Integrated Issue Tracking

Issue tracking in SourceForge has been rethought from the ground up. We use our own issue tracking in developing the SourceForge platform itself (we're completely self-hosted!) so we’re forced to think through the process on a daily basis. Some of the features we’re particularly proud of are:

• Tickets (and all other SourceForge tools) let you use markdown for formatting, and attach files.
• You can organize tickets with milestones, custom fields, and labels
• In addition to simple search, an advanced search syntax is available. Favorite searches can be saved for frequent use.
• Threaded discussion on tickets
• Subscribe to tracker updates through email or rss
• Links and backlinks to other artifacts throughout SourceForge (all of our tools have this)

Threaded Discussion Forums

Discussion forums are a standard tool, and are the communication hub of many projects.

• Subscribe to forums by email or rss
• Reply to forum posts by email
• Project admins can moderate discussion posts
• Spam bot protection
• Allow anonymous posting, only logged in users, or even a specific list of users
• If you prefer, your project can have a traditional mailing list
• Blog tool with threaded discussion
• Set posts to draft mode while working on them
• Full threaded discussion on blog posts, linking to other artifacts, and markdown formatting just like other tools

Code Repository

Of course the heart of your Open Source project is the source code, and this is an area where we really shine.

• Host code with git, Mercurial (hg), or Subversion (svn)
• Browser-based code browsing
• Link commits to tickets and other artifacts
• View color-coded commit diffs
• Forking and merge requests with git and hg
• View commit history as a graph

Documentation

Helping your users use your product is as important as making it in the first place. So we offer several different ways to create your documentation. We start with a wiki, but you can install and use any tools that you want in your project web space.

• Make wiki pages with markdown, attachments, threaded discussion, artifact linking
• Syntax highlighting for code snippets
• Browse wiki pages by name or tags
• Custom wiki macros make common tasks easier

Downloads & Stats

SourceForge makes sure your project is always available to users as a quick download. You get access to information about project download activity to find out who your users are.

• Extensive worldwide mirror network
• Mark your files as official releases
• SourceForge detects a downloader's platform and provides them with an appropriate release.
• You'll get download stats over time, by platform, and by region.

Open Source Directory

How will anyone know about your project if they can't find it? Your project is added to our Open Source Directory where potential users can browse and search for software.

• Categorize your project by topic, platform, license, etc
• We promote great projects as a staff pick, featured project, or project of the month.
• Users can review and recommend your project.
• Your project page can be shared with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

And, it’s Open Source

And, as if all of that wasn’t enough, the SourceForge platform Allura is Open Source, and released under the Apache license. You can download it, host your own forge, and make enhancements to the code. We would love to have you participate in setting the course of future Allura development. If you’re a Python programmer, designer, UI/UX expert, or have any other skills that you can contribute to the effort, jump in and get busy. We love Open Source, and we just want to make the SourceForge developer experience better, every day.