11 ms·

GitLab 8.3 released with Auto-merge and GitLab Pages

196 points by doppp 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Url changed from http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/22/gitlab-just-launched-another-feature-that-will-help-it-compete-with-github/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/22/gitlab-just-launched-anoth..., which points to this.
- sytse 11y ago
  Thanks dang!
infocollector 11y ago
Anyone knows if there are plans to support hg-git and hg on Gitlab?
- jordigh 11y ago
  You don't need any special support on the gitlab side for hg-git, since that's all client side. It would be awesome if they had hg support, but I assume it would require too much. Kallithea is supposed to be the one with hg support, but hmmmmm.... maybe it wouldn't be so much work to put hg support into gitlab instead. I'll have a look sometime.
  - infocollector 11y ago
    That is what I thought, till I tried to clone a git repo using hg-git interface. Don't remember the error I got, but that did not work for me. Maybe someone here has experience making this combination work?
ozborn 11y ago
I'm a huge fan of Gitlab and use it at my workplace, but haven't upgraded to even 8.0 to try the continuous integration (CI) feature. Wikipedia makes it look pretty comparable on features to more mature CI system like Jenkins but can anybody here say how the current CI in Gitlab 8.x really compares?
- anthonycalabro 11y ago
  Definitely a huge fan of GitLab, best open source solution and super easy to host locally.
- dominotw 11y ago
  I am curious about this as well. Is it a feature that has seen widespread adoption?
  - sytse 11y ago
    GitLab CI has been hard to use for a long time since we didn't devote a lot of time to it (less than 1 person). But we saw it got traction nonetheless and opted to integrate it in the main GitLab application in 8.0. Since then it's popularity is growing fast, we added a lot of features (most recently build artifacts) and we have more than 2 people working on it full time.
- xrstf 11y ago
  [We're running a Gitlab instance and one CI instance with multiple CI runners in the Google Cloud.] Gitlab CI is great if you don't need dynamically provisioned build slaves, for which I found no integrated support. In general, Gitlab CI is much more straightforward and easy to use than Jenkins. Jenkins wins when it comes to stuff like build artifacts (getting these out of Jenkins is easy peasy (just wget them and provide basic HTTP auth if needed), but with GitLab I have not yet found a way to automatically download say the latest build results), credentials management and other "more enterprisey" features. Jenkins is easy to install on Debian-based systems; I have no real experience in setting up Gitlab other than via the official Docker images, which is nearly as easy as typing `apt-get install jenkins`. Setting up CI runners/instances is easy as well (apt-get install + one or two calls to gitlab-multi-runner). Overall I'm pretty happy with Gitlab CI. Especially the fact that every developer in our company can take advantage of automated builds by just enabling CI support and putting a .gitlab-ci.yml in the repository is great. Over are the days were admins had to manage Jenkins jobs.
  - halfdan 11y ago
tedmiston 11y ago
My startup has been using GitLab Community Edition for 3 years now and we're really happy with it -- especially the code review features. We've also started using the CI in the past few months. At this point I want a similar setup for my personal projects, but didn't feel like running a dedicated EC2 box just for a GitLab instance, so I've been using Bitbucket to host free private repos instead. What are others using to manage their own private repos? Edit: I wasn't aware GitLab.com offers free private repos too. Even if, "Right now GitLab.com is really slow and frequently down." https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/
- jvehent 11y ago
  AWS CodeCommit is another option.
- martin_ 11y ago
  What about hosting them on gitlab.com?
- btmiller 11y ago
  Interesting. What do you like about code review things? I personally found it to be lacking. It's hard to dig up comments on branches that have been merged into a master branch and I'd also like to have notes/comments on the HEAD of a project. Right now, they just get perpetually buried. That's where a lot of project decisions end up getting made in my team. Perhaps we should be using a wiki or some other system, but I'd really love for some more enhancements to code review.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    I agree with you on finding branch comments post-merge. I found using merge requests makes it easier, but to be honest, I don't look at comments much after the fact. Making more small branches with merge requests was really helpful for us. As far as commenting on HEAD, I think they've intentionally avoided that given how fast it could change and not having a deterministic way to anchoring comments to the correct lines. Related: Tom Lehman from Genius explains some of the problems of fuzzy annotation anchoring in a 10-min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJyqfRcyYIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJyqfRcyYIQ.
VeilEm 11y ago
