9 ms·

GitLab, open source github clone, reaches 3.0

328 points by georgebashi 14y ago

mercurial 14y ago
It's not quite a "github clone" in the sense that it's supposed to be self-hosted. It would make it more of a trac/redmine concurrent, depending on how much work has gone into the wiki and project management part. Is anyone actually using it? And ironically, the source code is hosted on github.
- axx 14y ago
  There're a lot of people who don't want to use GitHub for whatever privacy policy. If you consider using Gitlab as a in-house self-hosted "GitHub-feature like" alternative, Gitlab is really good! We use it for our projects and it runs quite well.
  - jbverschoor 14y ago
    https://enterprise.github.com https://enterprise.github.com Your own private github.
    - Supreme 14y ago
      This costs money, GitLab does not. The benefit is obvious.
    - axx 14y ago
      $5k is a lot of money for smaller companies. :) Also: don't get me wrong, i love Github and what it's doing for our opensource culture, but like everything else, sometimes there're other requirements.
    - MetaCosm 14y ago
      We did a 45 day trial. To call it disappointing would be a vast understatement. Performance problems, no root access, no direct repository access, poor tooling (had to wait for support to write us a script). We were actually locked out of our repo with no recovery options for about 4 days before we gave up on Github support. I do love Github, just hate their "have your own" VM product, it is bad. After that we tried Gitorious (back then it was still an unholy nightmare to install) before finally landing on Gitlab. Gitlab isn't perfect, sometimes the ruby process likes to eat gigs of memory and has to be restarted (we have very large repos)... But Gitlab has a great trajectory, every release is a great step up and I find the multiple branches working mode more natural than the multiple repos method that github has...
      - Diederich 14y ago
        Huh..we've had full root access since the beginning. (Github FI) Even across all of their releases. There's a place to drop your public key in. Github support has been variable, but generally good for us. The switch to a VM was touchy at first, but once we gave it enough horsepower, things were fine.
        MetaCosm 14y ago
        https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-access https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-a... In order to preserve the integrity of the appliance and ensure that it remains in a consistent state, we have these limitations in place: - Root access is not provided. - The admin user password is not provided. - Installation and execution of third party software is not permitted. - Modification of the underlying VM configuration is not permitted. Bypassing any of these limitations will void all warranties and may put your installation in an unsupportable state.
      - lionetti 14y ago
        Disclaimer: I work for Atlassian Atlassian Stash was released five months ago for Enterprise teams adopting Git behind the firewall. Stash is installed on your servers and gives you full control of your Git environment - security, user management (LDAP), infrastructure support and pull requests.
      - jarito 14y ago
        Totally agree. We have about 500 devs on enterprise github (which is totally different than github:fi) and it is terrible. There have been so many issues including constant service failures that require reboot, missing / disabled features, poor ui choices that we are still cleaning up, the list goes on. I still can't even limit access to it using an ldap group. If someone works for the company, then they can access it. Totally unacceptable for a product that licenses based on numbers of seats.
  - vog 14y ago
    https://bitbucket.org/ https://bitbucket.org/ Bitbucket suports Git, too. (not just Hg)
- doublerebel 14y ago
  I'm using it right now. It's rather lightweight and is easy to setup on a low end VPS. The git-related code has features Bitbucket only just added: side by side diffs, comments at line number, activity log... The issue tracker is rather basic (like Github) so you guessed correctly -- many people are using it alongside Redmine. I've created a simple patch and theme to tie the two together [1] - something that would be impossible with Github. Between the two it's had a significant positive impact on recent projects for both me and my clients. It's been much easier to grasp the current state of the project than using just gitk or a standard file browser or cli client. I expect to see many more Gitlab installations in the future. The ability to customize it for a need is invaluable. [1] https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/97#issuecomment-9185334 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/97#issuecomment-...
- sytse 14y ago
  You can also get Gitlab as a service on http://gitlab.com http://gitlab.com I started Gitlab.com last month and we already have more than 250 people who have created an account. Many companies are already using Gitlab behind their firewall: Phusion, Thomson Reuters, Michigan State University, see the bottom of the Gitlab.org front page for more. The fact that the source code is on Github is ironic, we need public repo's to change it: http://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/3159951-allow-public-repositories http://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestion...
  - twog 14y ago
    Just out of curiosity, are you a core contributor to the gitlab project? Or did you build a SaaS around the existing OSS work that had been done?
    - sytse 14y ago
      I'm not a core contributor, we're building on the work that was already done. However, we are working fulltime on this and we work in the open and are sending all our work upstream. So we hope to become core contributors and help the Gitlab project flourish. Read more on http://blog.gitlab.com/contributions/ http://blog.gitlab.com/contributions/
- aliukani 14y ago
  I've set up Gitlab at Northeastern University to explore it as an option for replacing our cgit install(s). I like the UI, but my only problem with it is that it doesn't support putting repos under a user namespace like Github does (with Gitlab, rails/rails and ali/rails can't exist on the same system). AFAIK there's no plan for Gitlab to support this, but it looks like Gitorious already does.
