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Everyone is moving to GitHub these days. Why doesn't Gitlab.com get more love? Isn't their whole stack open source?

ericjang 11y ago
Gitlab is really nice, but the user experience isn't quite as slick as Github's. Understandable, since Github has a lot more engineers behind their infrastructure. I think Gitlab's current user base is for developers/startups who want VC backups for their private codebases. I'd probably use Gitlab if I were developing a private project that I didn't plan on releasing. Github, by design, is friendly towards people who want their code to be open to the world and encourage exploration of interesting projects. It's a great for sharing research code, and many big companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Disney, Pixar) already put their stuff there. It's highly unlikely these big fishes will move to Gitlab anytime soon.
- _wmd 11y ago
  Definite +1 on the italicization of 'quite'.. GitHub's UX advantage over Gitlab is marginal at best, at least as far as their web client is concerned. The desktop experience is pretty nice, but we've otherwise got SourceTree for non-developers who need a decent UI. Gitlab is the first piece of open source I've seen in probably a decade where I haven't a single bad word to say for it, their attention to detail is superb, starting with the installation process. I'm usually by default a critic of pretty much anything I encounter (aka. "typical HN comment author") but I find myself advocating Gitlab constantly
yeukhon 11y ago
I will cut the BS and give you my thought: simply because few people are interested in maintaining GitLab. If I were in the dev's position, I would have more time to focus on improving build pipeline, like adding some cool bot.
bastawhiz 11y ago
I have three personal reasons for preferring Github to Gitlab. I'm not going to talk about the community edition of Gitlab, since Github Enterprise is a separate topic and frankly I think most individual developers couldn't be bothered to download, run, and maintain their own Gitlab instance (as evidenced by the fact that Github.com is so damn popular). 1. Gitlab themselves admit that Gitlab.com is bad[1]. Making a cloud-based software development platform is hard, and Github has some of the best engineers working on scaling the service. Gitlab doesn't have nearly as many resources. 2. The community is thin[2]. Almost all of the largest projects on Gitlab.com are Gitlab. Gitlab CE is maintained by only a handful of people. Go through the list of top contributors on Gitlab.com and you'll find that they have almost zero "personal projects" hosted there. If the developers of the service don't even use it, why should I? 3. The UX of Gitlab is honestly quite poor. At best, it's a clone of Github's UI. At worst, it has way too much scrolling thanks to inconveniently placed whitespace, poor performance, a confusing information architecture, and oodles of low-contrast text. I personally find getting around Gitlab to be tiring and confusing. Here's an easy example: from the Contributors tab of a project [3], how can I see more about a contributor? You just can't. There's lots of little papercuts like this scattered across Gitlab. Not to say Github is without papercuts, but it certainly has far fewer. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ [2] https://gitlab.com/explore https://gitlab.com/explore [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master
- sdesol 11y ago
  > At best, it's a clone of Github's UI. What I don't understand right now is why they aren't trying to copy GitHub as much as possible ... when it makes sense of course. I've been studying both GitHub and GitLab's design in detail, because I want to incorporate my technology into their branches and commits page, and I've found the user experience between both quite striking. When I get some time this week, I would like to submit an issue with GitLab to let them know in more detail what I think they can do better, but here is just a synopsis: - I still can't put my finger on it, but there is something off about the font. - Avatars with 50% border radius is a bad design choice in my opinion. The problem with creating circular avatars is they hide too much of the image and they create a focal point towards the center of the image. If your avatar doesn't have a natural center focus, it will look bad and create unnecessary eye strain, since your mind will naturally try to fill in cropped areas. Keep it simple and use a simple border radius of 8 or less. - Avatars on the commits page are too small. I'm not sure if this design decision was the result of the Gitorious acquisition, but Gitorious had this problem as well. Using small avatars has its place, but not on the commits page since this page is designed to help you better understand who did what quickly. - How the commit message is revealed in the commits page is too jarring. If you click on the ellipses at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/commits/master https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/commits/master and https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master you'll better understand. The problem with GitLab's implementation is the strong focal point is the avatar and when you click on the ellipsis, your eyes will get dragged down with it when the message is revealed. Just copy GitHub and use a bigger avatar and have the commits message reveal below the strong focal point (avatar) - The calendar icon on the commits page is visually too strong and should be removed. - The clipboard and other elements on the commits rows creates an unnatural balance/flow. If you look at GitHub's commits page, the clipboard, commit sha and browse tree icon are equally balanced in size and weight, which creates a natural horizontal flow. You can sweep from left to right and it won't create any unnecessary jarring effect. This is just some of the things that I've thought about when I was looking at the commits page and I really don't understand why they aren't copying GitHub's UI in a lot of places. The amount of money that GitHub is investing in their UI vs GitLab's is quite significant, and it should be obvious that GitHub is way more capable of producing a better user experience, so why not copy it?
pbreit 11y ago
Source code hosting is an area where longevity is probably the single most important factor.
StevePerkins 11y ago
GitLab and Bitbucket are more about private companies and their private hosting for doing their actual private work. GitHub does that too, of course. But they are also basically a social networking website for individuals and organizations in the software industry. Prominent companies put code on GitHub because that's how you maintain a public presence in the developer community today. Even though the GitHub repos are more often than not mirrors, with the code actually being developed with internally-hosted repos and tooling. So as far public destinations for open source code, GitHub has that market pretty sewn up for now. However, there's lots of competition in the "charging money for private services" market. Atlassian is a giant in the enterprise world, and I'm sure GitLab is doing well too. GitHub sells private services too, of course. Lots of people argue that Bitbucket's tooling is better, and even the paid version of GitLab is insanely cheaper... but GitHub does have an advantage in being able to leverage everyone's familiarity with it.