Phabricator[0] is a more mature alternative if anyone is interested in an open source and free substitute for GitHub. I think the only thing GitLab might have over Phabricator is a familiar GitHub like UI. Phabricator was an internal Facebook project that was open sourced. It's actually far more than just a substitute for GitHub. It has a much better system for managing issues, and better code review tools as well as other powerful features. My favorite feature is the herald system[1]. [0] http://phabricator.org/ http://phabricator.org/ [1] https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/herald/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/hera...
- cmrx64 11y ago
  I'm also a phan, but phabricator is more complex than GitLab and doesn't have (to my knowledge) a free, hosted version like gitlab.com. It also isn't quite as appropriate for open source projects, in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with it. I really do love differential though, and its UI is very cohesive.
  - electrum 11y ago
    Facebook uses it for some open source projects: https://reviews.facebook.net/ https://reviews.facebook.net/
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - eeZi 11y ago
    It's much better suited for open source projects than GitHub, not only due to the powerful issue tracker and other community features. An incomplete list of projects using it, some of them VERY large: - Blender (https://developer.blender.org/ https://developer.blender.org/) - LLVM (http://reviews.llvm.org/ http://reviews.llvm.org/) - Haskell (https://phabricator.haskell.org https://phabricator.haskell.org) - Wikimedia (after lots of discussion and a lengthy selection process, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/) - FreeBSD (https://reviews.freebsd.org/ https://reviews.freebsd.org/) - Fedora (in some places, for example: https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/ https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/) - Khan Academy (https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/ https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/) - Enlightenment (https://phab.enlightenment.org/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/) - KDE (https://phabricator.kde.org/ https://phabricator.kde.org/) - Freedesktop (https://phabricator.freedesktop.org https://phabricator.freedesktop.org) - lighttpd (https://review.lighttpd.net https://review.lighttpd.net) - Kolab (https://git.kolab.org/ https://git.kolab.org/) - ... Wikimedia hat lots of content about their choice and the migration process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ Phabricator has been in use as a production tool for years and it shows. It is much more sophisticated in terms of workflow and real-world use than alternatives.
nalck 11y ago
GitLab has a fine interface and offers free private repositories. If it weren't for GitHub's network effect advantage, I'd use it for all my git projects.
- x1024 11y ago
  What's the "Network effect" for private repos?
  - dajohnson89 11y ago
    I'd imagine the network effect is non-existent for private repos, but for public repos it's huge. And then there's the issue of switching between Gitlab and Github for private/public projects.
    - nalck 11y ago
      That's essentially it. GitHub has won its role as the (meta)repository of public record. I suspect many stick with it over its competitors for this very reason.
  - bubalus 11y ago
    Just because a repo starts out private, it doesn't mean it has to be private forever.
    - lewisl9029 11y ago
      Exactly this. I generally begin my projects as private GitHub repos and then make them public once they have a MVP-quality demo of some sort. I also make heavy use of GitHub's issues/milestones system, even on private repos, to keep myself organized. I'd probably use GitLab a lot more if I knew of an easy way to port issues and milestones over to GitHub when I decide to make a project public. On a related note, can anyone recommend some good external issue tracking systems that integrates well with both GitLab and GitHub?
- dudul 11y ago
dujiulun2006 11y ago
GitLab Pages (EE only) That's it. I'm pirating GitLab EE.
chappi42 11y ago
title should be: ... and Gitlab Page (EE only!) They do so many good thing thus it's hard to complain. But Pages-EE-only makes no sense imho. The blog post even mentions open source projects needing a static web page. But do (small) oss projects have the funding to buy into EE? A quick integrated project website could be especially helpful for smaller projects were one doesn't want to setup a proper site.
- Grue3 11y ago
  gitlab.com is EE and is free to use. If you self-host gitlab then surely you can serve static pages as well.
- sytse 11y ago
  GitLab.com runs EE so you can set up a free site there. We have free shared runners too so you don't have to configure a thing. I set it up yesterday for Sytse.com (with a redirect, cname support coming next month)
  - chappi42 11y ago
    Thanks for replying. gitlab.com is not an option in my case a.o. reasons due to ci testing (which btw is supergreat in 8.x!!). But this pages ee is the first time i think gl did 'wrong'. Not really 'core-essential', but a pity.
    - sytse 11y ago
      Why can't you use GitLab.com with CI? You can bring your own runners if you want.
      - chappi42 11y ago
        Missed that, in this case it should work.
        sytse 11y ago
mrslave 11y ago
All I want is a Kanban board. It seems I have to fork out $$$ for JIRA. :(
- michaelt 11y ago