  - sytse 14y ago
    I'm the founder of Gitlab.com and this is very high on our list of priorities. All our code is open and we will try to merge the changes back into the main project. This functionality is the most upvoted item on our feedback site https://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/3211258-allow-repos-with-the-same-name https://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestio...
mattdeboard 14y ago
Awesome. I hope this is fairly straightforward to roll out. I've tried out Gitorious and iirc it was pretty messy.
- estel 14y ago
  We're currently running Gitorious and it's definitely incredibly messy. I'm tempted to try and "migrate" to Gitlab.
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    You are definitely not the only one one ... I too am using Gitorious, but I would definitely agree with messy and having looked at alternatives.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- thomanil 14y ago
  mattdebord and estel: I'm one of the core Gitorious committers. What specifically did you find messy? The initial setup or GUI/UX? Honest question, as we're constantly trying to prioritize based on the painpoints of users. :) BTW we've recently addressed the complicated manual setup with a new, automated installer that gets you set up within 30 minutes: http://getgitorious.com/installer http://getgitorious.com/installer Also, a new and improved UI is due to arrive in Gitorious soon: http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-repositories/ http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-repositori... All feedback is very welcome.
  - Pyrodogg 14y ago
    I just setup a local Gitorious install this weekend. Really nice to see this planned advance in the UX.
  - mattdeboard 14y ago
    It's been quite a long while for me, so I couldn't be more specific for you. My recollection is that it was very complex, that's really all I've got.
callmebison 14y ago
See also RhodeCode, which is more of a BitBucket clone (supports git & mercurial). http://rhodecode.org/ http://rhodecode.org/ If you are looking for something a bit different, there's also fossil. http://www.fossil-scm.org/ http://www.fossil-scm.org/
- lrem 14y ago
  Unfortunately, Fossil's web-facing part is somewhat neglected. Up to the point, that the issue tracker for Fossil itself has been practically closed and the docs moved out of the wiki... I still use it as a nice dvcs though, mainly for the single binary file installation.
  - yebyen 14y ago
    Where do you see docs outside of the wiki? (Duh, the rest of the internet...) Also, where do you get the idea that the issue tracker has been closed? It's possible that the maintainer has gone on hiatus, and there's not as much activity as there was once, but I see they have fresh issues this week and a release just yesterday. I think that Fossil is a terrific way to introduce anyone to command line, database, and scm who you intend to sell or gift with a 'database' of any kind. It's very odd to me how many people can't wrap their head around the concept of a file, or database, let alone ./configure; make; make install I think that SQL is the most accessible language to those people, since it fits a simple grammar and statements end in semicolons, and the fact that Fossil repositories can come packaged into a sqlite database file means that two weeks after you got them to try using Fossil to keep their copy, there should be no magic left in the box, you can show them a database and they should 'get it'. I have not tried this with anyone, but it should work... of course unless they just aren't trying...
    - saraid216 14y ago
      Eh, never underestimate the challenge of understanding something from a newbie's perspective.
    - lrem 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- mapleoin 14y ago
  Also , even though I share you sentiments on Windows, adding: "Gitlab does not run on Windows and we have no plans of making Gitlab compatible." AFAICS Gitlab is server software. You can run whatever you want on your dev machine. I assume you didn't mean you want to run your own GitLab server on each dev machine, I don't see how that would make sense.
  - Adirael 14y ago
    They mean Windows servers, not clients.
    - mapleoin 14y ago
      I'm aware of that, but the parent was referring to clients.
- callmebison 14y ago
  > There exist plenty of genuine windows devs out there that use git, or devs that switch between OS'es for different tasks (myself included, I'd boot up windows to work on graphics/games) Yes, but you probably shouldn't be running a code hosting platform on one of your developer workstations. I'm pretty sure it would work from a client point of view (it's still git after all), just that they won't support you running their web app on windows.
- kouno 14y ago
  You are reading it wrong. "Gitlab does not run on Windows" means that you should deploy this on a linux _server_. You can still use windows on your local machine, and push your changes to a linux box. It's true that you will have to have another machine, or a virtual box to use gitlab, but I believe that's how small/medium companies work.
adnans 14y ago
We've been using Gitblit (http://gitblit.com/ http://gitblit.com/) in the office for new projects and are quite happy with it. It all comes together when you hook up Groovy push scripts which we use to notify our Jenkins instance to test and build which in turn pushes it to our dev server for deploy.
- slashdotdash 14y ago
  Agreed, Gitblit is probably the best solution if you're forced to self-host git on a Windows server.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Fonts look really horrible in Chrome on Windows. That has been a problem for a long time and they've still not done anything about it. I know that Google doesn't let any employees use Windows so that explains why they overlook stuff like this. But it's a big deal, so I'm uninstalling Chrome from all of my Windows computers now.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
_pferreir_ 14y ago
