10 ms·

GitLab – Open Source Git Management Software

281 points by hiby007 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Touche 12y ago
Ah, finally a proper package! https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ This will make GitLab an easier choice in the future. If you're looking for a lighter choice Gitbucket is really nice: https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket
- geerlingguy 12y ago
  Of course it's released right after I get everything to play nice in an Ansible role... But this will help with adoption immensely; I'm sure many people have dropped GitLab simply because installation and upgrades were a nightmare (especially to non-native Rubyists).
  - codereflection 12y ago
    Upgrades may be a little detailed, but they are not difficult, even for non-Ruby devs.
    - sbarre 12y ago
      I can attest to this as well. We installed Gitlab about 2 months ago, and a notable upgrade came out recently (I'm gapping on version numbers) and I was able to update our in-house server with very little effort by following the great instructions. I know Ruby relatively well but I'm by no means a "pro", and I had no issues.
- sytse 12y ago
  Glad you like the packages! It took some effort to package it but thanks to the example of Omnibus-Chef it turned out really nice. (GitLab B.V. CEO)
  - cmhamill 12y ago
    Would you folks ever consider releasing a non-omnibus package? I'm averse to packages which include their own dependencies, but have developers who would benefit greatly from GitLab otherwise.
  - favadi 12y ago
    Why the package version is outdated? 6.5?
    - sytse 12y ago
      It is 6.7 isn't it?
- Goosey 12y ago
  Are there any accessible examples using gitbucket, perhaps an open source project or the like?
dakridge 12y ago
For those that want to view a demo of GitLab: http://demo.gitlab.com/ http://demo.gitlab.com/
Rygu 12y ago
We use and love Atlassian Stash (https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash), it's excellent for code reviews. The diff view options and commenting make it easy to create pull requests, get feedback and eventually merge code into the master branch. (Per branch permissions are awesome too.) Long time ago we also assessed GitLab and found it usable but not quite there yet for production use. Though it looks nicer now.
- taspeotis 12y ago
  I use Stash and I'm quite satisfied with it. The ability to create branches from "inside" JIRA and then check out in the desktop from Stash is good for newcomers to Git. Plus the ability to prevent pull requests from being merged without X approvals, at least one successful Bamboo build etc. It's all very well integrated and polished. I'm just waiting on rebase instead of merge for pull requests.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    I love the approval merging too, also the locking of branches (e.g. only X people have the ability to commit to master, everyone else has to have a PR reviewed and merged). I wish it allowed comments in more places than just PRs, but it's been pretty great so far.
    - kevinschumacher 12y ago
      FYI the latest version of Stash allows comments on specific files and commits.
      - StavrosK 12y ago
        Ah, thanks. We're running 2.11, maybe we'll need to upgrade, if it's 2.12. Otherwise I just noticed.
- wdmeldon 12y ago
  We've been using Stash as well and I'm, for the most part, quite pleased with it. My biggest initial problem was a lack of GitHub style, convenience feature. In the last couple updates, they've filled in the biggest feature gaps and demonstrated they know what they're customers want. I'd still like to see cleaner Jira integration.
FeloniousHam 12y ago
My previous experience with Gitlab (and others) led me to Gitblit: http://gitblit.org/ http://gitblit.org/ Gitblit is in another universe in terms of ease of installation, upgrade and maintenance, and very close on features. Even with a .deb package for Gitlab, my upgrade experience with previous versions wouldn't make me leave Gitblit. It's just dead simple.
- danieldk 12y ago
  Moreover, Gitblit uses plain text files for everything. It may not scale to thousands of users, but for small to medium size teams, it certainly makes maintenance, backups, and migration easier.
M4v3R 12y ago
We're using GitLab for source code and issue management, as well as for internal documentation, and I must say it's really great piece of software. Plus, it's very actively developed and gets new features/fixes all the time.
- sytse 12y ago
  Thanks! Great to hear that you are happy with the development rate.
ridruejo 12y ago
BitNami (I'm a cofounder) provides free installers, VMs and cloud images for GitLab. You can also spin 1h demos. https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab
- friendcode 12y ago
  You should do a stack for codebox (https://github.com/FriendCode/codebox https://github.com/FriendCode/codebox)
  - npongratz 12y ago
    Bitnami offers a monthly contest for helping to decide which applications they'll package next: https://bitnami.com/contest https://bitnami.com/contest Anyone can add their favorite apps and promote them. (I'm not affiliated with Bitnami, and greatly appreciate the service they provide)
- sytse 12y ago
  GitLab B.V. CEO here, BitNami has been making and supporting VM's for GitLab for a long time, highly recommended.
  - ridruejo 12y ago
    Thanks! We are big fans of GitLab as well :)
- jameswyse 12y ago
  Off topic: This is the first I've seen of BitNami and it looks great, especially the cloud hosting app. I'd switch from our current system (mainly AWS tools and shell scripts for app deployment) in a heartbeat but there's no way I can justify $599/mo for 10-15 servers. I'm surprised you don't use a PAYG pricing model like most of the IaaS providers out there..
