13 ms·

If you haven't tried Gitlab yet, I would give it a serious look. You can self host it which is cool and means that if the company's funds dry up and they stops

If you haven't tried Gitlab yet, I would give it a serious look. You can self host it which is cool and means that if the company's funds dry up and they stops development (hopefully never), you can continue using the product. With Google Code shut down and Github losing 66 million in 9 months in 2016, it's an important question to ask about where you keep your source code. Featurewise, I haven't noticed anything that I can't use Gitlab for that I wanted to do. The interface is still less familiar to me than Github, but that seems to be a function of it being changed relatively often as well as the time spent looking at it. I also like how much Gitlab embraces open source. They recently acquired Gitter and will open source it. Even though I mainly just use it as an alternative to the still more popular Github, I'm considering picking up one of the Enterprise plans to help ensure the development pace continues like this!

usaphp 9y ago
> You can self host it which is cool and means that if the company's funds dry up and they stops development (hopefully never), you can continue using the product. You still have a git repo on both github and bitbucket, even if they stop development you will be able to download your code and host it anywhere you want. No?
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  Code yes. Issue tracker and other features? Not so easy.
caiob 9y ago
To me, Gitlab's UI is a hybrid of Github and Bitbucket. Best of both worlds. IMO it's just a matter of time until it surpasses Github in terms of usability. Now, you raise a good point noting that Github's been operating on losses. How will Github make enough money to sustain growth as it becomes THE go-to place for developers of all kinds and levels?
- sytse 9y ago
  We have an open core model where some features are only available in the proprietary version. We make 90% of our money selling subscriptions for https://about.gitlab.com/products/ https://about.gitlab.com/products/ GitLab.com subscriptions https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ are more recent but this is growing rapidly.
  - carussell 9y ago
    Any plans to go back to selling subscriptions for managed instances? I'm leeching on gitlab.com today, but not enthused about it, if only because I've become disillusioned with GitLab itself. I pay for email, and I'd be willing to pay for code hosting, too, on the following conditions: - it's running something like Gogs/Gitea instead of GitLab - whatever software's on the backend, my subscription needs to allow me to choose the community edition, not some enterprise version - priced at XX/yr instead of X/mo
    - keganunderwood 9y ago
      > priced at XX/yr instead of X/mo I understand I risk looking like an idiot but did you mean X per user per month? If not, what's the difference?
      - carussell 9y ago
        No. The difference between XX/yr and X/mo is that the latter is a tactic that relies on perceptual psychology to downplay the cost, same as when you see something priced at $3.99 instead of $4. It might be important to clarify that when I say XX/yr what I mean by XX is ~50USD. That's a reasonable price for a small instance (especially since the current going rate for something comparable is $0). Something priced at $8–9/mo, however, costs twice as much, even though the monthly pricing scheme helps to hide it. If you're buying hosting for your code, you don't really need the flexibility of monthly pricing. (What're you gonna do, spin up some short-lived instances for as long as you need them and then shut them down when you're "done" with them? No. The expected user model for code hosting is one that's cumulative.) Side note: charging per user per month for a hosted instance would be pretty arbitrary, anyway. Put a cap on instance size, workload, number of simultaneous requests, and daily or hourly data in and data out, not on number of users. Charging by the user for a hosted instance is very nearly unashamed rent-seeking. The only reason it makes sense for GitLab EE is because it's on-prem.
mrmekon 9y ago
> Featurewise, I haven't noticed anything that I can't use Gitlab for that I wanted to do. I've only noticed one: the ability to do less. Along with its excellent improvements over the years, it also gained some staggering RAM usage. It used to be really nice for self-hosting your own private GitHub alternative on a little VPS or RasPi, but those days are apparently behind us.
- jakebasile 9y ago
  Yeah, they’ve added more features which end up using more memory. For the small version you’re talking about you might look at gogs.io. Haven’t used it, but I hear good things.
  - connorshea 9y ago
    Just for the record, I believe most of the community has moved from Gogs to Gitea (a fork) because of management issues in the original project.
    - atomi 9y ago
      Huh? Gogs is fine. People, for whatever reason, think devs have to continue adding more and more features otherwise they see the project as "dead". It's not. In my opinion the Gitea folks are creating a bloated version of Gogs. YMMV.
      - connorshea 9y ago
        My understanding was that the maintainer of Gogs had stopped replying to any issues/PRs for a period of a few weeks and refused to add any other maintainers to the project, so people wanted to fork and ensure that it'd always have an active maintainer. https://blog.gitea.io/2016/12/welcome-to-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2016/12/welcome-to-gitea/
        cube2222 9y ago
Kpourdeilami 9y ago
Something that I find missing is the ability to embed code snippets into other websites
- sytse 9y ago
  I would love to see that too. Issue is at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/8088 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/8088
nikolay 9y ago
It's web UI used to be way slower than GitHub. Has this improved?
- cmatija 9y ago
  We're really committed to improving the overall performance of GitLab. You can take a look at some ongoing performance-related issues at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf... as well as some already completed improvements at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=closed&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf... There's also a plethora of ongoing efforts on making our hosted instance GitLab.com even faster. Lots of issues to look over at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/infrastructure/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/infrastructure/issues?scope=al...
  - sytse 9y ago
    Rights now our issue speed is much improved. Finally GitLab.com http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902794 http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902794 is faster than GitHub.com http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902795 http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902795 in one aspect. Still lots of work to do.
- alvil 9y ago
  Searching is still slow but otherwise Gitlab is excellent, I'm using it every day.
  - brodock 9y ago
    It will get better when we enable Elasticsearch for the search feature. I don't think we have a canary issue but this may be useful: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3492 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3492
- agnivade 9y ago
cmatija 9y ago
Just wanted to add to this and point out that Gitter is already completely open-source and available at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/ https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/
sumitgt 9y ago
Given that git has such a distributed nature, couldn't you simply move over your code to Gitlab if and when Github actually is on the verge of shutting down? I'm glad that Gitlab exists, however the lazy person in me sees no immediate need to use it. Even if all Github datacenters are destroyed by an asteroid, copies of repos I care about will still be around in enough people's computers to be able to recover.
- elmigranto 9y ago
  What about issues, wiki and other non-git data?
  - mholt 9y ago
    (Nit: The GitHub wikis are also git repositories. https://help.github.com/articles/adding-and-editing-wiki-pages-locally/ https://help.github.com/articles/adding-and-editing-wiki-pag...) But anyway, the same argument could be made of an asteroid hitting your own datacenter with self-hosted GitLab instead.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    IIRC GitLab can import GitHub issues straight from the UI.
    - zegerjan 9y ago
      Also PRs will be imported, milestones, labels and more: https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/project/import/github.html#overview https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/project/import/github.html#o...
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    Those can be extracted. Way more relevant imo: Links to your repo. For a mildly successful project a key part are external links pointing to your project. Those will point to a wrong location and you won't have control.
ganeshkrishnan 9y ago
I use their community edition and barring few hiccups while deleting auto-merged branches, the whole product is beyond terrific. Highly recommended to host it yourself and have your source on it
- sytse 9y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. BTW we fixed the hiccup you speak about. When you now create a merge request we added an option to set the state of 'delete branch on merge' on the merge request. You can set this to give a suggestion to the person merging, and it is off by default.