I am using it for a small project in my company and I'm pretty happy with it. It's nice for enterprise-level projects that are not Open Source. You could pay for GitHub or even get a private BitBucket repo for free, but some companies just prefer having their own thing.
- jbverschoor 14y ago
  Or you can just get your own real github on your own servers for $5k/year: https://enterprise.github.com https://enterprise.github.com
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    Yeah, uh, there's plenty of room for people like me who have lots of repos that either MUST or should stay private, but neither wants to use BitBucket, nor pay $5k/year, although that is pretty cheap to start with, my projects aren't for revenue generation.
yakshay 14y ago
Does the web editor support editing files in a bare repo ?
- sytse 14y ago
  I assume you mean an empty repo (without any files) and not a bare repo? A bare repo has no working copy and is pushable, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-convert-a-git-repository-from-normal-to-bare http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-convert-a-... I don't think the editor allows you to create new files.
- davvid 14y ago
  Does the web editor support editing files in a bare repo ? Yes. The trick is that lib/gitlab/file_editor.rb checks the file out, modifies it, commits it, and removes it. I read this from one of the comments in the original post.
allr 14y ago
This looks great. Currently using Bitbucket, but always a good thing that an Open-source alternartive exists!
floydprice 14y ago
This is a great! Well done guys you deserve real credit for building and maintaining such a well written and well thought out piece of software. Congratulations on reaching 3.0!
stevedomin 14y ago
I think it's great that this kind of project exists. But why copying so much on Github ? There is always room for something new.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Probably because people are used to Github's interface and prefer it to many other things?
benjamincburns 14y ago
I wonder if the grammar mistakes are beneficial for adoption or if it drives people away (no, really). The "who is already use" line on the homepage reminds me of "All your base are belong to us." I could see it appealing to a certain audience of programmers, IT support, and the like -- particularly those with a background in gaming. Has anyone done any A/B testing on something like this? [Edited: I'm _really_, _really_ not trying to be the grammar police here. I'm in no position to do so, and my grammar is faaar from perfect. I'm just wondering about the actual impacts (or lack thereof).]
- rrrene 14y ago
  Judging from the grammatical errors and the core dev's last names, they sound eastern european (ukraine).
  - benjamincburns 14y ago
    Judging by the downvotes and this reply I think I made a mistake in making whether or not it's meant to be humorous the focus of my question. It seems like it should be intuitive that grammar mistakes == bad conversion, but I'd love to see numbers on it since I really doubt it's hurting them much, if at all, in this case. C'est la vie.
  - sytse 14y ago
    Most core dev of Gitlab are based on the Ukraine. But it is quickly getting more international on https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors (I'm @dosire, the founder of Gitlab.com)
- jthei 14y ago
  As has been mentioned, you see this a lot in projects that are started by a small core group of programmers that have english as a second (or additional) language but are attemtping to develop to an international audience. It's open source though, so us native speakers are more than capable of helping them out.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
paddyoloughlin 14y ago
Timely for me. At my workplace, we are migrating to git and the devs would like to use github, but management is expressing reluctance to either rely on an external host or fork out for github enterprise, despite our arguments. I was already planning on installing gitlab this week to try it out. Anyone here got any advice or suggestions on using it as a Github replacement for a small team?
- X-Istence 14y ago
  I haven't used Gitlab, but Gitorious has their source code completely open as well, and it is fairly simple to get set up and running!
  - benjamincburns 14y ago
    We're on an old install of gitosis at my shop, and also keeping an eye out for something to switch to. Gitlab certainly looks appealing, especially given its similarities with github. Having used Gitorious, are there any strengths or weaknesses you see in GitLab that would have either prevented you from using it or made you choose it over Gitorious were you to make the decision over again?
    - X-Istence 14y ago
      At the time when I was looking Gitlab was in its infancy, and Gitorious was pretty much the only thing out there. The search wasn't exhaustive as it was a "we need to get this working, now." kind of project where we didn't really get a lot of time to play with different platforms.
khet 14y ago
Github like any monopoly will come back to bite us. That is why I think we need an open source Github. That said, the interface seems a bit too "inspired" by Github. I hope they rethink how an application like this should work for themselves rather than allowing Github to influence their designs. I see this quite frequently among opensource projects, they try to make clones rather than making a better product. TLDR: Think about how the UI should work in your application. Its different for everyone so don't blindly clone others.
- mccoyst 14y ago
  How is Github a monopoly? Bitbucket, Google Code, and even junky old SourceForge are far from unpopular.
  - vog 14y ago
    While I agree that Bitbucket and Google Code are interesting competitors, I think the "popularity" of SourceForge is misleading. SourceForge is only big because they are already hosting so many projects. I haven't seen any intresting new projects there. And those being there are would mostly be willing to switch to GitHub, if they had enough spare time for that (it's not just the project switch, but also the switch from CVS or Subversion to Git they would have to manage).
  - gue5t 14y ago
