Bitbucket sunsetting support for Mercurial

[Francois Normandin]

As I've reported in the UI Tools support page, I've started migrating the open source code I still have on bitbucket (Mercurial-based repos) to Github.
I didn't think that it might be worth a specific topic until @LogMAN mentioned it. Personally, I'm moving my code to Github in the process. I know there are some reports of Hg-to-Git transitions not going so well when using sub-repositories, so please share your migration experience if you've had to jump into some hoops to get it done!

For all of you who still use Mercurial and host your open source and/or enterprise repos on Bitbucket, this blog post is worth reading:

3 hours ago, LogMAN said:

Thanks for the heads up, this completely went by me.

Here is the official blog post from Bitbucket if anyone is interested: https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket

Edited October 26, 2019 by Francois Normandin

[Neil Pate]

Yes this is bad news indeed. The forum channel is full of angry customers. 

For what it's worth I have managed to import several repositories from Bitbucket into github using the github import, but it failed for me when I had 2FA turned on in Bitbucket. 

[LogMAN]

There is a forum where they want to discuss conversion tools, best practices et cetera:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Bitbucket-articles/What-to-do-with-your-Mercurial-repos-when-Bitbucket-sunsets/ba-p/1155380

At git-scm they suggest using hg-fast-export. git-remote-hg seems to be popular as well. Someone wrote a script to automate the migration process to GitHub without using GitHub import. Although I'm not sure how well it performs it can be worth a try: https://magnushoff.com/blog/kick-the-bitbucket/

[Michael Aivaliotis]

On 10/26/2019 at 8:44 AM, Francois Normandin said:

I've started migrating the open source code I still have on bitbucket (Mercurial-based repos) to Github.

What's the reason for moving to Github?

I was using Kiln to host my code, which used Mercurial. I switched to Bitbucket with Git. I had to migrate many projects from Mercurial to Git. I did the migration using the HG-GIT extension: https://hg-git.github.io

The main problem I encountered was using the "large files" Mercurial extension. The automatic import tools provided by GitHub and others don't like that extension and barf. Otherwise you can use the web migration tool provided by GitHub. My workaround to the large files problem was to accept the fact that I will lose the revision history on those files. Not a huge deal, since most large files I had were installers and binaries that didn't have revisions per say. So after the migration I did a diff on the project folder, identified the large files, which were missing from the new Git project and just copied them over and pushed them up to the Git repo. Don't forget that the core GIT functionality is the same regardless of service provider. So let's say you found a way to import your repo to GitHub, you can easily turn-around and move it to GitLab, bitbucket or whatever. You're not locked-in. But it might be an issue if you are using an extension that only one service provider supports.

The future is GIT. I made the jump over a year ago and haven't looked back. The service provider you choose should give you the tools you need to do your job. The reason I picked Bitbucket was because I liked and used all the other products that Atlassian provides, JIRA, Confluence etc. The tools from Github are a bit weak for my business. I also like companies that continuously improve and invest in their products, among other things. Github seems to be the popular choice for open-source, since that's how it got started. Now that Microsoft owns them, perhaps they don't have to worry about generating revenue (don't know if it's good or bad). But I don't see features that compare to what Atlassian offers.

[Francois Normandin]

On 10/30/2019 at 11:11 PM, Michael Aivaliotis said:

What's the reason for moving to Github?

I simply have all my public repos in Github nowadays, so switching it is mainly to keep them all in the same place.

You're right that I could have simply kept the address of the repo the same and changed it to Git.

[JKSH]

On 10/31/2019 at 11:11 AM, Michael Aivaliotis said:

My workaround to the large files problem was to accept the fact that I will lose the revision history on those files. Not a huge deal, since most large files I had were installers and binaries that didn't have revisions per say.

Files that don't have revisions don't need to be commited into the repository itself.

GitHub has a nice feature called GitHub Releases which lets you host "release files" -- it's designed for installers/packages/binaries, but you're free to store other files there too. Each Release is linked to a tag/commit in your Git repo so you know which version of your code was used to generate the installer. Here's an example of some releases from an NI repo: https://github.com/ni/niveristand-scan-engine-ethercat-custom-device/releases/

BitBucket has a lightweight variant of this called BitBucket Downloads (the link is somewhat tangential, but it's the best I could find).

I like GitHub's release file hosting more than BitBucket's, but I like BitBucket's issue tracker more than GitHub's.

