5 ms·

Isn't one of the main selling points of Gitlab their built-in CI? Anyone using Gitlab use an external CI?

superb-owl 4y ago
Funny, I was gonna say the same thing. But I also remembered GitHub now has built-in CI (Actions). I wonder if Circle is struggling to maintain market share.
- danielvaughn 4y ago
  With all the built-in support for CI, I'm not sure how CircleCI is even operating anymore.
philwelch 4y ago
My last job used Gitlab as an external CI.
mtlynch 4y ago
It appeals to me as someone who likes Circle's CI offering but wants to move away from Github. I tried using Gitlab's CI and was surprised at how limited it was. The Gitlab CI syntax was harder to follow, and my integration tests took 17m to run when they ran in almost 1/3 the time on Circle. A big part of the problem was that CircleCI lets me use an instance with 8 CPUs / 16 GB RAM with just a config file change[0], whereas every Gitlab instance is 1 CPU / 3.75 GB RAM unless you host your own runners.[1] But if I'm paying a company to manage CI, I don't want to provision my own hardware infrastructure [0] https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference#docker-execution-environment https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference#docker-exe... [1] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/saas/linux_saas_runner.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/saas/linux_saas_runner...
- judge2020 4y ago
  Related, GitHub has had 'use more powerful hosted runners' in the pipeline for over 2 years[0]. This issue replaced another now-deleted issue[1] from July 2020. Really disappointing, as I've had to resort to using `az vm start` -> run -> `az vm deallocate` to use an on-demand powerful runner. 0: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/161 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/161 1: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 (note: added `ga` `ae` and removed `beta` `cloud` labels on Oct 13, 2020 ; the previous text: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731200411/https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 https://web.archive.org/web/20200731200411/https://github.co... )
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    As a former CircleCI customer (my new employer uses Gitlab) I can highly recommend them. They make that issue so easy. You can even request GPU machines and it all works really well.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      Why are you a former customer?
      - simlevesque 4y ago
        They said that their new employer uses Gitlab. The link in the OP describes that before today you couldn't use both at the same time.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        I moved job.
  - thinkafterbef 4y ago
    I'm a bit biased as one of the founders of BuildJet, but we solve this exact issue. BuildJet for GitHub Actions, plugs elegantly into GitHub Actions. With 1-line change in your config, you get 2x speed for half of GitHub's price. Check it out @ https://buildjet.com/for-github-actions https://buildjet.com/for-github-actions
    - srijan4 4y ago
      We recently started using buildjet, and it has been nothing short of awesome. So I can highly recommend them.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Quick question, why does every startup on earth have google as a customer? Shouldn't a company of this size have its own solutions and programs? This is in no way a deg against your project, its just a general question .
ramoz 4y ago
They offer a whole kitchen sink at this point and honestly it's not great.
- cyberpunk 4y ago
  I really like GitLab's CI. Actions is probably winning the war, though.
  - pas 4y ago
    GitLab CI can launch multiple pipelines on the same push/trigger (use separate files, like GH Actions, etc), but even after using it for I don't even know how many years I'm still struggling with setting it up in a nice way.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    Actions does seem to be winning, but having used both extensively I'm convinced that it's on name recognition alone (with pricing being a second). Gitlab CI is my favorite of the many I've tried (gitlab, circle, travis, github), Actions is probably my least preferred. It gets the job done but there are always a lot of actions-specific stuff for every job, whereas with most of the others they're relatively portable. Actions feels like it was designed with lock-in as a primary goal.
avip 4y ago
Using built-in gitlab ci. It's definitely good enough for my ci needs. Setup was easy. Love having less tools involved in my day2day. Some features seem to work incorrectly (ex. some combinations of branch filter rules + file changes rules). Or I misread the docs. For a free service it gives excellent value. Circleci also good product. But having 1 less "thing" wins over most other considerations for me.
mdaniel 4y ago
As a long-time GitLab CI user, I do miss how the local circleci runner binary just worked. I am aware of gitlab-runner but it is a sick joke designed to mislead folks who just skim the docs into believing that they have a local execution story Or, I guess a more conciliatory stance is: wow, folks must be using some pretty hello-world pipelines if `gitlab-runner exec` works for you
- goodoldneon 4y ago
  We provision our self-hosted runners via Terraform and GitLab's Helm chart. It's a relatively painless setup, but obviously not a few button clicks and commands
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    > a local execution story I can see how "local" can have multiple meanings, but here I meant "as a developer on my laptop, can I have local docker run things the way GL is going to run things?" I hear people say a lot "oh, I just use shell scripts, NBD" but as I said, I'm sure for hello-world setups which don't have any includes or take advantage of GLCI constructs that can work fine, but what rubs me the wrong way is that "gitlab-runner exec" doesn't say "just use shell scripts," it says "gitlab-runner exec - execute a build locally" and it for sure does not do that
    - Volundr 4y ago
      Yeah this is a pain point for me as well, especially when developing the pipelines themselves. There's no good way to run it on my own machine, so I'm stuck pushing new commits to Gitlab over and over again and waiting for it to complete, or rather fail so I can troubleshoot the new error.
      - mdaniel 4y ago
        Depending on one's definition of "good," running GL locally in docker is (in my experience) painless, given sufficient disk space and probably RAM But yes, your observation is my whole complaint: it is not _reasonable_ to ask a GLCI developer to run a local copy of GL, complete with any shared GLCI template repos, in a local docker container just to have local execution. Maybe I wouldn't complain about it so much had I not started with circleci so long ago and had such a "wow, this is amazing" followed by gitlab-runner's :troll_face: -- to say nothing of GitHub Actions just straight up ignoring that whole demographic and hoping https://github.com/nektos/act https://github.com/nektos/act emulates enough to have people not notice the massive feature gap
mqus 4y ago
We're using gitlab with (on-premise) jenkins. It seems just much more capable (and if we choose to switch away from gitlab it won't matter)

