AWS Discontinues Git-Hosting Service CodeCommit

As part of an apparent effort to clean house, Amazon Web Services will pull the plug on its git-based source control service, AWS CodeCommit.

“After giving it a lot of thought, we made the decision to discontinue new access to a small number of services, including AWS CodeCommit,” AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr wrote, sharing a prepared message on the X social media service Tuesday.

Although existing customers can continue to use CodeCommit for the time being, AWS has stopped accepting new customers. And it has not given a date on when the service would be shuttered.

“While we are no longer onboarding new customers to these services, there are no plans to change the features or experience you get today, including keeping them secure and reliable,” Barr wrote in an extended Tweet. “We also support migrations to other AWS or third-party solutions better aligned with your evolving needs.”

The company has posted instructions on how to migrate a codebase from AWS to Microsoft’s GitHub, GitLab and other code repositories.

“After migration, you have the option to continue to use your current AWS CodeCommit repository, but doing so will likely require a regular sync operation between AWS CodeCommit and the new repository provider,” the cloud giant provider advised.

Market Impact of CodeCommit

Launched in 2015, AWS CodeCommit provided a managed revision control service to host git repositories. It was designed to work with Git-based tools as well as with other AWS tools such as the CloudGuru code analysis software.

Nonetheless, the service had trouble gaining a foothold in the competitive code repository market, despite the natural appeal for AWS shops to stick with AWS for additional services.

TNS Analyst Lawrence Hecht noted that, in last year’s JetBrains survey, 3.2% of the developers surveyed used CodeCommit. Even among developers whose company primarily uses AWS for the cloud, only 9% used AWS CodeCommit.

Those same AWS-centric accounts were much more likely to say their company was using BitBucket (39%), GitLab (45%) and GitHub (63%)

“That is not a large user base, but it will be interesting to see where those people will migrate to,” noted Hecht in a Slack message.

One place where AWS CodeCommit has a strong userbase was Japan. In the JetBrains survey, 11% of developers said their company uses it, a larger user base than BitBucket in that market.

Despite the marginal use of CodeCommit, many observers still had feelings about the matter.

“Given AWS is a competitor to Azure, it’s so odd to see AWS making a business case for their customers to move” to Microsoft, wrote Gergely Orosz, author of the Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, in an X thread.

“To me, this is a clear sign to not adopt any dev-related tooling from AWS. It’s not the business they want to be in,” replied Acorn Labs chief architect and co-founder Darren Shepherd.

For GitLab, AWS shuttering CodeCommit is a sign that the market for code hosting has matured.

“The market has moved from point solutions to platforms that address the entire software development lifecycle,” wrote Emilio Salvador, GitLab vice president for strategy and developer relations, in a statement. “Buyers are now looking to platforms that provide one workflow that unifies developer, security, and operations teams with integrated native security.”

GitLab has set up two options for migrations from CodeCommit, using either self-managed GitLab or through the GitLab.com hosted service.

“Self-managed customers can install, administer, and maintain their GitLab instance on bare metal, VMs, or containers. GitLab.com requires no installation,” Salvador explained.

Other companies in the space are focusing on how their products can help in the transition.

“Migration to a new source code management tool is always challenging, The right considerations and migration strategies can significantly help with the process,” wrote Patrick Wolf, principal product manager at Harness, a DevOps software provider, in an e-mail to TNS. “Some important considerations for selecting a new Source Code Manager are integration with a DevOps platform, security and governance features, and developer productivity features.”

Other AWS services being discontinued are S3 Select, CloudSearch, Cloud9, SimpleDB, Forecast, and Data Pipeline. Earlier this month, the company also gave the axe to its Quantum Ledger Database.

Editor’s Note (8/2/2024): This post has been updated with additional quotes from GitLab and Harness.io.  

TNS Analyst Lawrence Hecht contributed this post.