Free hosted source control?

A couple of months ago I left my job in order to finish my degree, and have since walked the fine line between "freelance consultant" and "unemployed bum", much to my enjoyment. One thing this means is that I code at home, on my personal laptop, projects that are a bit more serious than just hobby-projects. This means I want a slightly more serious source control system other than "occasionally copy the code to an external drive".

Why not use regular source control (SVN, …) locally, but where the repository is stored on an external drive? That way, you have serious source control but without it having to be hosted. Of course it's also a good idea to regularly back up the repository to a different machine (preferably on a remote location, in case your house burns down, or there's an earthquake).

TommyCarlier said:

Why not use regular source control (SVN, …) locally, but where the repository is stored on an external drive? That way, you have serious source control but without it having to be hosted. Of course it's also a good idea to regularly back up the repository to a different machine (preferably on a remote location, in case your house burns down, or there's an earthquake).

That's exactly the hassle I want to avoid - having to carry the external drive with me (I usually work on my laptop at cafes and all around), having to back it up to a secondary backup, having it available everywhere... exactly the pluses that cloud hosting gives me.

Yggdrasil said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

That's exactly the hassle I want to avoid - having to carry the external drive with me (I usually work on my laptop at cafes and all around), having to back it up to a secondary backup, having it available everywhere... exactly the pluses that cloud hosting gives me.

If you don't mind making your code open-source, you could use Codeplex. Of course, I understand that that's not always desireable.

TommyCarlier said:

Yggdrasil said:

*snip*

If you don't mind making your code open-source, you could use Codeplex. Of course, I understand that that's not always desireable.

Not an option, unfortunately. Right now I'm working on code for a client, so it's not really my choice to make.

Yggdrasil said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

Not an option, unfortunately. Right now I'm working on code for a client, so it's not really my choice to make.

I'm about to provide hosted SVN for a friend of mine, wanna piggy pack on it?

I don't know about free hosting.  If you already have a web site, any of the DVCS options (git, bzr, or hg for instance) would be trivial to piggy back of the site, since there's no central "server" component needed.  This would be especially enticing to me, given your description of being "on the road" with a laptop a lot.  Being able to continue using your source control while being disconnected is very liberating.

Yggdrasil said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

That's exactly the hassle I want to avoid - having to carry the external drive with me (I usually work on my laptop at cafes and all around), having to back it up to a secondary backup, having it available everywhere... exactly the pluses that cloud hosting gives me.

I don't know about you, but I find my pen drive a lot more accessible from whereever I am than some random server in 'the cloud'. Often, infinitely so, like when I don't have net access. DVCSs work ok when disconnected, but traditional stuff like SVN is hopeless unless you're just using the source control system as a glorified backup program rather than a real version control system.

Talking of which, Github has a paid option for non-open-sourcers if you want to use git (which you should in this scenario, unless you're considering Hg instead).

You could try Google if you trust them not to accidentally dish out your code to the world and its aunt.

Yggdrasil said:

TommyCarlier said:

*snip*

That's exactly the hassle I want to avoid - having to carry the external drive with me (I usually work on my laptop at cafes and all around), having to back it up to a secondary backup, having it available everywhere... exactly the pluses that cloud hosting gives me.

How about getting a hostname and setting up a little server at home.

I don't think it's likely you will find a free AND private source control host. There are many free source control hosts like Sourceforge, Github, Launchpad, Google Code, Codeplex, Macforge, BerliOS, NonGNU, and more, but all require your code to be open source. If you don't want that Github offers an inexpensive private account ($7/month).

I use unfuddle and they offer exactly what you are looking for.

PeterMarshall said:

I use unfuddle and they offer exactly what you are looking for.

As a freelancer who requires code in different locations its perfect.

http://unfuddle.com/

unfuddle isnt free and private? its either or.

littleguru said:

Does somebody know of any free TFS hostings out there? Also limited to a certain amount of projects... - and not Codeplex

I wish I knew. I could use one of those myself. I'd even be willing to pay a small monthly fee for an online TFS provider.

Stebet said:

littleguru said:

*snip*

I wish I knew. I could use one of those myself. I'd even be willing to pay a small monthly fee for an online TFS provider.

It isn't cheap. $129.99 per user per month. Ouch.

If anyone's interested, I'm starting Windows SVN hosting later this month, for about £15 per month with no real limitations.