  - ebrescia 12y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. We're working on refining our pricing. If you want to use the service, shoot me an email to erica at bitnami and we'll work something out.
mrmondo 12y ago
We switched from github + Gitolite to gitlab a few months back and we're loving it. We've had no issues with it and it's really been a great move for us.
thecodemonkey 12y ago
We've been using GitLab for our production projects for almost a year now. The biggest reason for moving from GitHub to GitLab was not having to worry about additional cost for creating new projects (we have hundreds of projects and most of them are rarely accessed long after they were created). It's also neat that we have the ability to customize GitLab if we wanted to, e.g. in 2012 we ran some experiments to create projects from templates directly in the GitLab interface [1] And lastly, since we're not in an environment with six-digit numbers of users and constant DDOS attacks - we're able to keep a much better uptime than we had before with GitHub. [1] http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment-workflow-using-git/ http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment-work...
- sytse 12y ago
  Great to hear this! (almost a year and already experimenting in 2012?)
  - thecodemonkey 12y ago
    Yearh, I started using GitLab for personal projects and after a bit more than a yearh we migrated the company projects to GitLab as well.
    - sytse 12y ago
      Ah, that makes sense
lucasnemeth 12y ago
I am working on a Brazilian public sector project, and since we only use open source alternatives running on our own servers (for security reasons), we chose Gitlab. It works nicely. The earlier versions consumed a lot of memory, but recently that's getting better. Would not recommend a too lightweight server, though.
- sytse 12y ago
  Good to hear it is getting better, see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/inst... for the requirements.
- vitorbaptistaa 12y ago
  Cool! Can you share which public body you work for?
peterwwillis 12y ago
We have gitlab set up at work for our small team, but we never use it. We just do regular old git operations from the CLI and use e-mail and Bugzilla for issue tracking. I've wondered if maybe there was a feature of Gitlab we're not using that we should, but so far nothing's stuck.
- sytse 12y ago
  Have your tried merge requests to do code reviews?
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    We do merge requests by hand (there's several ways to do reviews/merges with git CLI), and communicate on bugs or e-mail threads. Oh, and I forgot to mention before we integrate git with Jenkins for CI and testing/reviewing/merging.
    - sytse 12y ago
      Consider giving merge requests a try, once you try line comments you don't want to go back
- clebio 12y ago
  Nice to know someone else hasn't forgotten the old ways that work. I'd be interested to read a blog post about your workflows.
hypr_geek 12y ago
When we migrated over from CVS to git, we installed an instance of GitLab. It is really awesome, a private GitHub for your needs. The setup was a pain though, even after following the instructions. Nice to know they have a single installable package now at https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/. We also use Atlassian Stash and JIRA for a client project (the client migrated from CVS to git) and honestly, found it to be quite similar in functionality and not too much better for the extra costs. Mostly, it helps that both (Stash and JIRA) are linked together, but I'm sure that can be done with GitLab and another issue tracking software like Bugzilla.
schrijver 12y ago
A nice feature is that it also features a REST API: http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ One thing I’m curious about is performance, as with a personal project I found the `grit` git-ruby bindings rather sluggish when loading in multiple repos… The new `rugged` bindings are supposed to perform much better and if I understand in time Gitlab will switch to them.
- sytse 12y ago
  We're switching to Rugged (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from-grit-to-rugged https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from-grit-to-rug...) and it does perform better. But a current GitLab instance should not be sluggish, even with grit.
  - schrijver 12y ago
    Alright, I’ll give a go. Dankjewel!
    - sytse 12y ago
      Graag gedaan
SEJeff 12y ago
Kind of surprised no one has mentioned gogs, which aims to be an on-premise github, but written in golang with a single binary deployment: https://github.com/gogits/gogs https://github.com/gogits/gogs
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Whenever I see things like this ("like X, but written in a different language"), I can't help but think that there's a lot of effort wasted for something that makes no difference to the end user. Why duplicate the whole thing just to make deployment (something that happens once) a bit easier? Does anyone else feel this way?
  - rickr 12y ago
    I partially agree, but if you're going to be hosting your own server you should be considering the front end features, as well as making sure whoever is going to be maintaining the server it lives on won't want to pull their hair out. I recently toyed around with InfluxDB which is a similar thing (written in go, no external dependencies) and it was pretty novel to have a 'self contained' binary like that. I suspect it's especially helpful when dealing with docker images as well.
    - StavrosK 12y ago
