15 ms·

Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

386 points by jobvandervoort 11y ago

jobvandervoort 11y ago
As always, if anyone has any questions, we're here.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Well done guys. I've been thinking about completely open models for a while now; we have a similar model at work (on FOSS as well). I'm a hardcore Github fan but I'm really impressed with what you've all been doing. The more I see your work, the more I want to switch.
  - jobvandervoort 11y ago
    That's great to hear. You can give it a try / use it for free at GitLab.com (public and private). We would love to hear what hardcore GitHub fans like you miss in GitLab. We want to be better.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      I'm not sure you can fix it unfortunately but the number 1 thing I would miss is the community. I work with a lot of open source projects and the consistency and speed at which I can file bugs, fork repositories and pretty much do anything is really important, and the access to all the github users is a major part of that. -- OK, this post was going to be some minor thoughts but turned into actual UX/dev feedback. Take from that what you will and keep in mind I haven't used Gitlab much at all. What makes Github great: - Ease of sharing a project. They got "social coding" 100% right. - Filing an issue can take under 5 seconds. - The UI is just great, slick, super responsive, everything updates without refreshing. - Syntax highlighting is amazing. Syntax HL in diffs! - Github profiles are great. For a lot of devs, github is a CV, keep that in mind. - gh-pages/jekyll integration kicks ass. - Referencing and auto-closing issues - webhooks, IRC bots -- Here are some killer features not present on Github that would make me very seriously consider switching some large projects: - Mailing list support. Think Discourse/Groupserver/Google Groups -> A UI that doesn't suck, easy to enable for any project or organization, one click to subscribe/unsubscribe with your account - Issue tracker's lack of features is both good and bad. Good for the speed at which issues are filed, but sometimes you really do need some extra features. (Marking as dupe; Making as "fixed" when an autocommit missed it; etc). Shouldn't go the bugzilla route and create meta-work, though. - Proper support for mirroring repositories (two-way mirrors?) - Improved IRC integration; eg. bots that watch over bug links / "Take a look at #1234" and spit out URLs and bug titles. - Sign in with persona. :) -- Where github simply falls short, and misc annoyances I have with it: - Organizations/permissions. They said they're working on that. - Gists could be improved and integrated with issues (cf. attachments). BTW I absolutely love gist, does GL have something like that? - SSL support for gh-pages on custom domains is lacking. - "Clean commit log" workflows aren't well supported. Rebasing messes with the commit ordering in PRs. - Issue references in commit messages are great but when force-pushed several times, they spam the issues. No way to delete those messages. - Comments on PRs disappearing. I haven't thought about proper ways to improve the PR review workflow on GH, but I know it can be improved. - The contributions graph algorithm doesn't deal well with "mass push" outliers (see what I mean: https://github.com/jleclanche/ https://github.com/jleclanche/) - The "PRs are issues" legacy still shows itself, they moved away from it though. - I constantly have to clean projects I forked for a single issue. - Wikis are cool but kinda lackluster. No way to inter-link pages. - It's closed source! -- UX thoughts on gitlab.com, the site (about.gitlab.com): - No way to see an actual repository, what Gitlab looks like. Github has a similar issue but at least has an "explore" link. I feel like the "features" screenshots should be on the homepage. There's plenty room if you squish/remove the corp/press logos and twitter spam. - Video at the bottom is completely out of place. Looking at it, it has 55k views, that's really nothing. This contradicts my previous note but I didn't even notice it at first since it was so low. - The page is fairly slow to load (~2 seconds). It's also huge. I really think there's just too much on it. Do you really need testimonies there? - Top of the page is overall excellent. https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/ https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/ - Love the link to that page being present, since it's the first question I'm asking myself. Dropping points on lack of graphics (examples/screenshots) -> What caught my eye on that page: Attachments in issues. WIP protection is neat but gimmicky. Builtin CI kicks ass! I don't know what Innersourcing means. Maybe "unlimited p/p repositories" should be first? This is a long list, consider reordering some things. I'm short on sleep, so feel free to follow up with me by email (it's listed on my profile) if you'd like.
      - jobvandervoort 11y ago
        This is amazing, thank you! I'll start working through it and see what we can do. I'll follow up by email!
        scrollaway 11y ago
        My pleasure, I hope it helps. I edited a couple of bits in.
      - hk__2 11y ago
        > SSL support for gh-pages on custom domains is lacking How could they do that? You’re responsible for your own domain, you have to buy an SSL certificate by yourself.
        teddyh 11y ago
        Just wait until November. (https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/)
        scrollaway 11y ago
        It's not supported.
- AshFurrow 11y ago
  It's so encouraging to see companies go open like this – thanks!
- Fogest 11y ago
  Are there any plans with the CI to allow me to download the artifacts from a finished CI task? It would be nice at times to download old builds at certain commits that the CI server had built in the past.
- lgp171188 11y ago
  Would appreciate better support for the Integration-Manager workflow described in http://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-Workflows#Integration-Manager-Workflow http://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-Wo.... It is possible to use this workflow with Bitbucket and GitHub but not with GitLab (possibly due to the differences in roles and permissions). I had already raised a feature request for this some time back. Would appreciate your thoughts on this.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Can you maybe link to the feature request?
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Announcement itself is fine. The way you contrast "open" with "proprietary" is a bit jarring. It should be free versus proprietary, but if you find that undesirable, then just go with open/closed. EDIT: Quite predictably, I got downvoted for asking people to use proper terminology and for promoting free software.
- nanny 11y ago
  People just hate when you correct their semantics, don't take it personally. Many people also don't know the difference between free and open. Here's a popular article by RMS which explains the difference: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
  - animefan 11y ago
    That ship has sailed. Today, "open source" means "free" in Stallman's terminology. Asking people to use nonstandard terminology in order to promote a particular viewpoint is not reasonable.
athoik 11y ago
What about security issues? Those will be in public too? Or you should contact by email when you have a security issue.
- dewey 11y ago
  "Sensitive issues, such as security issues with GitLab, will still be handled internally. We’ll create tracking issues for these on the public issue trackers that don’t contain exploitable information."
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  For sensitive issues you can email us at support at gitlab dot com.
_pmf_ 11y ago
It's hard to compete against GitHub. I hope they will get some traction so we have an alternative to GitHub once it gets bought by MS (and becomes the next SourceForge).
- nadams 11y ago
  Why would Microsoft buy github? They have their own.