    I think "monoculture" or just centralization in general would be a better name than "monopoly" for what the OP is getting at. Hacking is all about decentralization to ensure free access. If github implements a policy (surely there's some action permitted by TOS, perhaps which most people would like, that you wouldn't), UI change, etc., you have no real recourse outside of convincing them it's in their best interest to change it to how you like it. With a decentralized system where you run your own node you can modify the code and behavior at your discretion. On top of the possibility for customization and extension, having more independent nodes means less chance of catastrophic failure. The cloud is remarkably unstable; look at heroku's uptime and at cascading failures even in redundant cloud systems for an example. It'd take the whole internet falling apart for thousands of individual hackers' repositories to all break down.
Evbn 14y ago
GitHub should GPL their UI and compete on server execution.
- benmanns 14y ago
  Why should they do that? For their sake or for yours?
potench 14y ago
I'm confused by one thing. I found this awesome jpg checked in on the GitLab Django demo project: http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474703a2f2f692e716b6d652e6d652f333667347a352e6a7067.jpg http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474... Seems like everything else on the demo repo requires me to log in but I can access this file without authorization... Why is that? Found it in the Django demo project attachments tab: http://demo.gitlabhq.com/django/files http://demo.gitlabhq.com/django/files which requires login. It's gloriously ironic! A photo mocking Rails security attached to a private repo... that's not secure.
- sytse 14y ago
  You are right that attachments are only hidden and not protected by default. GitLab uses the CarrierWave gem to store attachments and this defaults to a publicly accessible directory. You can configure the behaviour of the attachment in https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/note.rb https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/...
sandGorgon 14y ago
How does this handle ssh key lookup - does it do something like Github? (key lookup in mysql? )
- sytse 14y ago
  It uses Gitolite to create 'virtual' user accounts https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite
xxiao 14y ago
installed it to ubuntu 12.04 with postgresql, can not login with default username and password. the postgresql section in the documentation is plainly wrong.
kennytm 14y ago
It's not mentioned in the release note, but I find implementing "Mix commit notes with merge request notes on MR show page" (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1630 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1630) the greatest change in 3.0. We are using merge requests as a tool in code review, and this commit finally allow us to go through all comments of an MR in a single page. It would be perfect if the issue "Save few lines of code with Merge Request comment like github does" (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1007 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1007) is implemented, as this would allow us to finally reliably comment directly on the "diff" tab.
SkyMarshal 14y ago
Amusing that it's hosted on Github [1]. There's also Gitorious, which has been around a while and is mature, full-featured, and provides both a SaaS [2] and the FOSS software you can host yourself [3]. I keep backups of some of my repo's there. [1]: https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq [2]: http://gitorious.org/ http://gitorious.org/ [3]: http://gitorious.com/ http://gitorious.com/
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Gitorious is also a god damn nightmare of things to setup and tweak to get working.
  - thomanil 14y ago
    It used to be, but now you can simply use the automated installer: http://getgitorious.com/installer http://getgitorious.com/installer
- thomanil 14y ago
  Thanks for that. BTW our new official home page can be found at http://getgitorious.com http://getgitorious.com :)
  - SkyMarshal 14y ago
    Gladly, thank you!
  - cdelsolar 14y ago
    Why is there a gitorious.com, a gitorious.org, and a getgitorious.com? :(
    - thomanil 14y ago
      gitorious.org - the free open source hosting service (came first) gitorious.com - the commercial company behind it (came later) getgitorious.com - official doc, starting point etc (recently added as a common starting point)
waffle_ss 14y ago
We've been using GitLab for about six months and it has been great. The developers iterate very quickly and they are totally receptive to pull requests (have had a couple accepted and one rejected for good reason). If you install it on Ubuntu, their wiki has instructions that you can pretty much copy and paste; the most complicated bit probably being the gitolite setup, which is what it uses internally for repo auth.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
I've been using gitlab for a while, and so far I like it. It has a few weaknesses here and there for sure, and the UI has some wonky aspects, but overall it works quite well.
ergo14 14y ago
Actually there is one other interesting project that has some high profile users and can be used as self hosted bitbucket/github: http://rhodecode.org/ http://rhodecode.org/ It supports both hg and git, adn while the ui could look better - its very functional and can do a lot.
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
I liked Gitlab when I ran it for myself for a while. It was great; couldn't knock it in anyway except for (at the time) setup instructions that weren't detailed/accurate enough to rely upon, especially regarding the main dependency gitorious. The big sell for this is simple, or even trivial, setup. I was just a single user so most of the functionality was a loss, so I transferred to bitbucket (free private repos) knowing full well the potential risks. It saved me the effort of keeping my own server up to date and secure (I'm not the pro, I can trust github or bitbucket to know and do better) at the cost of no longer being self sufficient. That said, I'd recommend this for any organisation that wants its own github, doesn't want to pay enterprise money, and doesn't mind doing all the hard work itself. And that's not faint praise, because it was fucking good when I did use it (while it was mid-Twitter Bootstrap conversion).