      I definitely see the appeal of a single binary, and maintaining Stash has made us want to tear our hair out, but, in the end, the hours lost there are fewer than the hours we would have gained if the developer of this project decided to help another one. The new features would save us much more time than time spent administrating it.
  - oxplot 12y ago
    Whenever I see things like "Why duplicate the effort, help with the existing ones", I cannot help but wonder how people fail to recognize that all great things had once a beginning. Gogs may or may not turn out to be great, but thinking that because it duplicates effort, it's a waste is very short sighted. Examples? How about countless Linux distributions? How about git itself?
davedx 12y ago
We've been using Gitlab side by side with Github for the past few months. In general it's a very nice replacement, but one thing I've been fighting with lately is code review capabilities. The problem I've been having is when I go to a commit, in Github I'll be able to see what's changed (the diffs), but in Gitlab I often get "diff too big and not shown for perf reasons" or suchlike. This inability to reliably view diffs makes me wonder how we're going to do code review on projects hosted on Gitlab. Does anyone else have experience with this, or any workarounds?
- sytse 12y ago
  The main workaround is to keep your commits small. If you run your own GitLab server your can also tune the constants that affect this behavior. If you have a good use-case feel free to send a merge request to increase them so they get better for everyone.
  - davedx 12y ago
    Aha. I'll have a chat with the guy who administrates our install about tweaking the constants. The example I had from this morning was quite a large diff (47 changed files). I'd rather have a large page load time and be able to see the diffs though. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    A use-case is "some people insist on making large commits". In a perfect world, maybe otherwise, but not this one.
- kodablah 12y ago
  We too find the code review system in GitLab (and GitHub for that matter) to be lacking. We add the repository to Crucible and it automatically indexes the commits. We then do code reviews on GitLab branches there. Yes, Crucible is commercial but it's far above reviewboard, gerrit, etc.
joshfng 12y ago
If you like GitLab, checkout GitHost (https://githost.io https://githost.io) We provide hosted private GitLab instances. We handle upgrades, security fixes, and backups automatically.
sytse 12y ago
We just released GitLab 6.8 minutes ago https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/ https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/ The main new feature of this release is protection against force pushes. Other changes include improvements to mentioning in comments, Merge Request UI improvements and new API features.
- jbrooksuk 12y ago
  "Merge Request UI improvements"? Improvements? I beg to differ. 1. You can no longer assign a MR to someone at the time of creation. 2. The CSS looks broken. https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 3. Successful MR's no longer turn green. There is no quick visual feedback, it used to go green. My team and I hate the new "improvements", but appreciate the work.
62646c 12y ago
Been using GitLab for a while. It's really nice
pushedx 12y ago
An open source alternative for Mercurial and hg repositories is RhodeCode [1]. Source code at [2], this is RhodeCode running their own software. It's a nice solution for those who prefer Hg. [1] https://rhodecode.com/ https://rhodecode.com/ [2] https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/ https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/
yukichan 12y ago
It's cool, and this is a nearly useless comment, but the logo looks to much like an alien out of a Whitley Strieber "non-fiction" story. A little creepy I'm saying. Gitlab needs some branding design love.
- sytse 12y ago
  Feel free to suggest one
mekael 12y ago
At my current job we didn't have any kind of version control for our source,(not even a sharepoint to dump things into).I spent some time trying out a whole bunch of different intalls and finally settled on Gitlab. It's pretty nice and I was able to get it up and running relatively quick once I put it in it's own instance rather than sharing a postgres install with something else.
jevinskie 12y ago
I just got my install of Gitlab working last night. I used the omnibus package (bundles its own nginx, ruby, postgresql, etc). I had to tweak the omnibus settings out of the box because unicorn was timing out on the initial page load. After I fixed that, I disabled the bundled nginx so I could instead use the system's nginx. I had to modify the chef configuration scripts to change directory permissions so the www-data nginx could read the git-owned socket. I'm very happy now that I got it working! My only nitpick (aside from some installation frustrations) is that the syntax highlighting for large files can be very slow. Does anyone have any tips for that?
davidgerard 12y ago
Grocer's Apostrophe alert! "wiki's"
- sytse 12y ago
  Thanks for commenting, I made a note to change it.
krob 12y ago
At my work, we aren't using gitlab, but looked into it for our own hosted git and it's pretty nice, considering you can do properly managed repos. We do currently use phabricator though for source-code review, which is pretty nice. You can also introduce new code into the system through it using their arc tool. I think a mixture between gitlab & phabricator is pretty nice. Using phabricator for new feature buildout & gitlab for bug tracking would be the ultimate setup for me.
balls187 12y ago