  If you're happy with something hosted, check out https://trello.com/ https://trello.com/ - it doesn't have the complicated workflow-defining things Jira does, but that's not always a bad thing, and it starts out free.
  - janpieterz 11y ago
    I've been an avid user of Trello. Easy to use, very simple for any external stake holders to get into (and nice permissions) while being super simple to use. They've got a great amount of 'example' boards as well: https://trello.com/inspiringboards https://trello.com/inspiringboards
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sytse 11y ago
  Please see https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards for the options with GitLab. There is also work done to redeem a bounty for GitLab support in Huboard.
  - mrslave 11y ago
    Thanks. I should have mentioned that I have seen that. I tried GitLab Kanban, thinking the product created by the same organization as GitLab would be the best. I was dissatisfied at installation time (uses Docker, in contrast to the RPMs provided for GitLab CE) and stopped there. Must be hosted locally for boring corporate reasons.
    - sytse 11y ago
      Thanks for the feedback. We're considering bundling a kanban board into the GitLab Omnibus packages to make it easier to install, see "Software to ship in the Omnibus packages" on https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/
Svenskunganka 11y ago
I've been using GitLab before, and use it from time-to-time still, but I've moved over to a self-hosted Gogs[0] server with Drone CI[1]. Both projects are actively maintained and both runs super well in Docker. Gogs is almost an identical clone of GitHub, although some small parts are missing but will most definitely be added in an upcoming version. Gogs is a lot more lightweight and faster than GitLab is. Our previous GitLab instance (7.X version range) used over 1.7GB of RAM (roughly 15 repos with 3 users) and always took longer than 1 second to serve a request (commit browsing was really bad, >5 seconds to serve such a request) while our Gogs installation uses 15MB and always serve requests sub-second. Both ran on the same hardware, with RAID10 SSDs. Definitely worth checking out if you want a self-hosted, lightweight & performant Git remote solution. Drone officially supports Gogs as well, so that's nice. [0] https://github.com/gogits/gogs/ https://github.com/gogits/gogs/ [1] https://github.com/drone/drone https://github.com/drone/drone
- sytse 11y ago
  Just wanted to add that we're working hard to bring down the request time in GitLab 8.x. We're not there yet but already optimized a lot of SQL queries and this release added support for better comment caching to prevent markdown parsing. Edit: we had to revert the comment caching at the last minute due to a bug but we're working on that, many other improvements and performance monitoring with InFluxDB and Grafana
  - lhecker 11y ago
    I can definitely confirm that somewhere around the 8.0 release (I forgot when exactly) GitLab got a lot faster in general. Previously with the 7.x line it took about a couple seconds at least to load a page but now I barely get over a second until "onload", with response times of about 400ms. In general I wouldn't consider performance with GitLab an issue and denote it as a selling point for Gogs anymore - it would just be nice if it no longer felt like a Ruby on Rails website... A optimized site of mine with similiar complexity and database setup has a response time of 16ms and an "onload" event after about 400ms (using PHP-FPM 7 & MariaDB). ;)
drinchev 11y ago
Congrats on the team. I'm reading the comments on HN and top comments are suggesting competitor products that fix mostly speed and UI concerns. I've been following GitLab since 3 years it was really cool to host my own GitHub ( back then the design was almost identical ), but now it becomes more obvious how important it is to choose a language before you build a web application. I think the ruby part was the only bad thing that they shouldn't have copied from GitHub. Also I bet you just can't use a web-app as big as gitlab on your own DO 10$ box and don't have any problems very soon. If I was part of GitLab team I would definitely put on the table a plan to decentralise the services from their main ruby repository and use something modern micro-service based solution with it's top performant language.
- sytse 11y ago
  A $10 DO box should run GitLab fine for a couple of people. Many of the speed concerns are about GitLab.com which are not due to ruby but the file server (we just moved to SSD and are working on decentralized storage). To make GitLab faster we're using Go were it makes sense, see the part about workhorse in the release announcement. We're very happy with using Ruby and Rails for the complex business logic. It allows us to ship many new features every month. We had CI as a separate application but it ended up being better to integrate it.
- farresito 11y ago
  I'm also not a huge fan of them moving the menu to the left as opposed to leaving at the top, like github has now. I just find it more natural at the top.
wegwerf42 11y ago
Another plug: https://github.com/jstimpfle/gitadmin https://github.com/jstimpfle/gitadmin It's a small auth layer with only a command-line interface (usually used over SSH). Single python script without fancy dependencies. Used at the university department where I sysadmin. It can be tested locally with super simple setup (just call once with --init to create a basedirectory). I'm grateful for feedback.

