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GitHub Releases App for Windows Developers

Windows developers can host code and collaborate with colleagues through brand-new application.

The code repository and collaboration Web site GitHub is very popular with open-source developers. Now GitHub hopes to make similar inroads with Windows developers, today releasing a desktop app that works on versions as far back as Windows XP and as current as pre-release versions of Windows 8.

The application, GitHub for Windows, is a free, 100 percent native Windows application, states a blog posting from GitHub's Tim Clem. GitHub is especially targeting enterprise developers, according to a GitHub press release (the first one in its history, the company says):

The majority of enterprise development takes place within a Windows environment, and this opens the door for more Enterprises to consider GitHub.

GitHub has been available to Windows developers over the years through various client apps, but the company says this is the easiest way to integrate with all of GitHub's functionality, including version control, collaborative abilities and code vault. Phil Haack, who left Microsoft last year to join GitHub, described the experience of some Windows developers in trying to use GitHub:

Git has historically been a strange and uninviting land for developers on the Windows platform. I call this land, Torvaldsia, replete with strange incantations required to make things work.

Microsoft collaborated in the creation of the application, and said that more than 150 developers participated in the beta test.

Git was originally created by Linus Torvalds, more famous as the creator of the Linux operating system, in 2005. Git is the name of the version-control system, while GitHub is where the code is stored. GitHub says it's the largest hoster of code in the world, claiming that its community of developers is 1.6 million.

GitHub has both free and for-fee code repositories. Open source projects using public repositories are the free versions, while private repositories start at $7/month and increase to $200/month for large enterprise shops.

GitHub for Windows is available immediately.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.

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