Gitlab is really nice, but the user experience isn't quite as slick as Github's. Understandable, since Github has a lot more engineers behind their infrastructure. I think Gitlab's current user base is for developers/startups who want VC backups for their private codebases. I'd probably use Gitlab if I were developing a private project that I didn't plan on releasing. Github, by design, is friendly towards people who want their code to be open to the world and encourage exploration of interesting projects. It's a great for sharing research code, and many big companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Disney, Pixar) already put their stuff there. It's highly unlikely these big fishes will move to Gitlab anytime soon.

_wmd 11y ago
Definite +1 on the italicization of 'quite'.. GitHub's UX advantage over Gitlab is marginal at best, at least as far as their web client is concerned. The desktop experience is pretty nice, but we've otherwise got SourceTree for non-developers who need a decent UI. Gitlab is the first piece of open source I've seen in probably a decade where I haven't a single bad word to say for it, their attention to detail is superb, starting with the installation process. I'm usually by default a critic of pretty much anything I encounter (aka. "typical HN comment author") but I find myself advocating Gitlab constantly

yeukhon 11y ago

I will cut the BS and give you my thought: simply because few people are interested in maintaining GitLab. If I were in the dev's position, I would have more time to focus on improving build pipeline, like adding some cool bot.

bastawhiz 11y ago

I have three personal reasons for preferring Github to Gitlab. I'm not going to talk about the community edition of Gitlab, since Github Enterprise is a separate topic and frankly I think most individual developers couldn't be bothered to download, run, and maintain their own Gitlab instance (as evidenced by the fact that Github.com is so damn popular). 1. Gitlab themselves admit that Gitlab.com is bad[1]. Making a cloud-based software development platform is hard, and Github has some of the best engineers working on scaling the service. Gitlab doesn't have nearly as many resources. 2. The community is thin[2]. Almost all of the largest projects on Gitlab.com are Gitlab. Gitlab CE is maintained by only a handful of people. Go through the list of top contributors on Gitlab.com and you'll find that they have almost zero "personal projects" hosted there. If the developers of the service don't even use it, why should I? 3. The UX of Gitlab is honestly quite poor. At best, it's a clone of Github's UI. At worst, it has way too much scrolling thanks to inconveniently placed whitespace, poor performance, a confusing information architecture, and oodles of low-contrast text. I personally find getting around Gitlab to be tiring and confusing. Here's an easy example: from the Contributors tab of a project [3], how can I see more about a contributor? You just can't. There's lots of little papercuts like this scattered across Gitlab. Not to say Github is without papercuts, but it certainly has far fewer. [1] https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ [2] https://gitlab.com/explore https://gitlab.com/explore [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/graphs/master

sdesol 11y ago
> At best, it's a clone of Github's UI. What I don't understand right now is why they aren't trying to copy GitHub as much as possible ... when it makes sense of course. I've been studying both GitHub and GitLab's design in detail, because I want to incorporate my technology into their branches and commits page, and I've found the user experience between both quite striking. When I get some time this week, I would like to submit an issue with GitLab to let them know in more detail what I think they can do better, but here is just a synopsis: - I still can't put my finger on it, but there is something off about the font. - Avatars with 50% border radius is a bad design choice in my opinion. The problem with creating circular avatars is they hide too much of the image and they create a focal point towards the center of the image. If your avatar doesn't have a natural center focus, it will look bad and create unnecessary eye strain, since your mind will naturally try to fill in cropped areas. Keep it simple and use a simple border radius of 8 or less. - Avatars on the commits page are too small. I'm not sure if this design decision was the result of the Gitorious acquisition, but Gitorious had this problem as well. Using small avatars has its place, but not on the commits page since this page is designed to help you better understand who did what quickly. - How the commit message is revealed in the commits page is too jarring. If you click on the ellipses at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/commits/master https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/commits/master and https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/commits/master you'll better understand. The problem with GitLab's implementation is the strong focal point is the avatar and when you click on the ellipsis, your eyes will get dragged down with it when the message is revealed. Just copy GitHub and use a bigger avatar and have the commits message reveal below the strong focal point (avatar) - The calendar icon on the commits page is visually too strong and should be removed. - The clipboard and other elements on the commits rows creates an unnatural balance/flow. If you look at GitHub's commits page, the clipboard, commit sha and browse tree icon are equally balanced in size and weight, which creates a natural horizontal flow. You can sweep from left to right and it won't create any unnecessary jarring effect. This is just some of the things that I've thought about when I was looking at the commits page and I really don't understand why they aren't copying GitHub's UI in a lot of places. The amount of money that GitHub is investing in their UI vs GitLab's is quite significant, and it should be obvious that GitHub is way more capable of producing a better user experience, so why not copy it?

pbreit 11y ago

Source code hosting is an area where longevity is probably the single most important factor.

StevePerkins 11y ago

GitLab and Bitbucket are more about private companies and their private hosting for doing their actual private work. GitHub does that too, of course. But they are also basically a social networking website for individuals and organizations in the software industry. Prominent companies put code on GitHub because that's how you maintain a public presence in the developer community today. Even though the GitHub repos are more often than not mirrors, with the code actually being developed with internally-hosted repos and tooling. So as far public destinations for open source code, GitHub has that market pretty sewn up for now. However, there's lots of competition in the "charging money for private services" market. Atlassian is a giant in the enterprise world, and I'm sure GitLab is doing well too. GitHub sells private services too, of course. Lots of people argue that Bitbucket's tooling is better, and even the paid version of GitLab is insanely cheaper... but GitHub does have an advantage in being able to leverage everyone's familiarity with it.