Funny, I was gonna say the same thing. But I also remembered GitHub now has built-in CI (Actions). I wonder if Circle is struggling to maintain market share.

danielvaughn 4y ago
With all the built-in support for CI, I'm not sure how CircleCI is even operating anymore.

philwelch 4y ago

My last job used Gitlab as an external CI.

mtlynch 4y ago

It appeals to me as someone who likes Circle's CI offering but wants to move away from Github. I tried using Gitlab's CI and was surprised at how limited it was. The Gitlab CI syntax was harder to follow, and my integration tests took 17m to run when they ran in almost 1/3 the time on Circle. A big part of the problem was that CircleCI lets me use an instance with 8 CPUs / 16 GB RAM with just a config file change[0], whereas every Gitlab instance is 1 CPU / 3.75 GB RAM unless you host your own runners.[1] But if I'm paying a company to manage CI, I don't want to provision my own hardware infrastructure [0] https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference#docker-execution-environment https://circleci.com/docs/configuration-reference#docker-exe... [1] https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/saas/linux_saas_runner.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/saas/linux_saas_runner...

judge2020 4y ago
Related, GitHub has had 'use more powerful hosted runners' in the pipeline for over 2 years[0]. This issue replaced another now-deleted issue[1] from July 2020. Really disappointing, as I've had to resort to using `az vm start` -> run -> `az vm deallocate` to use an on-demand powerful runner. 0: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/161 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/161 1: https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 (note: added `ga` `ae` and removed `beta` `cloud` labels on Oct 13, 2020 ; the previous text: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731200411/https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/95 https://web.archive.org/web/20200731200411/https://github.co... )
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  As a former CircleCI customer (my new employer uses Gitlab) I can highly recommend them. They make that issue so easy. You can even request GPU machines and it all works really well.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    Why are you a former customer?
    - simlevesque 4y ago
      They said that their new employer uses Gitlab. The link in the OP describes that before today you couldn't use both at the same time.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I moved job.
- thinkafterbef 4y ago
  I'm a bit biased as one of the founders of BuildJet, but we solve this exact issue. BuildJet for GitHub Actions, plugs elegantly into GitHub Actions. With 1-line change in your config, you get 2x speed for half of GitHub's price. Check it out @ https://buildjet.com/for-github-actions https://buildjet.com/for-github-actions
  - srijan4 4y ago
    We recently started using buildjet, and it has been nothing short of awesome. So I can highly recommend them.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Quick question, why does every startup on earth have google as a customer? Shouldn't a company of this size have its own solutions and programs? This is in no way a deg against your project, its just a general question .