196 points by doppp 11y ago

dang 11y ago

Url changed from http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/22/gitlab-just-launched-another-feature-that-will-help-it-compete-with-github/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/22/gitlab-just-launched-anoth..., which points to this.

sytse 11y ago
Thanks dang!

infocollector 11y ago

Anyone knows if there are plans to support hg-git and hg on Gitlab?

jordigh 11y ago
You don't need any special support on the gitlab side for hg-git, since that's all client side. It would be awesome if they had hg support, but I assume it would require too much. Kallithea is supposed to be the one with hg support, but hmmmmm.... maybe it wouldn't be so much work to put hg support into gitlab instead. I'll have a look sometime.
- infocollector 11y ago
  That is what I thought, till I tried to clone a git repo using hg-git interface. Don't remember the error I got, but that did not work for me. Maybe someone here has experience making this combination work?

ozborn 11y ago

I'm a huge fan of Gitlab and use it at my workplace, but haven't upgraded to even 8.0 to try the continuous integration (CI) feature. Wikipedia makes it look pretty comparable on features to more mature CI system like Jenkins but can anybody here say how the current CI in Gitlab 8.x really compares?

anthonycalabro 11y ago
Definitely a huge fan of GitLab, best open source solution and super easy to host locally.
dominotw 11y ago
I am curious about this as well. Is it a feature that has seen widespread adoption?
- sytse 11y ago
  GitLab CI has been hard to use for a long time since we didn't devote a lot of time to it (less than 1 person). But we saw it got traction nonetheless and opted to integrate it in the main GitLab application in 8.0. Since then it's popularity is growing fast, we added a lot of features (most recently build artifacts) and we have more than 2 people working on it full time.
xrstf 11y ago
[We're running a Gitlab instance and one CI instance with multiple CI runners in the Google Cloud.] Gitlab CI is great if you don't need dynamically provisioned build slaves, for which I found no integrated support. In general, Gitlab CI is much more straightforward and easy to use than Jenkins. Jenkins wins when it comes to stuff like build artifacts (getting these out of Jenkins is easy peasy (just wget them and provide basic HTTP auth if needed), but with GitLab I have not yet found a way to automatically download say the latest build results), credentials management and other "more enterprisey" features. Jenkins is easy to install on Debian-based systems; I have no real experience in setting up Gitlab other than via the official Docker images, which is nearly as easy as typing `apt-get install jenkins`. Setting up CI runners/instances is easy as well (apt-get install + one or two calls to gitlab-multi-runner). Overall I'm pretty happy with Gitlab CI. Especially the fact that every developer in our company can take advantage of automated builds by just enabling CI support and putting a .gitlab-ci.yml in the repository is great. Over are the days were admins had to manage Jenkins jobs.
- halfdan 11y ago

tedmiston 11y ago

My startup has been using GitLab Community Edition for 3 years now and we're really happy with it -- especially the code review features. We've also started using the CI in the past few months. At this point I want a similar setup for my personal projects, but didn't feel like running a dedicated EC2 box just for a GitLab instance, so I've been using Bitbucket to host free private repos instead. What are others using to manage their own private repos? Edit: I wasn't aware GitLab.com offers free private repos too. Even if, "Right now GitLab.com is really slow and frequently down." https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/

jvehent 11y ago
AWS CodeCommit is another option.
martin_ 11y ago
What about hosting them on gitlab.com?
btmiller 11y ago
Interesting. What do you like about code review things? I personally found it to be lacking. It's hard to dig up comments on branches that have been merged into a master branch and I'd also like to have notes/comments on the HEAD of a project. Right now, they just get perpetually buried. That's where a lot of project decisions end up getting made in my team. Perhaps we should be using a wiki or some other system, but I'd really love for some more enhancements to code review.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  I agree with you on finding branch comments post-merge. I found using merge requests makes it easier, but to be honest, I don't look at comments much after the fact. Making more small branches with merge requests was really helpful for us. As far as commenting on HEAD, I think they've intentionally avoided that given how fast it could change and not having a deterministic way to anchoring comments to the correct lines. Related: Tom Lehman from Genius explains some of the problems of fuzzy annotation anchoring in a 10-min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJyqfRcyYIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJyqfRcyYIQ.

