects, and will be set to read-only in October. Following a complete final backup of all the contents on the site, CodePlex will shut down for good on December 15, 2017.
Concerning the future of the domain following the shutdown of the site, the company states:
At that time, CodePlex.com will start serving a read-only lightweight archive that will allow you to browse through all published projects – their source code, downloads, documentation, license, and issues – as they looked when CodePlex went read-only. You’ll also be able to download an archive file with your project contents, all in common, transferrable formats like Markdown and JSON. Where possible, we’ll put in place redirects so that existing URLs work, or at least redirect you to the project’s new homepage on the archive. And, the archive will respect your “I’ve moved” setting, if you used it, to direct users to the current home of your project.
In the post, it is also stated that there is no plan currently for the aforementioned archive to have an end date.
Of course, for those who wish to migrate their projects to GitHub, Microsoft has partnered with the online repository to provide a seamless import experience, which would transfer CodePlex source code, license, and documentation. A walkthrough of the process can be found on the CodePlex wiki.
If that isn't quite your cup of tea, there will also the option to download an archive file once the CodePlex Archive goes live. And for those folks who are using Git and just need to transfer the source code, Microsoft has pointed them towards hosting services like Visual Studio Team Services or, if you want to go outside Redmond's offering, something like Bitbucket.
This move is a long time coming, as even the software giant has migrated a few of its important projects to GitHub, like Visual Studio Code, its .NET "Roslyn" compiler, TypeScript programming language and more.
In a short post on its blog, GitHub simply acknowledges Microsoft's over 16,000 open source contributors (the most of any company), and states it is working with the CodePlex team to ensure a smooth migration experience.
Just to clarify, this is not an April Fools' joke.
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