Crucible / Fisheye - replacement / alternative
Asked by Pawel Wysocki:

Didn't saw any similar thread so placing an open question.  

We already know that Crucible and Fisheye won't be develop further beside the patching (security fixes, etc): <https://confluence.atlassian.com/fisheye/fisheye-and-crucible-are-in-basic-maintenance-mode-987143949.html>

<br />

Is there anyone here who already thought and investigate any Fisheye / Crucible alternatives (supported and developed)?

If yes, what tools you did select and how are you feeling about them? (integration with other atlassian tools, setup, features etc).  

Thanks


Answers:
author: MEDITECH ADMIN TEAM
body: Following along on this. I have very much the same answer. Looks like options I have found are devart and upsource although I havent dug in very deep yet. Biggest concern is nothing will interact like FishEye does with Jira.

My Developers are not inline to moving to GIT anytime soon. They prefer SVN. Daydreaming of bitbucket working with SVN but that is just silly!


author: Marek Parfianowicz
body: In case you use other SCMs, like Subversion, Mercurial or Perforce then some of alternatives are: Review Board, Upsource, Helix.

Just keep in mind that they may not offer the same set of features as Fisheye and Crucible.

For example, in **Review Board** (based on my experience with 2.x version few years ago, they may have added more features since then) there's no possibility to browse repositories, no possibility to search content of repositories or to view diffs from a repository (I mean without creating a code review), also no web hooks, no smart commits, no repository/user activity, no charts and metrics. Iterative reviews are supported only partially, a unified diff is not available. On the positive side, Review Board supports much more SCM types, e.g. TFS, Bazaar; it also supports 15+ issue trackers (and not only Jira).

Another tool, **Upsource** has feature set quite similar to Fisheye \& Crucible, although it does not support CVS. I checked version 3.5 few years ago and it didn't allow to upload patches or attachments to a code review, also adding entire files from a repository was not possible. Other features missing were file-level comments, multi-line comments, defect tracking, comment drafts, advanced search. On the positive side, Upsource runs IDEA's code analysis engine under the hood, so for example you can enjoy symbol navigation, searching for code references etc.

Please also keep in mind that Fisheye and Crucible are **not** end of life. They are mature products with a vast feature set. Thus, even with basic maintenance mode you can enjoy great code reviews in our products.


author: Marek Parfianowicz
body: Hi everybody!

Please let me share my point of view as of 2024. To give you some context, I've been working on Fisheye\&Crucible for the last 10 years, both as a software engineer and a team leader. I wore the "product manager" hat as well. Also, over a decade ago, in my previous job, I was subversion administrator.

Now, let's get to the point.

My personal recommendation is as follows:

**If you are still using Mercurial or Subversion then you shall migrate your repositories to Git.**

Yes, it's hard, especially if you have huge Subversion mono-repositories, as the most probably they will have to be split. But Git is the industry standard for a long time and this will be best long-term solution for your teams. Just have a look at public surveys, like done by StackOverflow or JetBrains:

* <https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2022/team-tools/> - 91% Git vs 6% SVN
* <https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/01/09/beyond-git-the-other-version-control-systems-developers-use/> - 94% Git vs 6% SVN

By not migrating to Git, you're cutting off yourself from the entire ecosystem built around Git. And I'm not talking about Atlassian tools only, like Bitbucket, but about other tools on the market.

Think about developers IDEs, like Jetbrains ones. Most of them will have superior support for Git and very basic one for other source control management systems. Or about security scanners, like Snyk or Veracode. Or about automated dependency updates, like Renovate. Or CI/CD built around Git, like Bitbucket Pipelines or GitHub Actions.

When it comes to a specific Git-hosting solution, if you're using on-premise tools (as many Fisheye \& Crucible customers do), then I recommend **Bitbucket Data Center.** It scales well and has very high performance and stability.