usaphp 9y ago

> You can self host it which is cool and means that if the company's funds dry up and they stops development (hopefully never), you can continue using the product. You still have a git repo on both github and bitbucket, even if they stop development you will be able to download your code and host it anywhere you want. No?

ChrisSD 9y ago
Code yes. Issue tracker and other features? Not so easy.

caiob 9y ago

To me, Gitlab's UI is a hybrid of Github and Bitbucket. Best of both worlds. IMO it's just a matter of time until it surpasses Github in terms of usability. Now, you raise a good point noting that Github's been operating on losses. How will Github make enough money to sustain growth as it becomes THE go-to place for developers of all kinds and levels?

sytse 9y ago
We have an open core model where some features are only available in the proprietary version. We make 90% of our money selling subscriptions for https://about.gitlab.com/products/ https://about.gitlab.com/products/ GitLab.com subscriptions https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/ are more recent but this is growing rapidly.
- carussell 9y ago
  Any plans to go back to selling subscriptions for managed instances? I'm leeching on gitlab.com today, but not enthused about it, if only because I've become disillusioned with GitLab itself. I pay for email, and I'd be willing to pay for code hosting, too, on the following conditions: - it's running something like Gogs/Gitea instead of GitLab - whatever software's on the backend, my subscription needs to allow me to choose the community edition, not some enterprise version - priced at XX/yr instead of X/mo
  - keganunderwood 9y ago
    > priced at XX/yr instead of X/mo I understand I risk looking like an idiot but did you mean X per user per month? If not, what's the difference?
    - carussell 9y ago
      No. The difference between XX/yr and X/mo is that the latter is a tactic that relies on perceptual psychology to downplay the cost, same as when you see something priced at $3.99 instead of $4. It might be important to clarify that when I say XX/yr what I mean by XX is ~50USD. That's a reasonable price for a small instance (especially since the current going rate for something comparable is $0). Something priced at $8–9/mo, however, costs twice as much, even though the monthly pricing scheme helps to hide it. If you're buying hosting for your code, you don't really need the flexibility of monthly pricing. (What're you gonna do, spin up some short-lived instances for as long as you need them and then shut them down when you're "done" with them? No. The expected user model for code hosting is one that's cumulative.) Side note: charging per user per month for a hosted instance would be pretty arbitrary, anyway. Put a cap on instance size, workload, number of simultaneous requests, and daily or hourly data in and data out, not on number of users. Charging by the user for a hosted instance is very nearly unashamed rent-seeking. The only reason it makes sense for GitLab EE is because it's on-prem.