  - RazzyP 11y ago
    Can't beat em', eat em'.
  - kasbah 11y ago
    Why did Google buy YouTube when they have Google Video?
    - hk__2 11y ago
      YouTube was <1 year old when it was bought; GitHub is 7 years old.
      - whisdol 11y ago
        Nitpick: YouTube was 1.5 years old (founded in February 2005, deal finalized in November 2006)[0]. I just looked that up because I really thought YouTube had been around longer before Google acquired it. That's interesting to learn, so thanks for pointing that out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
  - achr2 11y ago
    For the same reason they're using GitHub to host all of their new open source initiatives.
- navait 11y ago
  Is bitbucket considered not a competitor? I've found it quite suitable for anything github does, though I'm at max a 5 person team.
aardshark 11y ago
So if customers want to contribute to fixes for issues they raise, is there a an easy way for them to do that without revealing who they are?
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  Yes. All our customers have a direct line to our support. We ask them to raise issues there, not on the public issue tracker.
davexunit 11y ago
This article uses a bit of openwashing to make "publicly viewable source code" seem "open". It's not. It's proprietary.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  It is, we don't intent to be vague about this. I hadn't heard of the term openwashing, but I understand the criticism. See also our license for our proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE And the license for our open source GitLab Community Edition (MIT Expat): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE
  - TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
    > It is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.
  - merb 11y ago
    Isn't the copy a little bit vague? I mean if I want to help I need to copy it?
    - sytse 11y ago
      If you want to contribute to EE I think you need a subscription. Otherwise you shouldn't run it.
  - nightcracker 11y ago
    Well, you are. Let me read to you the definition of Open Source: > Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone.
    - nanny 11y ago
      That's not the definition of "open source", that's the definition of "free software". As you can see by this very article, "open" and "free" are not the same. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
philtar 11y ago
I apologize in advance for my short sighted question as I don't really know much about gitlab but my question is: does this mean anything for large file support in the community edition? I find it surprising there are no free solutions for large binary files other than perforce. Compared to most tools indie game devs use, perforce is a dinosaur.
- Mathiasdm 11y ago
  Mercurial has had support for large binary files using the 'largefiles' extension for several years now.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  We will not bring Git Annex [0] to the community edition. However, we do accept merge requests for Git LFS support [1]. This means that if this is contributed to GitLab, it will be available in the Community Edition. [0]: http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/git_annex.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/git_annex.html [1]: http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/7502608-git-large-file-storage-lfs-support http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...
- jordigh 11y ago
  I find it surprising there are no free solutions for large binary files other than perforce. There's in fact lots of tooling in Mercurial to handle this precise problem, as well as gigantic repos. Mercurial's extensibility with these scaling problems, in fact, is why Facebook has chosen it. If you're not married to git, try checking out Facebook's Mercurial extensions.
  - philtar 11y ago
    What web interface supports LargeFiles?
zxcvcxz 11y ago
Decided to switch to gitlab when I realized github refused to release their tools on Linux even though according to stackoverflow statistics Linux users make up over 20% of programmers, matching the number of OS X programmers. It's unfortunate that they make a living off open source software created by a lead Linux developer but they act like Linux doesn't even exist. Not a big deal though, the userbase on github is worse than facebook or 9gag. Gitlab isn't much better than github when it comes to openess, but it seems to be the best alternative so far.
- yjgyhj 11y ago
  > Not a big deal though, the userbase on github is worse than facebook or 9gag. Found the grumpy linux user ;)
- klapinat0r 11y ago
  Which tools are you talking about?
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Git.
    - klapinat0r 11y ago
      Git is widely available, even on github: https://github.com/git/git https://github.com/git/git apt-get install git pacman -Sy git emerge --ask dev-vcs/git yum install git
  - aidenn0 11y ago
    I assume they're talking about https://mac.github.com/ https://mac.github.com/
    - klapinat0r 11y ago
      Ah, thank you.
- 11y ago
nhumrich 11y ago
Just saw that gitlab now offers free hosting, you only pay for support (only if you want it). Do enough people really pay for support in order to keep gitlab from going under? Free software is one thing, but free hosting? It just blows my mind how they can offer such a thing.
- nightcracker 11y ago
  Github does exactly the same with Github Pages.
- KingMob 11y ago
  Lots of places do it. Disk space relative to code size is extraordinarily cheap. Just look at the granddaddy, GMail. Google gave away 1 GB per user back in 2004 because they figured the ads would support it.
- nadams 11y ago
  > Free software is one thing, but free hosting? Hosting basically boils down to the fact that ~98% of your users will use a small portion of your resources. This is why hundreds - even thousands - of users are shoved onto a single shared server (all without ever having a problem). Considering disk and bandwidth is cheap - it's really inexpensive to host users. 2% of your users will attempt to use 50% or more of your resources - and those are the ones that you kick to the curb or arrange some sort of payment. I used to do free web hosting and now have switch to just free source code hosting. A perfect example of this is this story [1]. I'm sure a good 90% of people who sign up for the free slack service only use a small blip of usage. [1] http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-...
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  We do not make substantial money with GitLab.com. It gives us the possibility to run GitLab on a very large scale. This helps us finding performance and scaling issues that otherwise would go unseen. In short, it allows us to make GitLab even better.
mrmondo 11y ago
We've been enjoying GitLab for quite some time now, but I have to say with every new release they always seem to break something critical for us, there seems to be far too many regressions and many of them are not communicated evening with their paying customers - for example the latest one that's been causing us grief: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  We're actively working on finding a solution for this. We understand this is not a nice development for many of our users. We do not want to inadvertently break the workflow / remove essential features without informing our customers in advance. And we will always work hard to ensure that if that does happen, we find a good solution for all parties. If you do find that this is the case for you, as a customer of GitLab, please never hesitate to contact us through our support channels.
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  Not to be rude, but isn't their software open source? Can't you try and patch it yourself?
  - oblio 11y ago
    If I've read his post correctly he's a paying customer. Surely that has to count for something :)
    - mrmondo 11y ago