I run a local gitlab appliance (provided by Bitnami) in VMWare on my dev box, so I can easily browse various source code I have, using their web gui. Big fan of it.
parfe 12y ago
For solo work as a dev surrounded by hardware people, I set up GitLab. Installation took a lot of effort and had a surprising number of service dependencies. For a single user it wasn't worth my time to install or maintain. Though, it is a really nice product once running. I switched to Gitweb and sd (http://syncwith.us/sd/using/ http://syncwith.us/sd/using/). I don't love sd, but the overhead of managing source and tickets for myself makes the combo worth it.
- avenger123 12y ago
  This hasn't been mentioned it seems but I just used a turnkey vm (from http://www.turnkeylinux.org/ http://www.turnkeylinux.org/) to setup Gitlab. Looks like the vm is not the latest version but it was a painless install.
  - krob 12y ago
    This is the way I'd prefer to use gitlab. KVM/Vmware/openvz instances are the way to go. I think they also have an amazon instance.
- bnycum 12y ago
  Gitlab now has prepackaged downloads available for Ubuntu and CentOS[0]. I originally setup 2 Gitlab servers a long time ago, one I replaced with the new package version and the other I'm fixing to. It was tough to maintain and upgrade if it worked, but the package versions have been super simple. [0]: https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/
- thinkersilver 12y ago
  Been using gitlab for solo dev at work and at home for everything that needs tracking, not only coding. Like you, attempted an install and gave up and used bitnami in the end. The only disadvantage is that the bitnami installers are a few point releases behind.
jbrooksuk 12y ago
We use GitLab where I work. I was finally able to set it up a few months ago and we've been using it quite heavily since. Whilst we like using it, the UI doesn't always feel intuitive and has changed a lot over the last few versions, 6.8.0 feels worse to us — mainly due to the weird Merge Request UI changes. https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 Still, I personally prefer the look and feel of GitHub. But it's a good free solution and we're really grateful for the work people put into it.
suyash 12y ago
Can anyone explain why would someone use GitLab vs Enterprise Github?
- oddevan 12y ago
  I'm at a school. We've got hardware for VMs but zero budget. I was/am tasked with getting a basic Git server up-and-running, and GitLab hit the necessary points of (a) running on a Linux VM (b) having a GUI for Git and (c) being free. I could see us using GitHub further down the road after we get some best practices in place and start using Git more, but for the time being GitLab is an excellent way to test the waters, especially since the GitHub Windows and Mac apps will work with an arbitrary 'origin' URL.
- panzi 12y ago
  Because you don't want to push your business secrets to a (US) company?
  - suyash 12y ago
    That's a silly reason, where do you think your emails, facebook, twitter feed is hosted? I trust US companies over any other.
    - panzi 12y ago
      Out emails are hosted on our company's server. Facebook and Twitter are publicity channels with public information only. And we don't even have that important corporate secrets. You might trust US companies, but after Snowden many people don't trust the US anymore (industry espionage). And there is no reason if you aren't a one man shop to not host such things yourself.
  - tom9729 12y ago
    Isn't GitHub Enterprise self hosted? I'd imagine the main reason to go with GitLab is that it's free. GitHub Enterprise costs more than Stash (although it offers more).
exabrial 12y ago
+1 for gitlab. Heavy use in prod with both business and engineering users!
exabrial 12y ago
I'm curious what other cool webapps people use? I use Gitlab, Graylog, Nexus... anything I'm missing out on?
- sdesol 12y ago
  I'm obviously biased since I wrote it, but my Git and GitHub pull request browser is a pretty cool webapp. If you are a JavaScript hacker, I think you'll like its programmable metadata technology. http://gitsense.com/blog/features/programmable-metadata/ http://gitsense.com/blog/features/programmable-metadata/ I wouldn't download the current beta version though. I'm currently testing a newer version with some enhancements which should be available for download by tomorrow.
- tom9729 12y ago
  I've never heard of Graylog, but Kibana (frontend for LogStash) looks pretty similar. http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/ http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/ What about CI (builds)? There's a lot of options here, but Jenkins is pretty good. It's a bit of a hack, but I sometimes use it as a quick way to put a frontend on a shell script. The build history is an audit log and the job config history tracks changes to the script. http://jenkins-ci.org/ http://jenkins-ci.org/
- jgrowl 12y ago
  Shipyard if you use docker.
munimkazia 12y ago
My organization has been using Gitlab for a while now. We had a few issues earlier with integrating LDAP authentication and sorting out attachments for the wall, but the latest version does seem to fix most issues. I am still not very happy with the wiki though (doesn't support folders, no way to upload images, doesn't look very good)
da4c30ff 12y ago
I was thinking what GNU could be if they launched GitLab or some alternative to replace the archaic Savannah. It could take the project to a whole new level.
marciopl 12y ago
Our company has been using Gitlab since Dec 2012, we had a small team and small code base back then. While searching for a good inhouse github replacement I found GitLab had what I wanted and was worth the time effort. It has been nice to see the evolution and all the features available now.

