Taking Bitbucket Forward: An Update on the Future of Connect and the Shift to Forge

The information in this post has been updated to align with the latest changes detailed(here). Review the updated post for a more comprehensive plan and clear next steps.

As part of Atlassian’s ongoing commitment to evolving and enhancing our ecosystem of customer and partner developed product extensions, we are announcing Bitbucket’s official migration to Forge as our primary tool for product extensibility, and the beginning of an “end-of-support” process for our legacy Connect extensibility framework. This change aligns with Atlassian’s wider strategy to advance our ecosystem and provide you with more powerful extensibility tools via Forge. Learn more about the Atlassian-wide changes here.

Bitbucket Cloud Forge apps in the Atlassian Marketplace

We’re excited to announce that (unpaid) Forge apps for Bitbucket Cloud can now be listed in the Atlassian Marketplace. Follow our Marketplace Guidelines to publish your Forge app on the marketplace using the “installation link” from the developer console to create an informational listing for your app.

We are continuing to work towards enabling “Paid-Via-Atlassian” apps for Bitbucket cloud and will share further updates as they come available.

Transitioning to Forge: What’s in it for you?

As we migrate to Forge as our primary platform for extensions, it’s essential to understand how this transition will benefit you as partners and customers. Below is a comparison of the prior state versus the future state with Forge, along with the key benefits.

  • Prior state with Connect apps
    • Apps were hosted by partners external to the Atlassian platform.
    • Partners had to manage highly-technical authentication mechanisms.
    • Apps had to work via complex integrations and often required high-touch maintenance.
    • Security and compliance were managed separately, leading to potential vulnerabilities.
  • Future state with Forge apps
    • Apps will run entirely within the Atlassian platform, enhancing security, privacy, and compliance.
    • Authentication between apps and Atlassian products is “zero-touch”.
    • Apps integrate seamlessly, as if native functionality.
    • Hosting and ops of the Forge platform is provided by Atlassian.
    • Forge provides a streamlined development experience with built-in developer tools and supporting services like Databases, caching, and hosting.

Key benefits of transitioning to Forge

  • Enhanced security and compliance: Forge allows apps to operate entirely within the Atlassian ecosystem, significantly improving security and compliance measures. This means customer data is better protected, and customers can trust that all applications meet industry standards.
  • Off-the-shelf development tools: Partners will have access to a comprehensive set of tools, including back-end and front-end hosting, databases, and zero-touch product authentication. This reduces the time and effort required to build and maintain applications, allowing you to focus on delivering value to your customers.
  • New capabilities for DevOps automation: With Forge, you can leverage new features integrated into Bitbucket Cloud, transforming it into a robust DevOps Automation Platform. Examples of these capabilities include:
    • Custom Merge Checks: Enhance customers code review process with tailored checks that fit their workflow.Learn more here.
    • Dynamic Pipelines: Streamline customers CI/CD processes with flexible pipelines that adapt to their project needs. Discover more here.

Migration timeline

Note: While Atlassian products are all transitioning to Forge, Bitbucket will follow an independent timeline to ensure a smooth migration for our partners & users:

Starting 3 months from today (May 2025):

  • No new Bitbucket Cloud Connect apps on marketplace: All new Bitbucket Cloud apps published on Atlassian’s Marketplace must be created on Forge.

Starting 6 months from today (August 2025):

  • No updates for existing Bitbucket Connect apps on the marketplace: Only apps using Forge will be eligible for updates. Support for updating Marketplace apps via Connect will be discontinued.

Clarification on what constitutes an “update”:

  • Updates that require a change to the scopes defined in an app descriptor.
  • Updates that require a change to the modules defined in an app descriptor.
  • Partners will not be prevented from making updates within already defined scopes/modules of their app descriptors (e.g., content changes to existing UI modules, bug fixes, etc.).
  • Exceptions will be made for updates assisting the migration of apps to Forge or the migration of existing users to a Forge-based equivalent.
  • Exceptions may be made for high-impact security-related updates.

Future Deprecation Date

  • Any notice period regarding the final end-of-support for existing apps will begin no earlier than August 2025 and will run for a minimum of 6 months.
  • Final dates and notice periods will be heavily based on feedback and input from the community.
  • At this stage, we are not announcing a full end-of-support date for existing Connect apps in Bitbucket Cloud. However, partners should be aware that such an announcement will be coming over the next few months.
  • After the official end-of-support announcement, there will be a minimum six-month notice period (from the date of the announcement) for you to migrate existing Connect apps to Forge.

Get started with Forge

To ensure a seamless transition, we encourage you to start exploring Forge today:

Next steps

We’re committed to supporting you every step of the way. Please get involved to provide feedback, ask questions, and let us know how we can assist you. Your input is invaluable and will help us prioritize features to fill any gaps before the final end-of-support for Connect.

Use the comment space on this thread to provide feedback or your questions. Over the next few months, we will be engaging with the developer community to collect feedback to shape the official end-of-support timeline and understand what is required to make this transition smooth.

1 Like

3 month? Is this the new default deprecation period?