328 points by georgebashi 14y ago

It's not quite a "github clone" in the sense that it's supposed to be self-hosted. It would make it more of a trac/redmine concurrent, depending on how much work has gone into the wiki and project management part. Is anyone actually using it? And ironically, the source code is hosted on github.

axx 14y ago
There're a lot of people who don't want to use GitHub for whatever privacy policy. If you consider using Gitlab as a in-house self-hosted "GitHub-feature like" alternative, Gitlab is really good! We use it for our projects and it runs quite well.
- jbverschoor 14y ago
  https://enterprise.github.com https://enterprise.github.com Your own private github.
  - Supreme 14y ago
    This costs money, GitLab does not. The benefit is obvious.
  - axx 14y ago
    $5k is a lot of money for smaller companies. :) Also: don't get me wrong, i love Github and what it's doing for our opensource culture, but like everything else, sometimes there're other requirements.
  - MetaCosm 14y ago
    We did a 45 day trial. To call it disappointing would be a vast understatement. Performance problems, no root access, no direct repository access, poor tooling (had to wait for support to write us a script). We were actually locked out of our repo with no recovery options for about 4 days before we gave up on Github support. I do love Github, just hate their "have your own" VM product, it is bad. After that we tried Gitorious (back then it was still an unholy nightmare to install) before finally landing on Gitlab. Gitlab isn't perfect, sometimes the ruby process likes to eat gigs of memory and has to be restarted (we have very large repos)... But Gitlab has a great trajectory, every release is a great step up and I find the multiple branches working mode more natural than the multiple repos method that github has...
    - Diederich 14y ago
      Huh..we've had full root access since the beginning. (Github FI) Even across all of their releases. There's a place to drop your public key in. Github support has been variable, but generally good for us. The switch to a VM was touchy at first, but once we gave it enough horsepower, things were fine.
      - MetaCosm 14y ago
        https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-access https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-a... In order to preserve the integrity of the appliance and ensure that it remains in a consistent state, we have these limitations in place: - Root access is not provided. - The admin user password is not provided. - Installation and execution of third party software is not permitted. - Modification of the underlying VM configuration is not permitted. Bypassing any of these limitations will void all warranties and may put your installation in an unsupportable state.
    - lionetti 14y ago
      Disclaimer: I work for Atlassian Atlassian Stash was released five months ago for Enterprise teams adopting Git behind the firewall. Stash is installed on your servers and gives you full control of your Git environment - security, user management (LDAP), infrastructure support and pull requests.
    - jarito 14y ago
      Totally agree. We have about 500 devs on enterprise github (which is totally different than github:fi) and it is terrible. There have been so many issues including constant service failures that require reboot, missing / disabled features, poor ui choices that we are still cleaning up, the list goes on. I still can't even limit access to it using an ldap group. If someone works for the company, then they can access it. Totally unacceptable for a product that licenses based on numbers of seats.
- vog 14y ago
  https://bitbucket.org/ https://bitbucket.org/ Bitbucket suports Git, too. (not just Hg)
doublerebel 14y ago
I'm using it right now. It's rather lightweight and is easy to setup on a low end VPS. The git-related code has features Bitbucket only just added: side by side diffs, comments at line number, activity log... The issue tracker is rather basic (like Github) so you guessed correctly -- many people are using it alongside Redmine. I've created a simple patch and theme to tie the two together [1] - something that would be impossible with Github. Between the two it's had a significant positive impact on recent projects for both me and my clients. It's been much easier to grasp the current state of the project than using just gitk or a standard file browser or cli client. I expect to see many more Gitlab installations in the future. The ability to customize it for a need is invaluable. [1] https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/97#issuecomment-9185334 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/97#issuecomment-...
sytse 14y ago
You can also get Gitlab as a service on http://gitlab.com http://gitlab.com I started Gitlab.com last month and we already have more than 250 people who have created an account. Many companies are already using Gitlab behind their firewall: Phusion, Thomson Reuters, Michigan State University, see the bottom of the Gitlab.org front page for more. The fact that the source code is on Github is ironic, we need public repo's to change it: http://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/3159951-allow-public-repositories http://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestion...
- twog 14y ago
  Just out of curiosity, are you a core contributor to the gitlab project? Or did you build a SaaS around the existing OSS work that had been done?
  - sytse 14y ago
    I'm not a core contributor, we're building on the work that was already done. However, we are working fulltime on this and we work in the open and are sending all our work upstream. So we hope to become core contributors and help the Gitlab project flourish. Read more on http://blog.gitlab.com/contributions/ http://blog.gitlab.com/contributions/
aliukani 14y ago
I've set up Gitlab at Northeastern University to explore it as an option for replacing our cgit install(s). I like the UI, but my only problem with it is that it doesn't support putting repos under a user namespace like Github does (with Gitlab, rails/rails and ali/rails can't exist on the same system). AFAIK there's no plan for Gitlab to support this, but it looks like Gitorious already does.
- sytse 14y ago
  I'm the founder of Gitlab.com and this is very high on our list of priorities. All our code is open and we will try to merge the changes back into the main project. This functionality is the most upvoted item on our feedback site https://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestions/3211258-allow-repos-with-the-same-name https://gitlab.uservoice.com/forums/176466-general/suggestio...