281 points by hiby007 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Ah, finally a proper package! https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ This will make GitLab an easier choice in the future. If you're looking for a lighter choice Gitbucket is really nice: https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket

geerlingguy 12y ago
Of course it's released right after I get everything to play nice in an Ansible role... But this will help with adoption immensely; I'm sure many people have dropped GitLab simply because installation and upgrades were a nightmare (especially to non-native Rubyists).
- codereflection 12y ago
  Upgrades may be a little detailed, but they are not difficult, even for non-Ruby devs.
  - sbarre 12y ago
    I can attest to this as well. We installed Gitlab about 2 months ago, and a notable upgrade came out recently (I'm gapping on version numbers) and I was able to update our in-house server with very little effort by following the great instructions. I know Ruby relatively well but I'm by no means a "pro", and I had no issues.
sytse 12y ago
Glad you like the packages! It took some effort to package it but thanks to the example of Omnibus-Chef it turned out really nice. (GitLab B.V. CEO)
- cmhamill 12y ago
  Would you folks ever consider releasing a non-omnibus package? I'm averse to packages which include their own dependencies, but have developers who would benefit greatly from GitLab otherwise.
- favadi 12y ago
  Why the package version is outdated? 6.5?
  - sytse 12y ago
    It is 6.7 isn't it?
Goosey 12y ago
Are there any accessible examples using gitbucket, perhaps an open source project or the like?

