The support for Git repos is still in Beta

May 4, 2015 11:56 GMT  ·  By

Canonical has announced that Git repositories can now be hosted directly on Launchpad, which was one of the most requested features of the community.

Launchpad has been making a name for itself, and it has become a powerful tool for Ubuntu-based distributions. It's been around for many years, and it's used for various purposes, from just simple announcements for packages that are not even hosted on this service to being an actual third-party repository for Ubuntu-based distros.

It's a versatile service, but it's been rather limited, and its makers knew that. That is why they are now working to support Git repositories as well, a decision that will definitely please a lot of people. This is still in the Beta stages, and it will take a while to iron out the problems, but it's working, and it should be up already.

Full Git support will take some time

Bazaar and Git might have some similar features, but it will take a while until these two platforms compare in features, on Launchpad. The developers are still implementing features, but for now it's possible to push Git repositories to Launchpad over SSH, clone repositories over git://, SSH, or HTTPS, see summary information on repositories and the branches they contain in the Launchpad web UI, propose merges from one branch to another, and a few other things.

"Our support is still in its early stages, and we still have several features to add to bring it up to parity with Bazaar hosting in Launchpad, as well as generally making it easier and more pleasant to use. We've released it before it’s completely polished because many people are clamouring to be able to use it, and we’re ready to let you all do so. From here on in, we'll be adding features, applying polish, and fixing bugs using Launchpad’s normal iterative deployment process: changes will be rolled out to production once they're ready, so you’ll see the UI gradually improving over time," reads the announcement from Canonical.

As usual, any help from the community is welcomed. Don't forget to submit bugs and tell the developers about the problems you'll encounter. This is a big step for Launchpad, and it's very likely that it will take a while to sort everything through.