The following is a guest post by Kelly Lanspa from the CloudForge product team.
CloudForge from CollabNet is a collaborative software development and application lifecycle management platform. It includes source code management, Git/Subversion hosting and bug tracking on one platform, with backup services, additional storage and secure role-based user access to manage distributed teams. CloudForge is integrated with Pivotal’s hosted Cloud Foundry service, enabling users to easily build-test-deploy and scale apps.
From the marketplace console (or the cf command line utility), select CloudForge then choose one of the packages available. When you select a package by clicking on “buy this plan”, CloudForge will require you to select a unique name for your instance which will be used to create a new organization name in CloudForge. Each “space” in Cloud Foundry will map to a unique CloudForge organization, and users can create different CloudForge accounts for different Cloud Foundry Applications or Spaces, but this isn’t strictly required. You can always deploy your code from a shared CloudForge repository to different Spaces. As CloudForge is a shared service, it does not need to bind to a specific Cloud Foundry application.
Create a new instance called “PivotalDemo” in your default Space (typically “development”) but do not bind it to a specific application. Note: the account name in CloudForge needs to be unique.
Add the CloudForge service in your Space. When you have successfully created a new CloudForge instance it will be listed in your Space Services. Click on “Manage” to finish configuring your CloudForge account.
The instance name you chose for CloudForge service will be used for your new CloudForge account. By default, any user clicking on “Manage” within Cloud Foundry will be automatically logged into CloudForge via OAuth as the Cloud Foundry Space user. However, you will need to choose a username and a password to access your SVN and Git repositories. These SCM services do not support oAuth and are accessed directly from your SCM client, IDE or your command line. Changing your first and last name are optional.
Regardless of how many developers you have it is always useful to maintain version control, even if you are the only developer. Using a Cloud-based SCM provider like CloudForge means that you always have a full copy of your source code backed up and ready for retrieval from any computer. It also makes it very easy to add collaborators on your projects. In order to add collaborators simply click on Admin->Manage Users.
You can invite as many collaborators as you like (depending upon your plan) to join your CloudForge account regardless of whether they are users on Cloud Foundry (the admin CloudForge account is created when the CloudForge service is selected from the run.pivotal.io marketplace, but subsequent team members do not have to be Cloud Foundry users). Each user will create a new username on CloudForge so you can track their commits, issue updates, and comments separately as you develop your application.
Now that you have invited others to collaborate on your projects it’s time to create your first project. Click on Projects->New Project.
Create a new CloudForge Project to manage your development. After you name your project you can add a SVN or Git repository (or both). If you want to include Bug/Issue Tracking, Agile Planning, Wiki, or Discussions you can also choose to add TeamForge to your project. All of these services will be provisioned within your project and the direct links for each provided on your project landing page.
Once you have coded your application and merged all of your branches into a stable trunk you can easily deploy the app to Cloud Foundry using the CF command utility or directly from the Spring Tool Suite. You are able to deploy to any CloudFoundry target, Space, or Org; your CloudForge project is not bound to a specific instance of Cloud Foundry. Feel free to create as many Projects in CloudForge as you need. Your account can be used to manage multiple applications and projects across several Spaces within Cloud Foundry. If you using the Spring Tool Suite IDE, we recommend installing the CollabNet Desktop as well. This allows you to manage your CloudForge account, including all repositories and all tasks, from within the same environment that manages your code.
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