dakridge 12y ago

For those that want to view a demo of GitLab: http://demo.gitlab.com/ http://demo.gitlab.com/

Rygu 12y ago

We use and love Atlassian Stash (https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash), it's excellent for code reviews. The diff view options and commenting make it easy to create pull requests, get feedback and eventually merge code into the master branch. (Per branch permissions are awesome too.) Long time ago we also assessed GitLab and found it usable but not quite there yet for production use. Though it looks nicer now.

taspeotis 12y ago
I use Stash and I'm quite satisfied with it. The ability to create branches from "inside" JIRA and then check out in the desktop from Stash is good for newcomers to Git. Plus the ability to prevent pull requests from being merged without X approvals, at least one successful Bamboo build etc. It's all very well integrated and polished. I'm just waiting on rebase instead of merge for pull requests.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  I love the approval merging too, also the locking of branches (e.g. only X people have the ability to commit to master, everyone else has to have a PR reviewed and merged). I wish it allowed comments in more places than just PRs, but it's been pretty great so far.
  - kevinschumacher 12y ago
    FYI the latest version of Stash allows comments on specific files and commits.
    - StavrosK 12y ago
      Ah, thanks. We're running 2.11, maybe we'll need to upgrade, if it's 2.12. Otherwise I just noticed.
wdmeldon 12y ago
We've been using Stash as well and I'm, for the most part, quite pleased with it. My biggest initial problem was a lack of GitHub style, convenience feature. In the last couple updates, they've filled in the biggest feature gaps and demonstrated they know what they're customers want. I'd still like to see cleaner Jira integration.

FeloniousHam 12y ago

My previous experience with Gitlab (and others) led me to Gitblit: http://gitblit.org/ http://gitblit.org/ Gitblit is in another universe in terms of ease of installation, upgrade and maintenance, and very close on features. Even with a .deb package for Gitlab, my upgrade experience with previous versions wouldn't make me leave Gitblit. It's just dead simple.

danieldk 12y ago
Moreover, Gitblit uses plain text files for everything. It may not scale to thousands of users, but for small to medium size teams, it certainly makes maintenance, backups, and migration easier.

M4v3R 12y ago

We're using GitLab for source code and issue management, as well as for internal documentation, and I must say it's really great piece of software. Plus, it's very actively developed and gets new features/fixes all the time.

sytse 12y ago
Thanks! Great to hear that you are happy with the development rate.

ridruejo 12y ago

BitNami (I'm a cofounder) provides free installers, VMs and cloud images for GitLab. You can also spin 1h demos. https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab https://BitNami.com/stack/gitlab

friendcode 12y ago
You should do a stack for codebox (https://github.com/FriendCode/codebox https://github.com/FriendCode/codebox)
- npongratz 12y ago
  Bitnami offers a monthly contest for helping to decide which applications they'll package next: https://bitnami.com/contest https://bitnami.com/contest Anyone can add their favorite apps and promote them. (I'm not affiliated with Bitnami, and greatly appreciate the service they provide)
sytse 12y ago
GitLab B.V. CEO here, BitNami has been making and supporting VM's for GitLab for a long time, highly recommended.
- ridruejo 12y ago
  Thanks! We are big fans of GitLab as well :)
jameswyse 12y ago
Off topic: This is the first I've seen of BitNami and it looks great, especially the cloud hosting app. I'd switch from our current system (mainly AWS tools and shell scripts for app deployment) in a heartbeat but there's no way I can justify $599/mo for 10-15 servers. I'm surprised you don't use a PAYG pricing model like most of the IaaS providers out there..
- ebrescia 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We're working on refining our pricing. If you want to use the service, shoot me an email to erica at bitnami and we'll work something out.

