SharpForge

SharpForge

Developer(s)	XP Software Services
Initial release	10, 2007 (2007-06-10)
Written in	C#, ASP.NET
Operating system	Windows
Type	Project management software
License	New BSD license
Website	http://sharpforge.org/

SharpForge is a free open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking web application, inspired by SourceForge. It is developed and maintained by XP Software Services.

As of February 28, 2009, SharpForge's services have been discontinued.

SharpForge is written in C# ASP.NET. It is available under the New BSD license. The license is a free software license.

Features

SharpForge allows distributed team members to participate in multiple projects simultaneously. Users can participate in existing projects or start their own project. Each project is provided multiple services called components. These components include:

• Hyperlinking information between a computer bug database
• Discussion forums
• Revision control
• Wiki content management system
• Release distribution
• Role-based access control
• a web interface to Subversion the version control system.
• The wiki content is stored as standard HTML in the Subversion version control system.
• Subversion hook events for all repositories can be maintained from the web server
• Theme designers can use css variables, values are taken from the configuration
• Commits can be associated with work items, the log message is captured as a threaded discussion about the work item and links back to the files changed in the commit
• Administration of large number of Subversion repositories is reduced, SharpForge creates and manages httpd.conf, acl and password files for Apache and svnserve.

Requirements

• .Net 2.0
• Sql Server 2005 Express or greater
• IIS 5 or greater
• Subversion 1.4 or greater (1)
• Apache 2.0 (2)

1. Subversion is only required if you want to use the source code and wiki components.
2. If you use Subversion, either Apache or svnserve can be used as the Subversion server. Svnserve is distributed with the Subversion release. The only difference is that Apache is better suited to high traffic scenarios.

Goals

• Leverage Subversion for content management
• Allow multiple independent companies or communities to coexist on the same web server/database, each can manage multiple projects. Users can be shared between communities or they can be independent. Each portal and project can customize the application to suit their own needs through configuration.
• Focus on collaboration, communication tools and flexibility rather than traditional top down "project management" approach.
• To reduce the amount of administration and knowledge required to manage multiple Subversion projects.
• To provide a modern "self hosting" alternative for open and closed source projects.
• Configurable to allow anonymous users to be able to participate in projects.
• Keep the core simple, stable and limited in scope, avoid feature creep, provide a clean interface for additional components and plug ins.

Component / Plug in Architecture

Each portal and project can override the default configuration in the web.config to have their own "flavor" of SharpForge without affecting other portals/projects. If no configuration is explicitly defined for portals or projects then they all use the configuration defined in the web.config.

Configuration hierarchy: project.config > portal.config > web.config

This allows you to provide behavior to all portals and projects by defining it in the web.confg and then to override this for individual portal/projects to provide specific behavior without it applying to all others.

Both components and plug ins are implemented using the provider model, however they make use of the technology slightly differently. Only a single component can be used but it can call 0..n plug ins. All of the SharpForge components use this model.

See also

• Comparison of issue tracking systems

External links

• SharpForge project home page
• SharpForge installation guide
• SharpForge documentation
• SourceForge, inspiration for SharpForge