Google Provides Beta Git Repository Hosting Service for Google Cloud Platform

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This article originally appeared at The WHIR

Without issuing an official announcement, Google beta launched a private Git repository hosting service on Google Cloud Platform known as Cloud Source Repositories.

According to a Google webpage spotted by VentureBeat, Cloud Source Repositories provides beta users free hosting of up to 500 MB of storage. It requires Git and the Google Cloud SDK. Using the Git command line tool, users can setup the Cloud Source Repository as a remote Git repository for their local repository. They can also connect a Cloud Source Repository to a hosted repository service such as GitHub or Bitbucketthat will automatically sync.

Cloud Source Repositories is integrated with the Google Developers Console, providing a source code editor for viewing repository files and making quick edits. It also works with Google Cloud Debugger providing insight into Java applications running on Google Compute Engine and App Engine.

As VentureBeat notes, it could be difficult for Google to overtake GitHub and Bitbucket, which are currently the most popular source code hosting providers. Cloud Source Repositories could be considered another tool in Google’s garage that means developers can get most of their needs satisfied without leaving the Google ecosystem.

“Google Cloud Source Repositories provides a crucial part of our end-to-end cloud tooling story,” Google Cloud Platform product manager Chris Sells wrote in an email to VentureBeat. “By allowing you to manage your source in your cloud projects along with your other cloud resources, you’ve got a one-stop shop for everything you’re doing in Google Cloud Platform. The Cloud Source Repositories service provides a private Git repository that works with your existing tools while providing a high degree of replication and encryption to make sure that your code is as safe and secure as you’d expect from Google’s cloud infrastructure.”

Indeed, building an ecosystem of tools that make it easier for developers to build and deploy applications on their own platform is becoming a major way for cloud providers to attract and keep developers in a competitive landscape. For instance, Amazon Web Services introduced its Git repository, CodeCommit, in November, and Microsoft provides the Visual Studio Online repository service for its Azure cloud.

It is unclear what the pricing of Cloud Source Repositories will be once it’s generally released. Github’s freemium pricing model provides public repositories for free, but plans including private repositories start at $7 per month or individuals and $25 per month for organizations.

Earlier this year, Google announced that it would be discontinuing its project hosting service Google Code which was a more direct equivalent to GitHub and Bitbucket. In contrast to Google Code, Cloud Source Repositories’ integration with Google Cloud Platform could make Cloud Source Repositories the default tool for developers in the Google ecosystem.

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