mattdeboard 14y ago

Awesome. I hope this is fairly straightforward to roll out. I've tried out Gitorious and iirc it was pretty messy.

estel 14y ago
We're currently running Gitorious and it's definitely incredibly messy. I'm tempted to try and "migrate" to Gitlab.
- X-Istence 14y ago
  You are definitely not the only one one ... I too am using Gitorious, but I would definitely agree with messy and having looked at alternatives.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
thomanil 14y ago
mattdebord and estel: I'm one of the core Gitorious committers. What specifically did you find messy? The initial setup or GUI/UX? Honest question, as we're constantly trying to prioritize based on the painpoints of users. :) BTW we've recently addressed the complicated manual setup with a new, automated installer that gets you set up within 30 minutes: http://getgitorious.com/installer http://getgitorious.com/installer Also, a new and improved UI is due to arrive in Gitorious soon: http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-repositories/ http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-repositori... All feedback is very welcome.
- Pyrodogg 14y ago
  I just setup a local Gitorious install this weekend. Really nice to see this planned advance in the UX.
- mattdeboard 14y ago
  It's been quite a long while for me, so I couldn't be more specific for you. My recollection is that it was very complex, that's really all I've got.

callmebison 14y ago

See also RhodeCode, which is more of a BitBucket clone (supports git & mercurial). http://rhodecode.org/ http://rhodecode.org/ If you are looking for something a bit different, there's also fossil. http://www.fossil-scm.org/ http://www.fossil-scm.org/

lrem 14y ago
Unfortunately, Fossil's web-facing part is somewhat neglected. Up to the point, that the issue tracker for Fossil itself has been practically closed and the docs moved out of the wiki... I still use it as a nice dvcs though, mainly for the single binary file installation.
- yebyen 14y ago
  Where do you see docs outside of the wiki? (Duh, the rest of the internet...) Also, where do you get the idea that the issue tracker has been closed? It's possible that the maintainer has gone on hiatus, and there's not as much activity as there was once, but I see they have fresh issues this week and a release just yesterday. I think that Fossil is a terrific way to introduce anyone to command line, database, and scm who you intend to sell or gift with a 'database' of any kind. It's very odd to me how many people can't wrap their head around the concept of a file, or database, let alone ./configure; make; make install I think that SQL is the most accessible language to those people, since it fits a simple grammar and statements end in semicolons, and the fact that Fossil repositories can come packaged into a sqlite database file means that two weeks after you got them to try using Fossil to keep their copy, there should be no magic left in the box, you can show them a database and they should 'get it'. I have not tried this with anyone, but it should work... of course unless they just aren't trying...
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Eh, never underestimate the challenge of understanding something from a newbie's perspective.
  - lrem 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mapleoin 14y ago
Also , even though I share you sentiments on Windows, adding: "Gitlab does not run on Windows and we have no plans of making Gitlab compatible." AFAICS Gitlab is server software. You can run whatever you want on your dev machine. I assume you didn't mean you want to run your own GitLab server on each dev machine, I don't see how that would make sense.
- Adirael 14y ago
  They mean Windows servers, not clients.
  - mapleoin 14y ago
    I'm aware of that, but the parent was referring to clients.
callmebison 14y ago
> There exist plenty of genuine windows devs out there that use git, or devs that switch between OS'es for different tasks (myself included, I'd boot up windows to work on graphics/games) Yes, but you probably shouldn't be running a code hosting platform on one of your developer workstations. I'm pretty sure it would work from a client point of view (it's still git after all), just that they won't support you running their web app on windows.
kouno 14y ago
You are reading it wrong. "Gitlab does not run on Windows" means that you should deploy this on a linux _server_. You can still use windows on your local machine, and push your changes to a linux box. It's true that you will have to have another machine, or a virtual box to use gitlab, but I believe that's how small/medium companies work.

adnans 14y ago

We've been using Gitblit (http://gitblit.com/ http://gitblit.com/) in the office for new projects and are quite happy with it. It all comes together when you hook up Groovy push scripts which we use to notify our Jenkins instance to test and build which in turn pushes it to our dev server for deploy.

slashdotdash 14y ago
Agreed, Gitblit is probably the best solution if you're forced to self-host git on a Windows server.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Fonts look really horrible in Chrome on Windows. That has been a problem for a long time and they've still not done anything about it. I know that Google doesn't let any employees use Windows so that explains why they overlook stuff like this. But it's a big deal, so I'm uninstalling Chrome from all of my Windows computers now.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