VeilEm 11y ago

Phabricator[0] is a more mature alternative if anyone is interested in an open source and free substitute for GitHub. I think the only thing GitLab might have over Phabricator is a familiar GitHub like UI. Phabricator was an internal Facebook project that was open sourced. It's actually far more than just a substitute for GitHub. It has a much better system for managing issues, and better code review tools as well as other powerful features. My favorite feature is the herald system[1]. [0] http://phabricator.org/ http://phabricator.org/ [1] https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/herald/ https://secure.phabricator.com/book/phabricator/article/hera...

cmrx64 11y ago
I'm also a phan, but phabricator is more complex than GitLab and doesn't have (to my knowledge) a free, hosted version like gitlab.com. It also isn't quite as appropriate for open source projects, in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with it. I really do love differential though, and its UI is very cohesive.
- electrum 11y ago
  Facebook uses it for some open source projects: https://reviews.facebook.net/ https://reviews.facebook.net/
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- eeZi 11y ago
  It's much better suited for open source projects than GitHub, not only due to the powerful issue tracker and other community features. An incomplete list of projects using it, some of them VERY large: - Blender (https://developer.blender.org/ https://developer.blender.org/) - LLVM (http://reviews.llvm.org/ http://reviews.llvm.org/) - Haskell (https://phabricator.haskell.org https://phabricator.haskell.org) - Wikimedia (after lots of discussion and a lengthy selection process, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/) - FreeBSD (https://reviews.freebsd.org/ https://reviews.freebsd.org/) - Fedora (in some places, for example: https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/ https://phab.qadevel.cloud.fedoraproject.org/) - Khan Academy (https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/ https://phabricator.khanacademy.org/) - Enlightenment (https://phab.enlightenment.org/ https://phab.enlightenment.org/) - KDE (https://phabricator.kde.org/ https://phabricator.kde.org/) - Freedesktop (https://phabricator.freedesktop.org https://phabricator.freedesktop.org) - lighttpd (https://review.lighttpd.net https://review.lighttpd.net) - Kolab (https://git.kolab.org/ https://git.kolab.org/) - ... Wikimedia hat lots of content about their choice and the migration process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/FAQ Phabricator has been in use as a production tool for years and it shows. It is much more sophisticated in terms of workflow and real-world use than alternatives.

nalck 11y ago

GitLab has a fine interface and offers free private repositories. If it weren't for GitHub's network effect advantage, I'd use it for all my git projects.

x1024 11y ago
What's the "Network effect" for private repos?
- dajohnson89 11y ago
  I'd imagine the network effect is non-existent for private repos, but for public repos it's huge. And then there's the issue of switching between Gitlab and Github for private/public projects.
  - nalck 11y ago
    That's essentially it. GitHub has won its role as the (meta)repository of public record. I suspect many stick with it over its competitors for this very reason.
- bubalus 11y ago
  Just because a repo starts out private, it doesn't mean it has to be private forever.
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    Exactly this. I generally begin my projects as private GitHub repos and then make them public once they have a MVP-quality demo of some sort. I also make heavy use of GitHub's issues/milestones system, even on private repos, to keep myself organized. I'd probably use GitLab a lot more if I knew of an easy way to port issues and milestones over to GitHub when I decide to make a project public. On a related note, can anyone recommend some good external issue tracking systems that integrates well with both GitLab and GitHub?
dudul 11y ago

dujiulun2006 11y ago

GitLab Pages (EE only) That's it. I'm pirating GitLab EE.

chappi42 11y ago

title should be: ... and Gitlab Page (EE only!) They do so many good thing thus it's hard to complain. But Pages-EE-only makes no sense imho. The blog post even mentions open source projects needing a static web page. But do (small) oss projects have the funding to buy into EE? A quick integrated project website could be especially helpful for smaller projects were one doesn't want to setup a proper site.

Grue3 11y ago
gitlab.com is EE and is free to use. If you self-host gitlab then surely you can serve static pages as well.
sytse 11y ago
GitLab.com runs EE so you can set up a free site there. We have free shared runners too so you don't have to configure a thing. I set it up yesterday for Sytse.com (with a redirect, cname support coming next month)
- chappi42 11y ago
  Thanks for replying. gitlab.com is not an option in my case a.o. reasons due to ci testing (which btw is supergreat in 8.x!!). But this pages ee is the first time i think gl did 'wrong'. Not really 'core-essential', but a pity.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Why can't you use GitLab.com with CI? You can bring your own runners if you want.
    - chappi42 11y ago
      Missed that, in this case it should work.
      - sytse 11y ago