      As well as logging that ticket publicly in case anyone had a contribution to fix the issue gitlab was contacted through the paid subscribers channel and their response was that they would follow it up on that public issue. I don't have an issue with that so let's wait and see A) what the fix is and more importantly B) what lessons were learnt from the regression.
dudul 11y ago
Nice. I really like GitLab. Made the move after GitHub started focusing on social justice instead of technology (plus I was tired of the hypocrisy of them making money from OS while keeping all their sources close), and I don't regret it.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  Great! Anything you miss, coming from GitHub?
  - dudul 11y ago
    Not really for now. The only thing, which doesn't really depend on you I assume :), is I wish GitLab was used more often as an authentication mechanism by other services. I don't know if GitLab is actually an OpenID provider or if it's just because it's not popular enough yet.
    - jobvandervoort 11y ago
      Great! GitLab can be an OAuth provider since version 7.7 [0]. I think it takes a while for this to be adopted by other services. Any advice or help improving this situation is welcome. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/2015/01/22/gitlab-7-7-and-ci-5-4-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/01/22/gitlab-7-7-and-ci-5-4-re...
ojanik 11y ago
Coincidentally, I just installed GitLab to try it out for our small team to replace BitBucket + Jira. And while its more than capable filling Bitbucket shoes the issues subsystem is probably worse than github's and nowhere near flexible as jira. Most notably: Missing more sophisticated workflows. Search for issues using multiple labels. Search for issues across multiple projects. We would also love to be able to do simple time tracking against issues. Is there no reasonably priced product out there that would fit our (rather simple) needs?
- audessuscest 11y ago
  I agree, we're using gitlab too and the only problem is the lack of ticket system feature (due date/alert reminder, multiple people assignment, advanced filters, simple markdown text editor for client, time tracking, edit default label for all project,...) otherwise we hightly recommend it.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Thanks, we're looking some of these but we want to keep it light and easy to use at the same time. Please be aware that some scrum tools also integrate with GitLab https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards
- technomancy 11y ago
  After my experiences with Jira, "nowhere near as flexible as Jira" sounds like high praise.
codegeek 11y ago
Good timing. Recently installed Gitlab Community edition on DigitalOcean (one click install) and so far loving it. Some issues: - Does it have a default task management tool or we need to integrate a 3rd party ? Couldn't find it in the forums yet - The UI is a bit clunky in terms of navigation. For example, being able to move from the homepage level to specific project back and forth is a bit confusing. Would love a re-design of UI. EDIT: Lot of feedback that I can give. So far: - Make it easy to navigate between index page and specific groups/projects. May be on login to index, just show a dashboard with all groups/projects that I am part of. If Admin, then show me additional options like what you have in "Admin Area" menu. Here is one idea. Just show all menu options in the left sidebar and split it like: - Home - Groups - Projects - Project 1 - all menus that shows up for projects - Admin Area - Profile Settings - Users - Mail Settings - User profile management is not that good for admins. For example, just yesterday one of my developers got locked out and I could not reset his access via the UI. I had to go in the config files to update the lockout timestamp. - Also for new users, as admin I want the control to add them as verified user already. Currently I don't think that options is there in UI unless we fiddle with the code. - For email driver, a simple form in UI will be nice to have. For example, if I want to use Mandrill, give me that option in the UI. Bottomline is that even though we are developers, we don't want to change the .rb files for Gitlab and instead focus on an easy UI.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  Happy to hear! > Does it have a default task management tool or we need to integrate a 3rd party ? Couldn't find it in the forums yet You can use Issues, which comes in every project and can be linked all throughout your GitLab instance. They also integrate with merge requests and can be used 'Kanban' style by using milestones. See our own for GitLab's issues: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues You can also integrate many of the popular systems, such as JIRA, Asana, Trello. > The UI is a bit clunky in terms of navigation. For example, being able to move from the homepage level to specific project back and forth is a bit confusing. Would love a re-design of UI. We're working very hard on this. The coming release will add more context to the menu and we're looking to improve it further both in terms of design, as well as UX. It'd be great if you could share us your thoughts on how we can improve this.
ausjke 11y ago
Still using Redmine for self-hosting here, Gitlab is too heavy for small teams. Thought about trying Phabricator but then its various components with strange names stopped me from trying, plus it seems clunky for small team too.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  What makes you feel GitLab is too heavy for small teams? In terms of load, it can run on a Raspberry Pi.
  - ausjke 11y ago
    CPU 1 core works for under 100 users but the responsiveness might suffer 2 cores is the recommended number of cores and supports up to 100 users 4 cores supports about 1,000 users 8 cores supports up to 10,000 users Memory 512MB is too little memory, GitLab will be very slow and you will need 250MB of swap 768MB is the minimal memory size but we advise against this 1GB supports up to 100 users (with individual repositories under 250MB, otherwise git memory usage necessitates using swap space) 2GB is the recommended memory size and supports up to 1,000 users 4GB supports up to 10,000 users
    - sytse 11y ago
      It runs on a RPi2 https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/21/gitlab-on-raspberry-pi-2/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/21/gitlab-on-raspberry-pi-2...
- mrmondo 11y ago
  We use Redmine for ticket / issue / task tracking as well as rough timesheeting, and we use gitlab and gitlab CI along side it. I quite like how quick Redmine is and how it just gets out of your way. We find gitlab to be pretty quick however upgrades are painful due to regular bugs / regressions. Ideally I'd like to see something like Taiga and Gogs together which I think would absolutely fly.
  - 11y ago
morad0556 11y ago
https://m.facebook.com/mjkhalily?fref=nf https://m.facebook.com/mjkhalily?fref=nf
skyraider 11y ago