_pferreir_ 14y ago

I am using it for a small project in my company and I'm pretty happy with it. It's nice for enterprise-level projects that are not Open Source. You could pay for GitHub or even get a private BitBucket repo for free, but some companies just prefer having their own thing.

jbverschoor 14y ago
Or you can just get your own real github on your own servers for $5k/year: https://enterprise.github.com https://enterprise.github.com
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Yeah, uh, there's plenty of room for people like me who have lots of repos that either MUST or should stay private, but neither wants to use BitBucket, nor pay $5k/year, although that is pretty cheap to start with, my projects aren't for revenue generation.

yakshay 14y ago

Does the web editor support editing files in a bare repo ?

sytse 14y ago
I assume you mean an empty repo (without any files) and not a bare repo? A bare repo has no working copy and is pushable, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-convert-a-git-repository-from-normal-to-bare http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-convert-a-... I don't think the editor allows you to create new files.
davvid 14y ago
Does the web editor support editing files in a bare repo ? Yes. The trick is that lib/gitlab/file_editor.rb checks the file out, modifies it, commits it, and removes it. I read this from one of the comments in the original post.

allr 14y ago

This looks great. Currently using Bitbucket, but always a good thing that an Open-source alternartive exists!

floydprice 14y ago

This is a great! Well done guys you deserve real credit for building and maintaining such a well written and well thought out piece of software. Congratulations on reaching 3.0!

stevedomin 14y ago

I think it's great that this kind of project exists. But why copying so much on Github ? There is always room for something new.

slurgfest 14y ago
Probably because people are used to Github's interface and prefer it to many other things?

benjamincburns 14y ago

I wonder if the grammar mistakes are beneficial for adoption or if it drives people away (no, really). The "who is already use" line on the homepage reminds me of "All your base are belong to us." I could see it appealing to a certain audience of programmers, IT support, and the like -- particularly those with a background in gaming. Has anyone done any A/B testing on something like this? [Edited: I'm _really_, _really_ not trying to be the grammar police here. I'm in no position to do so, and my grammar is faaar from perfect. I'm just wondering about the actual impacts (or lack thereof).]

rrrene 14y ago
Judging from the grammatical errors and the core dev's last names, they sound eastern european (ukraine).
- benjamincburns 14y ago
  Judging by the downvotes and this reply I think I made a mistake in making whether or not it's meant to be humorous the focus of my question. It seems like it should be intuitive that grammar mistakes == bad conversion, but I'd love to see numbers on it since I really doubt it's hurting them much, if at all, in this case. C'est la vie.
- sytse 14y ago
  Most core dev of Gitlab are based on the Ukraine. But it is quickly getting more international on https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/graphs/contributors (I'm @dosire, the founder of Gitlab.com)
jthei 14y ago
As has been mentioned, you see this a lot in projects that are started by a small core group of programmers that have english as a second (or additional) language but are attemtping to develop to an international audience. It's open source though, so us native speakers are more than capable of helping them out.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

paddyoloughlin 14y ago

Timely for me. At my workplace, we are migrating to git and the devs would like to use github, but management is expressing reluctance to either rely on an external host or fork out for github enterprise, despite our arguments. I was already planning on installing gitlab this week to try it out. Anyone here got any advice or suggestions on using it as a Github replacement for a small team?

X-Istence 14y ago
I haven't used Gitlab, but Gitorious has their source code completely open as well, and it is fairly simple to get set up and running!
- benjamincburns 14y ago
  We're on an old install of gitosis at my shop, and also keeping an eye out for something to switch to. Gitlab certainly looks appealing, especially given its similarities with github. Having used Gitorious, are there any strengths or weaknesses you see in GitLab that would have either prevented you from using it or made you choose it over Gitorious were you to make the decision over again?
  - X-Istence 14y ago
    At the time when I was looking Gitlab was in its infancy, and Gitorious was pretty much the only thing out there. The search wasn't exhaustive as it was a "we need to get this working, now." kind of project where we didn't really get a lot of time to play with different platforms.

khet 14y ago

Github like any monopoly will come back to bite us. That is why I think we need an open source Github. That said, the interface seems a bit too "inspired" by Github. I hope they rethink how an application like this should work for themselves rather than allowing Github to influence their designs. I see this quite frequently among opensource projects, they try to make clones rather than making a better product. TLDR: Think about how the UI should work in your application. Its different for everyone so don't blindly clone others.

mccoyst 14y ago
How is Github a monopoly? Bitbucket, Google Code, and even junky old SourceForge are far from unpopular.
- vog 14y ago
  While I agree that Bitbucket and Google Code are interesting competitors, I think the "popularity" of SourceForge is misleading. SourceForge is only big because they are already hosting so many projects. I haven't seen any intresting new projects there. And those being there are would mostly be willing to switch to GitHub, if they had enough spare time for that (it's not just the project switch, but also the switch from CVS or Subversion to Git they would have to manage).
- gue5t 14y ago
  I think "monoculture" or just centralization in general would be a better name than "monopoly" for what the OP is getting at. Hacking is all about decentralization to ensure free access. If github implements a policy (surely there's some action permitted by TOS, perhaps which most people would like, that you wouldn't), UI change, etc., you have no real recourse outside of convincing them it's in their best interest to change it to how you like it. With a decentralized system where you run your own node you can modify the code and behavior at your discretion. On top of the possibility for customization and extension, having more independent nodes means less chance of catastrophic failure. The cloud is remarkably unstable; look at heroku's uptime and at cascading failures even in redundant cloud systems for an example. It'd take the whole internet falling apart for thousands of individual hackers' repositories to all break down.