mrslave 11y ago

All I want is a Kanban board. It seems I have to fork out $$$ for JIRA. :(

michaelt 11y ago
If you're happy with something hosted, check out https://trello.com/ https://trello.com/ - it doesn't have the complicated workflow-defining things Jira does, but that's not always a bad thing, and it starts out free.
- janpieterz 11y ago
  I've been an avid user of Trello. Easy to use, very simple for any external stake holders to get into (and nice permissions) while being super simple to use. They've got a great amount of 'example' boards as well: https://trello.com/inspiringboards https://trello.com/inspiringboards
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sytse 11y ago
Please see https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards for the options with GitLab. There is also work done to redeem a bounty for GitLab support in Huboard.
- mrslave 11y ago
  Thanks. I should have mentioned that I have seen that. I tried GitLab Kanban, thinking the product created by the same organization as GitLab would be the best. I was dissatisfied at installation time (uses Docker, in contrast to the RPMs provided for GitLab CE) and stopped there. Must be hosted locally for boring corporate reasons.
  - sytse 11y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. We're considering bundling a kanban board into the GitLab Omnibus packages to make it easier to install, see "Software to ship in the Omnibus packages" on https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/

Svenskunganka 11y ago

I've been using GitLab before, and use it from time-to-time still, but I've moved over to a self-hosted Gogs[0] server with Drone CI[1]. Both projects are actively maintained and both runs super well in Docker. Gogs is almost an identical clone of GitHub, although some small parts are missing but will most definitely be added in an upcoming version. Gogs is a lot more lightweight and faster than GitLab is. Our previous GitLab instance (7.X version range) used over 1.7GB of RAM (roughly 15 repos with 3 users) and always took longer than 1 second to serve a request (commit browsing was really bad, >5 seconds to serve such a request) while our Gogs installation uses 15MB and always serve requests sub-second. Both ran on the same hardware, with RAID10 SSDs. Definitely worth checking out if you want a self-hosted, lightweight & performant Git remote solution. Drone officially supports Gogs as well, so that's nice. [0] https://github.com/gogits/gogs/ https://github.com/gogits/gogs/ [1] https://github.com/drone/drone https://github.com/drone/drone

sytse 11y ago
Just wanted to add that we're working hard to bring down the request time in GitLab 8.x. We're not there yet but already optimized a lot of SQL queries and this release added support for better comment caching to prevent markdown parsing. Edit: we had to revert the comment caching at the last minute due to a bug but we're working on that, many other improvements and performance monitoring with InFluxDB and Grafana
- lhecker 11y ago
  I can definitely confirm that somewhere around the 8.0 release (I forgot when exactly) GitLab got a lot faster in general. Previously with the 7.x line it took about a couple seconds at least to load a page but now I barely get over a second until "onload", with response times of about 400ms. In general I wouldn't consider performance with GitLab an issue and denote it as a selling point for Gogs anymore - it would just be nice if it no longer felt like a Ruby on Rails website... A optimized site of mine with similiar complexity and database setup has a response time of 16ms and an "onload" event after about 400ms (using PHP-FPM 7 & MariaDB). ;)

drinchev 11y ago

Congrats on the team. I'm reading the comments on HN and top comments are suggesting competitor products that fix mostly speed and UI concerns. I've been following GitLab since 3 years it was really cool to host my own GitHub ( back then the design was almost identical ), but now it becomes more obvious how important it is to choose a language before you build a web application. I think the ruby part was the only bad thing that they shouldn't have copied from GitHub. Also I bet you just can't use a web-app as big as gitlab on your own DO 10$ box and don't have any problems very soon. If I was part of GitLab team I would definitely put on the table a plan to decentralise the services from their main ruby repository and use something modern micro-service based solution with it's top performant language.

sytse 11y ago
A $10 DO box should run GitLab fine for a couple of people. Many of the speed concerns are about GitLab.com which are not due to ruby but the file server (we just moved to SSD and are working on decentralized storage). To make GitLab faster we're using Go were it makes sense, see the part about workhorse in the release announcement. We're very happy with using Ruby and Rails for the complex business logic. It allows us to ship many new features every month. We had CI as a separate application but it ended up being better to integrate it.
farresito 11y ago
I'm also not a huge fan of them moving the menu to the left as opposed to leaving at the top, like github has now. I just find it more natural at the top.

wegwerf42 11y ago

Another plug: https://github.com/jstimpfle/gitadmin https://github.com/jstimpfle/gitadmin It's a small auth layer with only a command-line interface (usually used over SSH). Single python script without fancy dependencies. Used at the university department where I sysadmin. It can be tested locally with super simple setup (just call once with --init to create a basedirectory). I'm grateful for feedback.