Microsoft went on a roll last week, unveiling a handful of new products and features to both its CodePlex open source repository, as reported by IDG News Service, and a new build service that runs “on Microsoft servers as part of its cloud-based Visual Studio Team Foundation Service,” according to a posting at Redmond Developer.

Regarding the CodePlex repository, Joab Jackson of IDG News Service wrote that user demand drove Microsoft’s decision to allow “projects using its CodePlex open source code repository to use the increasingly popular Git version control system built by Linux creator Linus Torvalds.” Torvalds has also been making news in the tech world this month for his new release of the Linux Kernal that syncs up the Linux and Android Open Source operating systems.

From IDG News Service:

Prior to Git support, CodePlex users already had a number of version-control systems to choose from. Some users prefer a centralized approach, while others find a distributed approach more useful, Groves said. CodePlex offers Mercurial, a distributed source control system (DVCS) that allows different parts of a code base to reside in different locations. CodePlex also offers Microsoft's own TFS (Team Foundation Server) for storing code in a central location. TFS provides connectivity for the clients of Subversion, another open source version control system.

Microsoft’s Mark Groves wrote over at the CodePlex Weblog that the CodePlex founders never thought they “would be running a source control system originally invented by Linus Torvalds to use for the Linux kernel.

From the CodePlex Weblog:

Though I would also say, nobody would have thought the open source ecosystem would be as important to Microsoft as it has become now.

Regarding Microsoft’s new cloud foray, the Redmond Developer says the new Team Foundation Service, announced by Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry at Visual Studio Live!, is now available as a preview for testers to use.

From Redmond Developer:
The build image supports Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and the Visual Studio 11 Beta. Windows 8 Metro style projects are not supported, but that will change when Windows Azure gains support for Windows 8, according to Harry. "This is just a starting place – a minimalistic one, and we’ve very interested in your feedback on what you’d like to have us install on the image by default," he noted.

Microsoft maintains that the cost of Visual Studio Team Foundation Service will be competitive, but has not released further information on pricing. Harry indicated in a recent blog on the future of CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project site, which is hosted on TFS, that the two hosted services will likely be aligned at some point. CodePlex supports TFS, Mercurial, and last week Microsoft announced that it now hosts Git projects. Harry envisions "a unified service across TFSpreview/CodePlex that scales from free to paid." His team is also working on fidelity between the TFS cloud service and on-premises Team Foundation Server so that users will have the option to migrate their data.