Apache Allura is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to th ...

software for managing source code repositories, bug reports, discussions, wiki pages, blogs and more for any number of individual projects. Allura graduated from incubation with the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the A ...

in March 2013.

Features

Allura can manage any number of projects, including groups of projects known as Neighborhoods, as well as sub-projects under individual projects. Allura also has a modular design to support tools attached to neighborhoods or individual projects. Allura comes packaged with many tools, and additional external and third-party tools can be installed. There are tools to manage version control for source code repositories, ticket tracking, discussions, wiki pages, blogs and more. Allura can also export project data, as well as import data from a variety of sources, such as

Trac Trac is an open-source software, open-source, web-based Project management software, project management and bug tracking system. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source s ...

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, and, of course, Allura itself.

Features common to most tools

Most tools support

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is appealing to human readers in its source code form. Markdown is ...

formatting, threaded comments with integrated and configurable spam prevention, group or individual artifact level subscriptions via email or RSS, and powerful searching using

Solr Solr (pronounced "solar") is an open-source enterprise-search platform, written in Java. Its major features include full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, NoSQL features an ...

. Additionally, the Markdown syntax supports cross-linking, such that a commit can refer to a specific ticket, a comment on a discussion thread can easily link to a commit, or a wiki page can even link directly to a specific comment in a discussion thread. Allura also has a powerful permissions system that gives fine-grained control over who has access to do what.

Version control

Allura comes packaged with tools for managing

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...

and SVN repositories. There is also a tool for managing

Mercurial Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux. Mercurial's major design goals include high performance and scalability, d ...

repositories, which is packaged separately for license reasons. Version control integration includes: *Browser-based file and commit browsing *Color-coded unified or side-by-side diff viewing *

Syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

*Forking and merge / pull requests *Commit history graph view

Ticket / bug tracking

*Multiple trackers per project *File attachments *Milestones, labels, and custom fields *Saved searches for frequent use *Bulk editing of tickets

Threaded discussion forums

*Moderation *Reply-by-email *Spam prevention

Wiki

*Attachments *Syntax highlighting for code snippets *Browsing pages by name or tags *Custom macros for things like project listings, blog post listings, and adding a Gittip button

Blogs

*Pre-publish drafts *External feed integration *Optional discussion comments with spam prevention

History

Allura began in October 2009 as an

reimplementation in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

of the developer tools for

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

(previously written in

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

), and was first announced in March 2011. Allura became the default platform for new projects on SourceForge in July 2011. In June 2012, Allura was submitted to the

(ASF) and began incubation to become an Apache project. Allura was moved to the ASF to encourage community engagement and to ensure an open and community oriented development process. Allura graduated to a top-level Apache project in March 2013.

Notable installations

*Apache Allura *SourceForge.net *Open Source Projects Europe *DLR German Aerospace Center *DARPA's VehicleForge

References

External links

* {{Wiki software Bug and issue tracking software Free software Free software programmed in Python Free project management software Free wiki software Project management software Version control