To help you a bit with a decision, please let me share my subjective, side-by-side comparison of Git and Subversion. I hope this table will help a bit to understand differences and how to find equivalent solutions for things you might be using in subversion:

|--------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| **Area**                       | **Git**                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                | **Subversion**                                                                                                                                                                       |
| Max reasonable repository size | While there's no upper limit, I recommend \~1 GB and \~ 5 GB with LFS. Such repository is small enough to be quickly cloned on developer's workstations, in CI/CD jobs etc (assuming full clones).                                                                                                                     | Also no upper limit, but if you want to have mono-repository, it should not exceed \~ 1 TB. Of course, I'm assuming assuming partial checkouts from such repository, \~ 1GB in size. |
| Checkout/clone optimization    | [sparse checkout](https://github.blog/2020-01-17-bring-your-monorepo-down-to-size-with-sparse-checkout/) [shallow clones](https://github.blog/2020-12-21-get-up-to-speed-with-partial-clone-and-shallow-clone/) [partial clones](https://github.blog/2020-12-21-get-up-to-speed-with-partial-clone-and-shallow-clone/) | Checking out sub-tree.                                                                                                                                                               |
| Mono-repositories              | A bit challenging, but doable.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         | Relatively easy as full checkout is never done.                                                                                                                                      |
| Referencing other repositories | [git submodules](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  | svn externals                                                                                                                                                                        |
| Distributed development        | Perfect                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                | Not really                                                                                                                                                                           |
| Scaling server                 | Very good, e.g. Bitbucket Data Center cluster, Bitbucket smart mirroring, Bitbucket Mesh, Bitbucket LFS, Bitbucket CDN, Bitbucket DC search server                                                                                                                                                                     | Not really, everything on one Apache server, one hard disk. The svnsync and read-only clones might help.                                                                             |
| Tooling support                | Great! E.g. Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, Snyk, Renovate, developer IDEs etc.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             | Slowly deteriorating                                                                                                                                                                 |
| Read access permissions        | Typically per repository for cloning/reading                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           | Per file (Apache access rules).                                                                                                                                                      |
| Write access permissions       | Controlling branches and pull requests (e.g. Bitbucket). Custom hooks (e.g. Bitbucket).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                | Per file (Apache access rules). Also via commit-hooks.                                                                                                                               |
| Working with binary files      | git lfs file locking                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   | svn file locking                                                                                                                                                                     |

?

I hope this helps. :)


author: Arnold Huibregtse
body: Hi,  
i noticed that now there is an actual End of Life on Crucible, according to the website dec 2024. What is your advice on replacing it with another tool?

comments: author: Marek Parfianowicz
body: Hi Arnold.

The <https://confluence.atlassian.com/support/atlassian-support-end-of-life-policy-201851003.html> page states that the 4.8.x release line will be supported till Dec 2024.

However, we plan to release a new 4.9.0 version mid-2024, which will get a standard 2-year support, till mid-2026.

Indeed, Fisheye and Crucible are in the basic maintenance mode, but this does not mean that they are end of life. Fisheye and Crucible were excluded from Atlassian's Server EOL (<https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/farewell-to-server>).

Cheers


author: Arnold Huibregtse
body: Thanks for the response. Just a question, usually it is not advised to use the .0 release. Will there be a .1 release before October 2024? That way i can schedule a safe transition to a stable version.


author: Marek Parfianowicz
body: We pay the same attention for quality for both x.x.0 and x.x.1 versions, so I do not think there's a huge difference. Yes, we're going to have 4.9.x bug-fix releases as well, but I cannot commit to any dates. Historically we published several bug-fix versions per year.


author: Simon H?sli
body: Hi Marek,

What is status now with Fisheye/Crucible?  
is there a new version being released soon or is Fisheye end of life?  
when will a new Version be availble, if at all?

Thanks for an update.

Simon


author: Marek Parfianowicz
body: In case you use Git only for source code management then Bitbucket shall be a very good alternative, especially taking into account integrations with other Atlassian products, like Jira or Bamboo.

comments: author: Martin Dowie
body: It's fine if you are a code house, with no audit requirements and just configuring source code...

Bitbucket is \*poor\* if you need to produce artefacts for auditing, or reviewing items other than plain text source code, e.g. model files, xml files, etc

Wish you would fire up more support for Crucible/Fisheye again...


Tags: server