[Michael Aivaliotis]

On 11/5/2019 at 5:46 PM, JKSH said:

Files that don't have revisions don't need to be commited into the repository itself.

I agree. I don't store those type of file in the repo for a while now. My specific comment was about how to transition from one large files extension in Mercurial to Git.

I use Bitbucket Downloads. However, I'm finding that different file sharing tools can be useful for different use-cases. There's really no one-size fits all.

[drjdpowell]

Since I have just painfully converted many years of Hg repos to Git, I thought I'd make a quick note here.   I used the procedure described here: https://helgeklein.com/blog/2015/06/converting-mercurial-repositories-to-git-on-windows/

Here is a screenshot of the Windows cmd window:

After this one needs to push to the new git repo on Bitbucket (though you could use another service).   I could not do this from the command line, but I could push after opening the repo in SourceTree (which I had previously set up to use the right private key to talk to Bitbucket).

Personally, I stayed with Bitbucket, partly because I could transfer my Issue Tracker history.   It involved Exporting the Issues (under Settings), and then Importing to the new git repo.  

It was quite painless, except for the tedium of converting many many repos.

 

[Neil Pate]

46 minutes ago, drjdpowell said:

Since I have just painfully converted many years of Hg repos to Git, I thought I'd make a quick note here.   I used the procedure described here: https://helgeklein.com/blog/2015/06/converting-mercurial-repositories-to-git-on-windows/

Here is a screenshot of the Windows cmd window:

After this one needs to push to the new git repo on Bitbucket (though you could use another service).   I could not do this from the command line, but I could push after opening the repo in SourceTree (which I had previously set up to use the right private key to talk to Bitbucket).

Personally, I stayed with Bitbucket, partly because I could transfer my Issue Tracker history.   It involved Exporting the Issues (under Settings), and then Importing to the new git repo.  

It was quite painless, except for the tedium of converting many many repos.

 

James, I took this as a good opportunity to move away from Bitbucket and to GitHub. Their import tool worked pretty well but it was a bit tedious as you say.

[Antoine Chalons]

Neil, can you explain what made you leave Bitbucket for GitHub?

[Neil Pate]

29 minutes ago, Antoine Chalons said:

Neil, can you explain what made you leave Bitbucket for GitHub?

Sure. My primary motivators were:

1. Performance (it always seemed slow even to access the web interface, and ssh pushes and pulls often took forever)
2. The war is over, Git has been crowned the victor. I backed the wrong horse about 8 years ago and now it is time to move on. The only reason I chose Bitbucket in the first place was their support for Hg.
3. The way they have handled the move to Git was terrible.
4. GitHub now has free private repositories, and as of yesterday you can have teams for free

Realistically, the only thing keeping me on Bitbucket for several years was the pain of moving all 100 of my repositories over to somewhere else. They forced my hand with this and I have not looked back since.

Since then I have found other good things:

1. GitKraken is incredible
2. Visual Studio has really nice (simple) support for Git with the Git extension
3. I don't have to remember how to pronounce Atlassian anymore

[smithd]

VSCode+gitlens has really nice git integration for text, if you don't have access (or dont want) full visual studio.

I've been trying and trying to get away from sourcetree -- I've tried gitahead and git extensions. I like Git extensions best so far -- is not friendly, but it does a good job of exposing all the little random git things whereas a lot of tools (rightfully) try to make git look like its easy. I do want to try kraken now.

Edit: do you know what gitkraken's license rules are? I thought the old rules were that its only free for open source, but I can't actually find any license terms. It says you can only access "public" repos, but when I just installed it I could use it just fine with a local-to-my-computer repo. So I'm confused.

Edited April 17, 2020 by smithd

[Neil Pate]

GitKraken is free for public GitHub repositories, I never tried it with anything local but I think you are right in that the free version does work as well. I spent a few weeks with the free version and happily handed them some money for the pro version. Its a really nice client. I actually bought a second license as I had the GitHub client on my wife's computer and it was so terrible in comparison.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Neil Pate

[pawhan11]

@Neil Pate 

Did You move completely from Atlassian products?  Did You find better alternatives for Jira or Confluence? 

[Neil Pate]

5 minutes ago, pawhan11 said:

@Neil Pate 

Did You move completely from Atlassian products?  Did You find better alternatives for Jira or Confluence? 

I only used Bitbucket for my personal consulting work so have moved away entirely there.

However at my day job we are heavily into Jira and Confluence and will likely not be moving away from these any time soon.