ramoz 4y ago

They offer a whole kitchen sink at this point and honestly it's not great.

cyberpunk 4y ago
I really like GitLab's CI. Actions is probably winning the war, though.
- pas 4y ago
  GitLab CI can launch multiple pipelines on the same push/trigger (use separate files, like GH Actions, etc), but even after using it for I don't even know how many years I'm still struggling with setting it up in a nice way.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Actions does seem to be winning, but having used both extensively I'm convinced that it's on name recognition alone (with pricing being a second). Gitlab CI is my favorite of the many I've tried (gitlab, circle, travis, github), Actions is probably my least preferred. It gets the job done but there are always a lot of actions-specific stuff for every job, whereas with most of the others they're relatively portable. Actions feels like it was designed with lock-in as a primary goal.

avip 4y ago

Using built-in gitlab ci. It's definitely good enough for my ci needs. Setup was easy. Love having less tools involved in my day2day. Some features seem to work incorrectly (ex. some combinations of branch filter rules + file changes rules). Or I misread the docs. For a free service it gives excellent value. Circleci also good product. But having 1 less "thing" wins over most other considerations for me.

mdaniel 4y ago

As a long-time GitLab CI user, I do miss how the local circleci runner binary just worked. I am aware of gitlab-runner but it is a sick joke designed to mislead folks who just skim the docs into believing that they have a local execution story Or, I guess a more conciliatory stance is: wow, folks must be using some pretty hello-world pipelines if `gitlab-runner exec` works for you

goodoldneon 4y ago
We provision our self-hosted runners via Terraform and GitLab's Helm chart. It's a relatively painless setup, but obviously not a few button clicks and commands
- mdaniel 4y ago
  > a local execution story I can see how "local" can have multiple meanings, but here I meant "as a developer on my laptop, can I have local docker run things the way GL is going to run things?" I hear people say a lot "oh, I just use shell scripts, NBD" but as I said, I'm sure for hello-world setups which don't have any includes or take advantage of GLCI constructs that can work fine, but what rubs me the wrong way is that "gitlab-runner exec" doesn't say "just use shell scripts," it says "gitlab-runner exec - execute a build locally" and it for sure does not do that
  - Volundr 4y ago
    Yeah this is a pain point for me as well, especially when developing the pipelines themselves. There's no good way to run it on my own machine, so I'm stuck pushing new commits to Gitlab over and over again and waiting for it to complete, or rather fail so I can troubleshoot the new error.
    - mdaniel 4y ago
      Depending on one's definition of "good," running GL locally in docker is (in my experience) painless, given sufficient disk space and probably RAM But yes, your observation is my whole complaint: it is not _reasonable_ to ask a GLCI developer to run a local copy of GL, complete with any shared GLCI template repos, in a local docker container just to have local execution. Maybe I wouldn't complain about it so much had I not started with circleci so long ago and had such a "wow, this is amazing" followed by gitlab-runner's :troll_face: -- to say nothing of GitHub Actions just straight up ignoring that whole demographic and hoping https://github.com/nektos/act https://github.com/nektos/act emulates enough to have people not notice the massive feature gap

mqus 4y ago

We're using gitlab with (on-premise) jenkins. It seems just much more capable (and if we choose to switch away from gitlab it won't matter)