GitLab Enterprise user here. GitLab's open-source policy is one of the major reasons we chose it (along with self-hosting and fairly modern, built-in continuous integration), but the GitLab community could use some additional design and documentation effort. Things that almost make me want to switch back to GitHub: - GitLab is really hard to look at. All of our devs are having trouble visually locating comments in diffs. We're always scrolling through the left-side menu looking for the issues tab. It's hard to visually differentiate between items like comments in merge requests. Our eyes just can't find and follow things. Even BitBucket looks better. - GitLab-CI has poor documentation on runners, and a rather buggy test runner registration process that doesn't provide any debugging output and produces false positives quite often. - GitLab-CI has no unconditional cleanup directive, like CircleCI does... but if you're re-using a test runner instead of tearing down the server each time, unconditional cleanup is the one thing you need. And no, the Docker executor doesn't solve this because we don't want to test our Docker containers inside Docker. - CI is based on commit IDs. You can't run particular CI events on merge requests. For example, this means no way to run integration tests on merge requests. - Typography could be improved. When you're looking at the issues page all day, this is quite noticeable. - Slack integration is not great; it dumps links to "GitLab Enterprise Edition" instead of useful commit/changeset stuff like GitHub does. If the community/GitLab can focus on putting on some of the design polish and service integration polish that GitHub has, GitLab would be a total winner for us, long-term.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it! The quick reply to your comments is: we're working on almost all of it. > - GitLab is really hard to look at. All of our devs are having trouble visually locating comments in diffs. We're always scrolling through the left-side menu looking for the issues tab. It's hard to visually differentiate between items like comments in merge requests. Our eyes just can't find and follow things. Even BitBucket looks better. We're working hard on this and focus more and more of our development capacity to this. > - GitLab-CI has poor documentation on runners, and a rather buggy test runner registration process that doesn't provide any debugging output and produces false positives quite often. There are a lot of improvements coming in this field. Especially the integration and setup of runners is going to be easier. We're hoping to make this a zero-step setup thing. Same with documentation. Our new GitLab CI maintainer Kamil has been spending a lot of time on writing documentation. > - GitLab-CI has no unconditional cleanup directive, like CircleCI does... but if you're re-using a test runner instead of tearing down the server each time, unconditional cleanup is the one thing you need. And no, the Docker executor doesn't solve this because we don't want to test our Docker containers inside Docker. This is interesting, I'm passing it onto Kamil. > - CI is based on commit IDs. You can't run particular CI events on merge requests. For example, this means no way to run integration tests on merge requests. This is be interesting to look at. I'm not sure whether we have something like this in the planning, but I'm taking note. > - Typography could be improved. When you're looking at the issues page all day, this is quite noticeable. We're worried about adding page load by including typefaces. We might change our minds on this. What OS are you using? Would Roboto work, for instance? > - Slack integration is not great; it dumps links to "GitLab Enterprise Edition" instead of useful commit/changeset stuff like GitHub does. We welcome contributions to improve it. This is not a focus at the moment, but considering the popularity of Slack, we can definitely have a look at this.
mesozoic 11y ago
Add a search that isn't terrible and you'll solve most every complaint I have and hear from others about Gitlab.
- sytse 11y ago
  What search are you talking about, in the issues or in the code?
r0naa 11y ago
I am moving my stuff to a self-hosted GitLab. If you are interested in knowing why: - I personally find it a little bit irritating that Github wants to promote "open-source/free-software", but haven't open sourced their own tools/product. - I was disappointed by the way Github handled some internal problems - I don't trust Github anymore; I want to be in control of my data.
- krupan 11y ago
  "they/them" refers to someone other than gitlab?
  - r0naa 11y ago
    Thank you for pointing that out! they was referring to Github.
  - spike021 11y ago
    Sounds like they're referring to GitHub.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  I also just canceled my Github subscription and moved all of my private repos to a self-hosted GitLab. I did this because I was very unhappy with the politics that GitHub recently decided it wanted to push. The funny thing though, having my private repos on my own server just FEELS nice. I have total control over my projects. I wasn't worried about anyone "snooping" on them but there's a subtle psychological change when you know your code is on your sever and no one other than you has admin access. I moved for political reasons, but found the intangible benefits of being the "master of my domain" were a great unintended side-effect.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Don't sell this position short as a mere "political reason". Github has decided that rationality and critical thinking take a back seat. This is a vastly damaging attitude that hurts the world. Providing any encouragement to unclear thinking is a vile thing to do. This is far worse than environmentally unfriendly attitudes; it's far more important than even open source.
avinassh 11y ago
How does the licensing works? Can anyone explain me? [0] > This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") can only be used with a valid GitLab subscription for the correct number of users. You are free to modify this Software and publish patches. It is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software. Isn't the third line contradicting with the fourth or have I misunderstood? [0] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE
- superuser2 11y ago
  A patch - literally a file generated by "diff" - only incidentally contains the original code, mostly your new functions and modifications. So you can't distrbute a patched version of the software, only the patch itself.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Exactly, that is how I meant that.
kevinSuttle 11y ago
If only this post was written by GitHub.
btashton 11y ago
I set up gitlab internally a couple years ago and it has been a pleasure. One big thing I fight is we have a lot of micro services that we want to have the same label set for and would like to manage against the same milestones. It would be really nice if label sets and milestones could be created for a group.
- sytse 11y ago
  Feel free to contribute that feature. I would love to create a milestone for all projects in a group in one go. Please be aware that if you name the project milestones the same you can use them to aggregate issues across multiple project in one view.
brugidou 11y ago
As a Gitlab CE user and part of a large company using Gerrit for code reviews I am really surprised that Gitlab does not try to emulate a bit more the various enterprise grade Gerrit features available such as full side-by-side diffs with key shortcuts, review history to easily see what changed since the last time you reviewed the merge request (even with rebased commits), +1/+2 rules, custom plugins available... Etc. I know that Gitlab EE has some features like the merge request rebase, but I don't know how a large company using gerrit could be convinced to switch to reviews in Gitlab
- sytse 11y ago
  We would love to add features like that. We have side-by-side diffs and shortcuts, but maybe not what you want. New commits are shown in the discussion (doesn't work with rebasing). You can have approvers for merge requests https://about.gitlab.com/2015/06/16/feature-highlight-approve-merge-request/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/06/16/feature-highlight-approv... and we support project services http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/README.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/README.html Anyway, I'm sure that there are still things missing and you are very welcome to add them to CE or EE. We had large companies switch from Gerrit but we hope to keep adding features that people currently miss.
chriswarbo 11y ago
Since gitlab closed gitorious.org, I've switched to serving all of my repos as static files generated from git2html, and accepting patches by email. Once burned...
- sytse 11y ago
  Just for your information, we had a 'one-click' import from Gitorious to GitLab.com. It will come online again after the internet archive work is done.
swah 11y ago
Everything should be open. Its almost immoral to sell software nowadays. No wonder so many people are flying to mobile...