mrmondo 12y ago

We switched from github + Gitolite to gitlab a few months back and we're loving it. We've had no issues with it and it's really been a great move for us.

thecodemonkey 12y ago

We've been using GitLab for our production projects for almost a year now. The biggest reason for moving from GitHub to GitLab was not having to worry about additional cost for creating new projects (we have hundreds of projects and most of them are rarely accessed long after they were created). It's also neat that we have the ability to customize GitLab if we wanted to, e.g. in 2012 we ran some experiments to create projects from templates directly in the GitLab interface [1] And lastly, since we're not in an environment with six-digit numbers of users and constant DDOS attacks - we're able to keep a much better uptime than we had before with GitHub. [1] http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment-workflow-using-git/ http://enga.ge/development/creating-a-sturdy-deployment-work...

sytse 12y ago
Great to hear this! (almost a year and already experimenting in 2012?)
- thecodemonkey 12y ago
  Yearh, I started using GitLab for personal projects and after a bit more than a yearh we migrated the company projects to GitLab as well.
  - sytse 12y ago
    Ah, that makes sense

lucasnemeth 12y ago

I am working on a Brazilian public sector project, and since we only use open source alternatives running on our own servers (for security reasons), we chose Gitlab. It works nicely. The earlier versions consumed a lot of memory, but recently that's getting better. Would not recommend a too lightweight server, though.

sytse 12y ago
Good to hear it is getting better, see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/inst... for the requirements.
vitorbaptistaa 12y ago
Cool! Can you share which public body you work for?

peterwwillis 12y ago

We have gitlab set up at work for our small team, but we never use it. We just do regular old git operations from the CLI and use e-mail and Bugzilla for issue tracking. I've wondered if maybe there was a feature of Gitlab we're not using that we should, but so far nothing's stuck.

sytse 12y ago
Have your tried merge requests to do code reviews?
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  We do merge requests by hand (there's several ways to do reviews/merges with git CLI), and communicate on bugs or e-mail threads. Oh, and I forgot to mention before we integrate git with Jenkins for CI and testing/reviewing/merging.
  - sytse 12y ago
    Consider giving merge requests a try, once you try line comments you don't want to go back
clebio 12y ago
Nice to know someone else hasn't forgotten the old ways that work. I'd be interested to read a blog post about your workflows.

hypr_geek 12y ago

When we migrated over from CVS to git, we installed an instance of GitLab. It is really awesome, a private GitHub for your needs. The setup was a pain though, even after following the instructions. Nice to know they have a single installable package now at https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/. We also use Atlassian Stash and JIRA for a client project (the client migrated from CVS to git) and honestly, found it to be quite similar in functionality and not too much better for the extra costs. Mostly, it helps that both (Stash and JIRA) are linked together, but I'm sure that can be done with GitLab and another issue tracking software like Bugzilla.

schrijver 12y ago

A nice feature is that it also features a REST API: http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/api/ One thing I’m curious about is performance, as with a personal project I found the `grit` git-ruby bindings rather sluggish when loading in multiple repos… The new `rugged` bindings are supposed to perform much better and if I understand in time Gitlab will switch to them.

sytse 12y ago
We're switching to Rugged (https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from-grit-to-rugged https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab_git#move-from-grit-to-rug...) and it does perform better. But a current GitLab instance should not be sluggish, even with grit.
- schrijver 12y ago
  Alright, I’ll give a go. Dankjewel!
  - sytse 12y ago
    Graag gedaan