mrmekon 9y ago

> Featurewise, I haven't noticed anything that I can't use Gitlab for that I wanted to do. I've only noticed one: the ability to do less. Along with its excellent improvements over the years, it also gained some staggering RAM usage. It used to be really nice for self-hosting your own private GitHub alternative on a little VPS or RasPi, but those days are apparently behind us.

jakebasile 9y ago
Yeah, they’ve added more features which end up using more memory. For the small version you’re talking about you might look at gogs.io. Haven’t used it, but I hear good things.
- connorshea 9y ago
  Just for the record, I believe most of the community has moved from Gogs to Gitea (a fork) because of management issues in the original project.
  - atomi 9y ago
    Huh? Gogs is fine. People, for whatever reason, think devs have to continue adding more and more features otherwise they see the project as "dead". It's not. In my opinion the Gitea folks are creating a bloated version of Gogs. YMMV.
    - connorshea 9y ago
      My understanding was that the maintainer of Gogs had stopped replying to any issues/PRs for a period of a few weeks and refused to add any other maintainers to the project, so people wanted to fork and ensure that it'd always have an active maintainer. https://blog.gitea.io/2016/12/welcome-to-gitea/ https://blog.gitea.io/2016/12/welcome-to-gitea/
      - cube2222 9y ago

Kpourdeilami 9y ago

Something that I find missing is the ability to embed code snippets into other websites

sytse 9y ago
I would love to see that too. Issue is at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/8088 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/8088

nikolay 9y ago

It's web UI used to be way slower than GitHub. Has this improved?

cmatija 9y ago
We're really committed to improving the overall performance of GitLab. You can take a look at some ongoing performance-related issues at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf... as well as some already completed improvements at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=closed&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf... There's also a plethora of ongoing efforts on making our hosted instance GitLab.com even faster. Lots of issues to look over at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/infrastructure/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=performance https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/infrastructure/issues?scope=al...
- sytse 9y ago
  Rights now our issue speed is much improved. Finally GitLab.com http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902794 http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902794 is faster than GitHub.com http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902795 http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9/1902795 in one aspect. Still lots of work to do.
alvil 9y ago
Searching is still slow but otherwise Gitlab is excellent, I'm using it every day.
- brodock 9y ago
  It will get better when we enable Elasticsearch for the search feature. I don't think we have a canary issue but this may be useful: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3492 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3492
agnivade 9y ago

cmatija 9y ago

Just wanted to add to this and point out that Gitter is already completely open-source and available at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/ https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/

sumitgt 9y ago

Given that git has such a distributed nature, couldn't you simply move over your code to Gitlab if and when Github actually is on the verge of shutting down? I'm glad that Gitlab exists, however the lazy person in me sees no immediate need to use it. Even if all Github datacenters are destroyed by an asteroid, copies of repos I care about will still be around in enough people's computers to be able to recover.

elmigranto 9y ago
What about issues, wiki and other non-git data?
- mholt 9y ago
  (Nit: The GitHub wikis are also git repositories. https://help.github.com/articles/adding-and-editing-wiki-pages-locally/ https://help.github.com/articles/adding-and-editing-wiki-pag...) But anyway, the same argument could be made of an asteroid hitting your own datacenter with self-hosted GitLab instead.
- lloeki 9y ago
  IIRC GitLab can import GitHub issues straight from the UI.
  - zegerjan 9y ago
    Also PRs will be imported, milestones, labels and more: https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/project/import/github.html#overview https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/user/project/import/github.html#o...
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  Those can be extracted. Way more relevant imo: Links to your repo. For a mildly successful project a key part are external links pointing to your project. Those will point to a wrong location and you won't have control.

ganeshkrishnan 9y ago

I use their community edition and barring few hiccups while deleting auto-merged branches, the whole product is beyond terrific. Highly recommended to host it yourself and have your source on it

sytse 9y ago
Thanks for the kind words. BTW we fixed the hiccup you speak about. When you now create a merge request we added an option to set the state of 'delete branch on merge' on the merge request. You can set this to give a suggestion to the person merging, and it is off by default.