386 points by jobvandervoort 11y ago

jobvandervoort 11y ago

As always, if anyone has any questions, we're here.

scrollaway 11y ago
Well done guys. I've been thinking about completely open models for a while now; we have a similar model at work (on FOSS as well). I'm a hardcore Github fan but I'm really impressed with what you've all been doing. The more I see your work, the more I want to switch.
- jobvandervoort 11y ago
  That's great to hear. You can give it a try / use it for free at GitLab.com (public and private). We would love to hear what hardcore GitHub fans like you miss in GitLab. We want to be better.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    I'm not sure you can fix it unfortunately but the number 1 thing I would miss is the community. I work with a lot of open source projects and the consistency and speed at which I can file bugs, fork repositories and pretty much do anything is really important, and the access to all the github users is a major part of that. -- OK, this post was going to be some minor thoughts but turned into actual UX/dev feedback. Take from that what you will and keep in mind I haven't used Gitlab much at all. What makes Github great: - Ease of sharing a project. They got "social coding" 100% right. - Filing an issue can take under 5 seconds. - The UI is just great, slick, super responsive, everything updates without refreshing. - Syntax highlighting is amazing. Syntax HL in diffs! - Github profiles are great. For a lot of devs, github is a CV, keep that in mind. - gh-pages/jekyll integration kicks ass. - Referencing and auto-closing issues - webhooks, IRC bots -- Here are some killer features not present on Github that would make me very seriously consider switching some large projects: - Mailing list support. Think Discourse/Groupserver/Google Groups -> A UI that doesn't suck, easy to enable for any project or organization, one click to subscribe/unsubscribe with your account - Issue tracker's lack of features is both good and bad. Good for the speed at which issues are filed, but sometimes you really do need some extra features. (Marking as dupe; Making as "fixed" when an autocommit missed it; etc). Shouldn't go the bugzilla route and create meta-work, though. - Proper support for mirroring repositories (two-way mirrors?) - Improved IRC integration; eg. bots that watch over bug links / "Take a look at #1234" and spit out URLs and bug titles. - Sign in with persona. :) -- Where github simply falls short, and misc annoyances I have with it: - Organizations/permissions. They said they're working on that. - Gists could be improved and integrated with issues (cf. attachments). BTW I absolutely love gist, does GL have something like that? - SSL support for gh-pages on custom domains is lacking. - "Clean commit log" workflows aren't well supported. Rebasing messes with the commit ordering in PRs. - Issue references in commit messages are great but when force-pushed several times, they spam the issues. No way to delete those messages. - Comments on PRs disappearing. I haven't thought about proper ways to improve the PR review workflow on GH, but I know it can be improved. - The contributions graph algorithm doesn't deal well with "mass push" outliers (see what I mean: https://github.com/jleclanche/ https://github.com/jleclanche/) - The "PRs are issues" legacy still shows itself, they moved away from it though. - I constantly have to clean projects I forked for a single issue. - Wikis are cool but kinda lackluster. No way to inter-link pages. - It's closed source! -- UX thoughts on gitlab.com, the site (about.gitlab.com): - No way to see an actual repository, what Gitlab looks like. Github has a similar issue but at least has an "explore" link. I feel like the "features" screenshots should be on the homepage. There's plenty room if you squish/remove the corp/press logos and twitter spam. - Video at the bottom is completely out of place. Looking at it, it has 55k views, that's really nothing. This contradicts my previous note but I didn't even notice it at first since it was so low. - The page is fairly slow to load (~2 seconds). It's also huge. I really think there's just too much on it. Do you really need testimonies there? - Top of the page is overall excellent. https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/ https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/ - Love the link to that page being present, since it's the first question I'm asking myself. Dropping points on lack of graphics (examples/screenshots) -> What caught my eye on that page: Attachments in issues. WIP protection is neat but gimmicky. Builtin CI kicks ass! I don't know what Innersourcing means. Maybe "unlimited p/p repositories" should be first? This is a long list, consider reordering some things. I'm short on sleep, so feel free to follow up with me by email (it's listed on my profile) if you'd like.
    - jobvandervoort 11y ago
      This is amazing, thank you! I'll start working through it and see what we can do. I'll follow up by email!
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        My pleasure, I hope it helps. I edited a couple of bits in.
    - hk__2 11y ago
      > SSL support for gh-pages on custom domains is lacking How could they do that? You’re responsible for your own domain, you have to buy an SSL certificate by yourself.
      - teddyh 11y ago
        Just wait until November. (https://letsencrypt.org/ https://letsencrypt.org/)
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        It's not supported.
AshFurrow 11y ago
It's so encouraging to see companies go open like this – thanks!
Fogest 11y ago
Are there any plans with the CI to allow me to download the artifacts from a finished CI task? It would be nice at times to download old builds at certain commits that the CI server had built in the past.
lgp171188 11y ago
Would appreciate better support for the Integration-Manager workflow described in http://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-Workflows#Integration-Manager-Workflow http://git-scm.com/book/be/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-Wo.... It is possible to use this workflow with Bitbucket and GitHub but not with GitLab (possibly due to the differences in roles and permissions). I had already raised a feature request for this some time back. Would appreciate your thoughts on this.
- sytse 11y ago
  Can you maybe link to the feature request?

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Announcement itself is fine. The way you contrast "open" with "proprietary" is a bit jarring. It should be free versus proprietary, but if you find that undesirable, then just go with open/closed. EDIT: Quite predictably, I got downvoted for asking people to use proper terminology and for promoting free software.

nanny 11y ago
People just hate when you correct their semantics, don't take it personally. Many people also don't know the difference between free and open. Here's a popular article by RMS which explains the difference: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...
- animefan 11y ago
  That ship has sailed. Today, "open source" means "free" in Stallman's terminology. Asking people to use nonstandard terminology in order to promote a particular viewpoint is not reasonable.

athoik 11y ago

What about security issues? Those will be in public too? Or you should contact by email when you have a security issue.

dewey 11y ago
"Sensitive issues, such as security issues with GitLab, will still be handled internally. We’ll create tracking issues for these on the public issue trackers that don’t contain exploitable information."
jobvandervoort 11y ago
For sensitive issues you can email us at support at gitlab dot com.