Evbn 14y ago

GitHub should GPL their UI and compete on server execution.

benmanns 14y ago
Why should they do that? For their sake or for yours?

potench 14y ago

I'm confused by one thing. I found this awesome jpg checked in on the GitLab Django demo project: http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474703a2f2f692e716b6d652e6d652f333667347a352e6a7067.jpg http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474... Seems like everything else on the demo repo requires me to log in but I can access this file without authorization... Why is that? Found it in the Django demo project attachments tab: http://demo.gitlabhq.com/django/files http://demo.gitlabhq.com/django/files which requires login. It's gloriously ironic! A photo mocking Rails security attached to a private repo... that's not secure.

sytse 14y ago
You are right that attachments are only hidden and not protected by default. GitLab uses the CarrierWave gem to store attachments and this defaults to a publicly accessible directory. You can configure the behaviour of the attachment in https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/note.rb https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/...

sandGorgon 14y ago

How does this handle ssh key lookup - does it do something like Github? (key lookup in mysql? )

sytse 14y ago
It uses Gitolite to create 'virtual' user accounts https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite

xxiao 14y ago

installed it to ubuntu 12.04 with postgresql, can not login with default username and password. the postgresql section in the documentation is plainly wrong.

kennytm 14y ago

It's not mentioned in the release note, but I find implementing "Mix commit notes with merge request notes on MR show page" (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1630 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1630) the greatest change in 3.0. We are using merge requests as a tool in code review, and this commit finally allow us to go through all comments of an MR in a single page. It would be perfect if the issue "Save few lines of code with Merge Request comment like github does" (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1007 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1007) is implemented, as this would allow us to finally reliably comment directly on the "diff" tab.

SkyMarshal 14y ago

Amusing that it's hosted on Github [1]. There's also Gitorious, which has been around a while and is mature, full-featured, and provides both a SaaS [2] and the FOSS software you can host yourself [3]. I keep backups of some of my repo's there. [1]: https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq [2]: http://gitorious.org/ http://gitorious.org/ [3]: http://gitorious.com/ http://gitorious.com/

drivebyacct2 14y ago
Gitorious is also a god damn nightmare of things to setup and tweak to get working.
- thomanil 14y ago
  It used to be, but now you can simply use the automated installer: http://getgitorious.com/installer http://getgitorious.com/installer
thomanil 14y ago
Thanks for that. BTW our new official home page can be found at http://getgitorious.com http://getgitorious.com :)
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Gladly, thank you!
- cdelsolar 14y ago
  Why is there a gitorious.com, a gitorious.org, and a getgitorious.com? :(
  - thomanil 14y ago
    gitorious.org - the free open source hosting service (came first) gitorious.com - the commercial company behind it (came later) getgitorious.com - official doc, starting point etc (recently added as a common starting point)

waffle_ss 14y ago

We've been using GitLab for about six months and it has been great. The developers iterate very quickly and they are totally receptive to pull requests (have had a couple accepted and one rejected for good reason). If you install it on Ubuntu, their wiki has instructions that you can pretty much copy and paste; the most complicated bit probably being the gitolite setup, which is what it uses internally for repo auth.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

I've been using gitlab for a while, and so far I like it. It has a few weaknesses here and there for sure, and the UI has some wonky aspects, but overall it works quite well.

ergo14 14y ago

Actually there is one other interesting project that has some high profile users and can be used as self hosted bitbucket/github: http://rhodecode.org/ http://rhodecode.org/ It supports both hg and git, adn while the ui could look better - its very functional and can do a lot.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

I liked Gitlab when I ran it for myself for a while. It was great; couldn't knock it in anyway except for (at the time) setup instructions that weren't detailed/accurate enough to rely upon, especially regarding the main dependency gitorious. The big sell for this is simple, or even trivial, setup. I was just a single user so most of the functionality was a loss, so I transferred to bitbucket (free private repos) knowing full well the potential risks. It saved me the effort of keeping my own server up to date and secure (I'm not the pro, I can trust github or bitbucket to know and do better) at the cost of no longer being self sufficient. That said, I'd recommend this for any organisation that wants its own github, doesn't want to pay enterprise money, and doesn't mind doing all the hard work itself. And that's not faint praise, because it was fucking good when I did use it (while it was mid-Twitter Bootstrap conversion).