2 Likes

The 3-month period is not the new default for deprecation. It only applies to the fact that no new Bitbucket Cloud Connect apps will be allowed on the marketplace. Additionally, there will be no updates for existing Bitbucket Connect apps on the marketplace . For the deprecation of existing apps, we will provide at least 6 months notice (from the announcement date) to allow time for migration to Forge. Please note, this is not the official deprecation announcement. The full end-of-support timeline for existing Connect apps in Bitbucket Cloud will be shared when the official announcement is made

Thanks for sharing. There are a few points that are quite unexpected:

What does ‘no updates for connect apps’ mean? If I’m not mistaken, Atlassian can only control the connect descriptor? Connect app updates are possible since the app is hosted by the vendor.

Has Atlassian looked into how many PvV Bitbucket apps there are on MP?
Brute-forcing vendors onto forge without providing a timeline for Forge + PvA isn’t fair play, IMO. Can you urgently provide a timeline for BBC PvA Forge apps, only then it is feasible to migrate BBC connect apps to forge.

Last but not least: Does BBC support Adopting Forge from Connect incrementally?

Thanks for sharing your insights.

14 Likes

Hi folks, just a quick update on the post above regarding the future of Bitbucket Connect.

We’d like to acknowledge the concerns that have been raised by partners regarding the timeframe, a migration path from Bitbucket Connect to Forge, and module parity between the two platforms.

We’re discussing this internally and will share a clarifying update as soon as possible.

7 Likes

My comment applies to Jira, but I prefer to share it as input when discussing the entire timeframe:
The Connect Spring Boot backend is written in Java, while Forge is written in TypeScript / JavaScript. A full migration requires a full re-write of the entire backend. It is a matter of years, not months. And also very costly for partners currently on Java.

6 Likes

So, does this mean that there is 3 months to move your Connect app to Connect-on-Forge?

If so, there can possibly be many subsequent updates to the Connect part of the app.

Timescales for how long Connect on Forge is supported would be most useful. Also perhaps the spring boot people would be able to migrate to the upcoming Forge Containers without the need to rewrite completely in JS/TS.

2 Likes

Thank you @tpettersen - I see you feel the vendor pain.

May I suggest that Atlassian applies the same aggressive goals towards herself as she does with the ecosystem?

  • At least feature parity of Forge/Connect
  • PvA for ALL products

As @scott.dudley put it simply and brilliantly: “more carrot, less stick”.

If Atlassian is serious about ‘Runs on Atlassian’, PvA for Bitbucket Cloud apps is a MUST, and not 4 years(*) of “maybe one day”.

(*) That’s when we started app migrations from Bitbucket DC

5 Likes

Hi everyone, PM for Bitbucket Cloud extensibility here - just want to post a quick note to let everyone know that we’re reading/hearing all the feedback here.

Fundamentally we haven’t communicated a few things well enough in this original post and we’ve also made a few decisions that, based on feedback, we need to change.

I’m hoping to get an update out ASAP (tomorrow at the latest) to clarify the parts we communicated poorly, and amend the parts we straight up missed the mark re: timelines etc.

  1. Thank you all for being engaged on here.
  2. We did miss the mark with this announcement, and we are going to make sure we do better moving forward with this.
  3. Please stay tuned for a more detailed update soon - we’ll make amendments to this post with the updated details AND post another thread outlining exactly what the changes are.
14 Likes

Afaik after talking with Atlassians, there is NO Connect on Forge for Bitbucket Cloud, due to technical differences how Connect for Bitbucket works!

2 Likes

We have a Paid-via-Vendor app on Bitbucket Cloud, which is currently registered as a free Connect app. It has mixed purpose, as it is free to use for public repos and customers only need to pay if they are using it on private repos.

If we migrate to Forge, will this still be allowed?

Also, if there is no Connect-on-Forge, how are we supposed to allow customers to migrate their existing app and do the data migration?

1 Like

@EdmundMunday thanks for taking ownership.

The fact that Connect on Forge is not available should allow for much longer migration times of at least 12m+, after feature parity.

BBC has a unique api proxy module which our app uses to expose a REST API. Please make sure Atlassian does not overlook this feature and provide it for the BBC forge apps as well.

Ahh, and one last thing: PvA for BBC Forge apps is a massive carrot. You won’t need a stick at all :wink:

@HamreetKaur, @EdmundMunday After waiting just 6 years for PvA on Bitbucket Cloud I’m happy to see some action again. However, I’m not so happy to realize that the app I have been giving away for free for 4 years now can’t be ported to Forge since the primary extension point I need (fileViewer) is not available on Forge :thinking:

Are there any plans to bring this to Forge and where would I be able to see information on the backlog?

1 Like

Hi everyone - I’ve just posted a follow up to this thread with some immediate changes as well as a lot more detailed information & next-steps.

Please do take a look at that post when you have the time. We’ll also be updating the original post in this thread with the updated information so that there isn’t inconsistent info floating around.

There area few questions in the comments here that came in after that other post was drafted so might not be specifically addressed. I’d like to try and avoid splitting this conversation over two parallel comment threads, so I will add some comments under the new post, tagging and citing the relevant individuals so that we can continue this conversation in the context of that updated information.

2 Likes