_pmf_ 11y ago

It's hard to compete against GitHub. I hope they will get some traction so we have an alternative to GitHub once it gets bought by MS (and becomes the next SourceForge).

nadams 11y ago
Why would Microsoft buy github? They have their own.
- RazzyP 11y ago
  Can't beat em', eat em'.
- kasbah 11y ago
  Why did Google buy YouTube when they have Google Video?
  - hk__2 11y ago
    YouTube was <1 year old when it was bought; GitHub is 7 years old.
    - whisdol 11y ago
      Nitpick: YouTube was 1.5 years old (founded in February 2005, deal finalized in November 2006)[0]. I just looked that up because I really thought YouTube had been around longer before Google acquired it. That's interesting to learn, so thanks for pointing that out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
- achr2 11y ago
  For the same reason they're using GitHub to host all of their new open source initiatives.
navait 11y ago
Is bitbucket considered not a competitor? I've found it quite suitable for anything github does, though I'm at max a 5 person team.

aardshark 11y ago

So if customers want to contribute to fixes for issues they raise, is there a an easy way for them to do that without revealing who they are?

jobvandervoort 11y ago
Yes. All our customers have a direct line to our support. We ask them to raise issues there, not on the public issue tracker.

davexunit 11y ago

This article uses a bit of openwashing to make "publicly viewable source code" seem "open". It's not. It's proprietary.

jobvandervoort 11y ago
It is, we don't intent to be vague about this. I hadn't heard of the term openwashing, but I understand the criticism. See also our license for our proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE And the license for our open source GitLab Community Edition (MIT Expat): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  > It is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.
- merb 11y ago
  Isn't the copy a little bit vague? I mean if I want to help I need to copy it?
  - sytse 11y ago
    If you want to contribute to EE I think you need a subscription. Otherwise you shouldn't run it.
- nightcracker 11y ago
  Well, you are. Let me read to you the definition of Open Source: > Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone.
  - nanny 11y ago
    That's not the definition of "open source", that's the definition of "free software". As you can see by this very article, "open" and "free" are not the same. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...

philtar 11y ago

I apologize in advance for my short sighted question as I don't really know much about gitlab but my question is: does this mean anything for large file support in the community edition? I find it surprising there are no free solutions for large binary files other than perforce. Compared to most tools indie game devs use, perforce is a dinosaur.

Mathiasdm 11y ago
Mercurial has had support for large binary files using the 'largefiles' extension for several years now.
jobvandervoort 11y ago
We will not bring Git Annex [0] to the community edition. However, we do accept merge requests for Git LFS support [1]. This means that if this is contributed to GitLab, it will be available in the Community Edition. [0]: http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/git_annex.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/git_annex.html [1]: http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/7502608-git-large-file-storage-lfs-support http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions...
jordigh 11y ago
I find it surprising there are no free solutions for large binary files other than perforce. There's in fact lots of tooling in Mercurial to handle this precise problem, as well as gigantic repos. Mercurial's extensibility with these scaling problems, in fact, is why Facebook has chosen it. If you're not married to git, try checking out Facebook's Mercurial extensions.
- philtar 11y ago
  What web interface supports LargeFiles?

zxcvcxz 11y ago

Decided to switch to gitlab when I realized github refused to release their tools on Linux even though according to stackoverflow statistics Linux users make up over 20% of programmers, matching the number of OS X programmers. It's unfortunate that they make a living off open source software created by a lead Linux developer but they act like Linux doesn't even exist. Not a big deal though, the userbase on github is worse than facebook or 9gag. Gitlab isn't much better than github when it comes to openess, but it seems to be the best alternative so far.

yjgyhj 11y ago
> Not a big deal though, the userbase on github is worse than facebook or 9gag. Found the grumpy linux user ;)
klapinat0r 11y ago
Which tools are you talking about?
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Git.
  - klapinat0r 11y ago
    Git is widely available, even on github: https://github.com/git/git https://github.com/git/git apt-get install git pacman -Sy git emerge --ask dev-vcs/git yum install git
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I assume they're talking about https://mac.github.com/ https://mac.github.com/
  - klapinat0r 11y ago
    Ah, thank you.
11y ago

nhumrich 11y ago

Just saw that gitlab now offers free hosting, you only pay for support (only if you want it). Do enough people really pay for support in order to keep gitlab from going under? Free software is one thing, but free hosting? It just blows my mind how they can offer such a thing.

nightcracker 11y ago
Github does exactly the same with Github Pages.
KingMob 11y ago
Lots of places do it. Disk space relative to code size is extraordinarily cheap. Just look at the granddaddy, GMail. Google gave away 1 GB per user back in 2004 because they figured the ads would support it.
nadams 11y ago
> Free software is one thing, but free hosting? Hosting basically boils down to the fact that ~98% of your users will use a small portion of your resources. This is why hundreds - even thousands - of users are shoved onto a single shared server (all without ever having a problem). Considering disk and bandwidth is cheap - it's really inexpensive to host users. 2% of your users will attempt to use 50% or more of your resources - and those are the ones that you kick to the curb or arrange some sort of payment. I used to do free web hosting and now have switch to just free source code hosting. A perfect example of this is this story [1]. I'm sure a good 90% of people who sign up for the free slack service only use a small blip of usage. [1] http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-...
jobvandervoort 11y ago
We do not make substantial money with GitLab.com. It gives us the possibility to run GitLab on a very large scale. This helps us finding performance and scaling issues that otherwise would go unseen. In short, it allows us to make GitLab even better.

mrmondo 11y ago

We've been enjoying GitLab for quite some time now, but I have to say with every new release they always seem to break something critical for us, there seems to be far too many regressions and many of them are not communicated evening with their paying customers - for example the latest one that's been causing us grief: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974

jobvandervoort 11y ago
We're actively working on finding a solution for this. We understand this is not a nice development for many of our users. We do not want to inadvertently break the workflow / remove essential features without informing our customers in advance. And we will always work hard to ensure that if that does happen, we find a good solution for all parties. If you do find that this is the case for you, as a customer of GitLab, please never hesitate to contact us through our support channels.
odonnellryan 11y ago
Not to be rude, but isn't their software open source? Can't you try and patch it yourself?
- oblio 11y ago
  If I've read his post correctly he's a paying customer. Surely that has to count for something :)
  - mrmondo 11y ago
    As well as logging that ticket publicly in case anyone had a contribution to fix the issue gitlab was contacted through the paid subscribers channel and their response was that they would follow it up on that public issue. I don't have an issue with that so let's wait and see A) what the fix is and more importantly B) what lessons were learnt from the regression.

