Software development tools company JetBrains has officially launched Space, a collaborative environment with strong support for software developer teams.
JetBrains, which produces integrated development environments for various languages, began privately beta testing Space last year and opened it to public testing in August 2020.
JetBrains based the system on the team concept. When participants join a team, they receive automatic access to all of its assets, including meetings, blogs, and calendars. It also lets participants see each others' visibility.
Microsoft Teams does all that and has a massive user base, but Space stands out with its developer focus. The product offers IDE integration, including full integration with IntelliJ, the Java-based open-source IDE platform underpinning much of JetBrains' work. It also features developer-centric functions, including version control, code reviews, a package registry, and an issue tracker to assign issues to individual coders.
Toward the end of beta testing, JetBrains added support for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, enabling teams to handle tasks like testing and reporting automatically. Space can use system events, like a code push or creating a new issue, to trigger automated workflows that create tasks for team members and kick off code reviews.
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CI/CD is a key part of the DevOps approach to software development, which uses automation to move from waterfall-based software development methods to a more continuous release cadence.
Developers can access individual repositories, create their own, look at the differences between versions, and add comments to them. Plus, repositories have integrated chat functionality.
Although Space is ideal for developers, it also supports other kinds of teams, the company said. For example, its project management tools can help all types of teams, including design, marketing, sales, HR, and legal.
Clients can now access Space in the cloud or run a self-hosted version in the future. They will be able to extend the platform with extra functionality via an API or using webhooks.