dudul 11y ago

Nice. I really like GitLab. Made the move after GitHub started focusing on social justice instead of technology (plus I was tired of the hypocrisy of them making money from OS while keeping all their sources close), and I don't regret it.

jobvandervoort 11y ago
Great! Anything you miss, coming from GitHub?
- dudul 11y ago
  Not really for now. The only thing, which doesn't really depend on you I assume :), is I wish GitLab was used more often as an authentication mechanism by other services. I don't know if GitLab is actually an OpenID provider or if it's just because it's not popular enough yet.
  - jobvandervoort 11y ago
    Great! GitLab can be an OAuth provider since version 7.7 [0]. I think it takes a while for this to be adopted by other services. Any advice or help improving this situation is welcome. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/2015/01/22/gitlab-7-7-and-ci-5-4-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/01/22/gitlab-7-7-and-ci-5-4-re...

ojanik 11y ago

Coincidentally, I just installed GitLab to try it out for our small team to replace BitBucket + Jira. And while its more than capable filling Bitbucket shoes the issues subsystem is probably worse than github's and nowhere near flexible as jira. Most notably: Missing more sophisticated workflows. Search for issues using multiple labels. Search for issues across multiple projects. We would also love to be able to do simple time tracking against issues. Is there no reasonably priced product out there that would fit our (rather simple) needs?

audessuscest 11y ago
I agree, we're using gitlab too and the only problem is the lack of ticket system feature (due date/alert reminder, multiple people assignment, advanced filters, simple markdown text editor for client, time tracking, edit default label for all project,...) otherwise we hightly recommend it.
- sytse 11y ago
  Thanks, we're looking some of these but we want to keep it light and easy to use at the same time. Please be aware that some scrum tools also integrate with GitLab https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards
technomancy 11y ago
After my experiences with Jira, "nowhere near as flexible as Jira" sounds like high praise.

codegeek 11y ago

Good timing. Recently installed Gitlab Community edition on DigitalOcean (one click install) and so far loving it. Some issues: - Does it have a default task management tool or we need to integrate a 3rd party ? Couldn't find it in the forums yet - The UI is a bit clunky in terms of navigation. For example, being able to move from the homepage level to specific project back and forth is a bit confusing. Would love a re-design of UI. EDIT: Lot of feedback that I can give. So far: - Make it easy to navigate between index page and specific groups/projects. May be on login to index, just show a dashboard with all groups/projects that I am part of. If Admin, then show me additional options like what you have in "Admin Area" menu. Here is one idea. Just show all menu options in the left sidebar and split it like: - Home - Groups - Projects - Project 1 - all menus that shows up for projects - Admin Area - Profile Settings - Users - Mail Settings - User profile management is not that good for admins. For example, just yesterday one of my developers got locked out and I could not reset his access via the UI. I had to go in the config files to update the lockout timestamp. - Also for new users, as admin I want the control to add them as verified user already. Currently I don't think that options is there in UI unless we fiddle with the code. - For email driver, a simple form in UI will be nice to have. For example, if I want to use Mandrill, give me that option in the UI. Bottomline is that even though we are developers, we don't want to change the .rb files for Gitlab and instead focus on an easy UI.

jobvandervoort 11y ago
Happy to hear! > Does it have a default task management tool or we need to integrate a 3rd party ? Couldn't find it in the forums yet You can use Issues, which comes in every project and can be linked all throughout your GitLab instance. They also integrate with merge requests and can be used 'Kanban' style by using milestones. See our own for GitLab's issues: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues You can also integrate many of the popular systems, such as JIRA, Asana, Trello. > The UI is a bit clunky in terms of navigation. For example, being able to move from the homepage level to specific project back and forth is a bit confusing. Would love a re-design of UI. We're working very hard on this. The coming release will add more context to the menu and we're looking to improve it further both in terms of design, as well as UX. It'd be great if you could share us your thoughts on how we can improve this.

ausjke 11y ago

Still using Redmine for self-hosting here, Gitlab is too heavy for small teams. Thought about trying Phabricator but then its various components with strange names stopped me from trying, plus it seems clunky for small team too.

jobvandervoort 11y ago
What makes you feel GitLab is too heavy for small teams? In terms of load, it can run on a Raspberry Pi.
- ausjke 11y ago
  CPU 1 core works for under 100 users but the responsiveness might suffer 2 cores is the recommended number of cores and supports up to 100 users 4 cores supports about 1,000 users 8 cores supports up to 10,000 users Memory 512MB is too little memory, GitLab will be very slow and you will need 250MB of swap 768MB is the minimal memory size but we advise against this 1GB supports up to 100 users (with individual repositories under 250MB, otherwise git memory usage necessitates using swap space) 2GB is the recommended memory size and supports up to 1,000 users 4GB supports up to 10,000 users
  - sytse 11y ago
    It runs on a RPi2 https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/21/gitlab-on-raspberry-pi-2/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/04/21/gitlab-on-raspberry-pi-2...
mrmondo 11y ago
We use Redmine for ticket / issue / task tracking as well as rough timesheeting, and we use gitlab and gitlab CI along side it. I quite like how quick Redmine is and how it just gets out of your way. We find gitlab to be pretty quick however upgrades are painful due to regular bugs / regressions. Ideally I'd like to see something like Taiga and Gogs together which I think would absolutely fly.
- 11y ago

morad0556 11y ago

https://m.facebook.com/mjkhalily?fref=nf https://m.facebook.com/mjkhalily?fref=nf

skyraider 11y ago

GitLab Enterprise user here. GitLab's open-source policy is one of the major reasons we chose it (along with self-hosting and fairly modern, built-in continuous integration), but the GitLab community could use some additional design and documentation effort. Things that almost make me want to switch back to GitHub: - GitLab is really hard to look at. All of our devs are having trouble visually locating comments in diffs. We're always scrolling through the left-side menu looking for the issues tab. It's hard to visually differentiate between items like comments in merge requests. Our eyes just can't find and follow things. Even BitBucket looks better. - GitLab-CI has poor documentation on runners, and a rather buggy test runner registration process that doesn't provide any debugging output and produces false positives quite often. - GitLab-CI has no unconditional cleanup directive, like CircleCI does... but if you're re-using a test runner instead of tearing down the server each time, unconditional cleanup is the one thing you need. And no, the Docker executor doesn't solve this because we don't want to test our Docker containers inside Docker. - CI is based on commit IDs. You can't run particular CI events on merge requests. For example, this means no way to run integration tests on merge requests. - Typography could be improved. When you're looking at the issues page all day, this is quite noticeable. - Slack integration is not great; it dumps links to "GitLab Enterprise Edition" instead of useful commit/changeset stuff like GitHub does. If the community/GitLab can focus on putting on some of the design polish and service integration polish that GitHub has, GitLab would be a total winner for us, long-term.

jobvandervoort 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it! The quick reply to your comments is: we're working on almost all of it. > - GitLab is really hard to look at. All of our devs are having trouble visually locating comments in diffs. We're always scrolling through the left-side menu looking for the issues tab. It's hard to visually differentiate between items like comments in merge requests. Our eyes just can't find and follow things. Even BitBucket looks better. We're working hard on this and focus more and more of our development capacity to this. > - GitLab-CI has poor documentation on runners, and a rather buggy test runner registration process that doesn't provide any debugging output and produces false positives quite often. There are a lot of improvements coming in this field. Especially the integration and setup of runners is going to be easier. We're hoping to make this a zero-step setup thing. Same with documentation. Our new GitLab CI maintainer Kamil has been spending a lot of time on writing documentation. > - GitLab-CI has no unconditional cleanup directive, like CircleCI does... but if you're re-using a test runner instead of tearing down the server each time, unconditional cleanup is the one thing you need. And no, the Docker executor doesn't solve this because we don't want to test our Docker containers inside Docker. This is interesting, I'm passing it onto Kamil. > - CI is based on commit IDs. You can't run particular CI events on merge requests. For example, this means no way to run integration tests on merge requests. This is be interesting to look at. I'm not sure whether we have something like this in the planning, but I'm taking note. > - Typography could be improved. When you're looking at the issues page all day, this is quite noticeable. We're worried about adding page load by including typefaces. We might change our minds on this. What OS are you using? Would Roboto work, for instance? > - Slack integration is not great; it dumps links to "GitLab Enterprise Edition" instead of useful commit/changeset stuff like GitHub does. We welcome contributions to improve it. This is not a focus at the moment, but considering the popularity of Slack, we can definitely have a look at this.

mesozoic 11y ago

Add a search that isn't terrible and you'll solve most every complaint I have and hear from others about Gitlab.

sytse 11y ago
What search are you talking about, in the issues or in the code?

r0naa 11y ago

I am moving my stuff to a self-hosted GitLab. If you are interested in knowing why: - I personally find it a little bit irritating that Github wants to promote "open-source/free-software", but haven't open sourced their own tools/product. - I was disappointed by the way Github handled some internal problems - I don't trust Github anymore; I want to be in control of my data.

krupan 11y ago
"they/them" refers to someone other than gitlab?
- r0naa 11y ago
  Thank you for pointing that out! they was referring to Github.
- spike021 11y ago
  Sounds like they're referring to GitHub.
exstudent2 11y ago
I also just canceled my Github subscription and moved all of my private repos to a self-hosted GitLab. I did this because I was very unhappy with the politics that GitHub recently decided it wanted to push. The funny thing though, having my private repos on my own server just FEELS nice. I have total control over my projects. I wasn't worried about anyone "snooping" on them but there's a subtle psychological change when you know your code is on your sever and no one other than you has admin access. I moved for political reasons, but found the intangible benefits of being the "master of my domain" were a great unintended side-effect.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Don't sell this position short as a mere "political reason". Github has decided that rationality and critical thinking take a back seat. This is a vastly damaging attitude that hurts the world. Providing any encouragement to unclear thinking is a vile thing to do. This is far worse than environmentally unfriendly attitudes; it's far more important than even open source.

avinassh 11y ago

How does the licensing works? Can anyone explain me? [0] > This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") can only be used with a valid GitLab subscription for the correct number of users. You are free to modify this Software and publish patches. It is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software. Isn't the third line contradicting with the fourth or have I misunderstood? [0] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE

superuser2 11y ago
A patch - literally a file generated by "diff" - only incidentally contains the original code, mostly your new functions and modifications. So you can't distrbute a patched version of the software, only the patch itself.
- sytse 11y ago
  Exactly, that is how I meant that.

kevinSuttle 11y ago

If only this post was written by GitHub.

btashton 11y ago

I set up gitlab internally a couple years ago and it has been a pleasure. One big thing I fight is we have a lot of micro services that we want to have the same label set for and would like to manage against the same milestones. It would be really nice if label sets and milestones could be created for a group.

sytse 11y ago
Feel free to contribute that feature. I would love to create a milestone for all projects in a group in one go. Please be aware that if you name the project milestones the same you can use them to aggregate issues across multiple project in one view.

brugidou 11y ago

As a Gitlab CE user and part of a large company using Gerrit for code reviews I am really surprised that Gitlab does not try to emulate a bit more the various enterprise grade Gerrit features available such as full side-by-side diffs with key shortcuts, review history to easily see what changed since the last time you reviewed the merge request (even with rebased commits), +1/+2 rules, custom plugins available... Etc. I know that Gitlab EE has some features like the merge request rebase, but I don't know how a large company using gerrit could be convinced to switch to reviews in Gitlab

sytse 11y ago
We would love to add features like that. We have side-by-side diffs and shortcuts, but maybe not what you want. New commits are shown in the discussion (doesn't work with rebasing). You can have approvers for merge requests https://about.gitlab.com/2015/06/16/feature-highlight-approve-merge-request/ https://about.gitlab.com/2015/06/16/feature-highlight-approv... and we support project services http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/README.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/README.html Anyway, I'm sure that there are still things missing and you are very welcome to add them to CE or EE. We had large companies switch from Gerrit but we hope to keep adding features that people currently miss.

chriswarbo 11y ago

Since gitlab closed gitorious.org, I've switched to serving all of my repos as static files generated from git2html, and accepting patches by email. Once burned...

sytse 11y ago
Just for your information, we had a 'one-click' import from Gitorious to GitLab.com. It will come online again after the internet archive work is done.

swah 11y ago

Everything should be open. Its almost immoral to sell software nowadays. No wonder so many people are flying to mobile...