SEJeff 12y ago

Kind of surprised no one has mentioned gogs, which aims to be an on-premise github, but written in golang with a single binary deployment: https://github.com/gogits/gogs https://github.com/gogits/gogs

StavrosK 12y ago
Whenever I see things like this ("like X, but written in a different language"), I can't help but think that there's a lot of effort wasted for something that makes no difference to the end user. Why duplicate the whole thing just to make deployment (something that happens once) a bit easier? Does anyone else feel this way?
- rickr 12y ago
  I partially agree, but if you're going to be hosting your own server you should be considering the front end features, as well as making sure whoever is going to be maintaining the server it lives on won't want to pull their hair out. I recently toyed around with InfluxDB which is a similar thing (written in go, no external dependencies) and it was pretty novel to have a 'self contained' binary like that. I suspect it's especially helpful when dealing with docker images as well.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    I definitely see the appeal of a single binary, and maintaining Stash has made us want to tear our hair out, but, in the end, the hours lost there are fewer than the hours we would have gained if the developer of this project decided to help another one. The new features would save us much more time than time spent administrating it.
- oxplot 12y ago
  Whenever I see things like "Why duplicate the effort, help with the existing ones", I cannot help but wonder how people fail to recognize that all great things had once a beginning. Gogs may or may not turn out to be great, but thinking that because it duplicates effort, it's a waste is very short sighted. Examples? How about countless Linux distributions? How about git itself?

davedx 12y ago

We've been using Gitlab side by side with Github for the past few months. In general it's a very nice replacement, but one thing I've been fighting with lately is code review capabilities. The problem I've been having is when I go to a commit, in Github I'll be able to see what's changed (the diffs), but in Gitlab I often get "diff too big and not shown for perf reasons" or suchlike. This inability to reliably view diffs makes me wonder how we're going to do code review on projects hosted on Gitlab. Does anyone else have experience with this, or any workarounds?

sytse 12y ago
The main workaround is to keep your commits small. If you run your own GitLab server your can also tune the constants that affect this behavior. If you have a good use-case feel free to send a merge request to increase them so they get better for everyone.
- davedx 12y ago
  Aha. I'll have a chat with the guy who administrates our install about tweaking the constants. The example I had from this morning was quite a large diff (47 changed files). I'd rather have a large page load time and be able to see the diffs though. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  A use-case is "some people insist on making large commits". In a perfect world, maybe otherwise, but not this one.
kodablah 12y ago
We too find the code review system in GitLab (and GitHub for that matter) to be lacking. We add the repository to Crucible and it automatically indexes the commits. We then do code reviews on GitLab branches there. Yes, Crucible is commercial but it's far above reviewboard, gerrit, etc.

joshfng 12y ago

If you like GitLab, checkout GitHost (https://githost.io https://githost.io) We provide hosted private GitLab instances. We handle upgrades, security fixes, and backups automatically.

sytse 12y ago

We just released GitLab 6.8 minutes ago https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/ https://www.gitlab.com/2014/04/22/gitlab-6-dot-8-released/ The main new feature of this release is protection against force pushes. Other changes include improvements to mentioning in comments, Merge Request UI improvements and new API features.

jbrooksuk 12y ago
"Merge Request UI improvements"? Improvements? I beg to differ. 1. You can no longer assign a MR to someone at the time of creation. 2. The CSS looks broken. https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 3. Successful MR's no longer turn green. There is no quick visual feedback, it used to go green. My team and I hate the new "improvements", but appreciate the work.

62646c 12y ago

Been using GitLab for a while. It's really nice

pushedx 12y ago

An open source alternative for Mercurial and hg repositories is RhodeCode [1]. Source code at [2], this is RhodeCode running their own software. It's a nice solution for those who prefer Hg. [1] https://rhodecode.com/ https://rhodecode.com/ [2] https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/ https://code.rhodecode.com/rhodecode/files/tip/

yukichan 12y ago

It's cool, and this is a nearly useless comment, but the logo looks to much like an alien out of a Whitley Strieber "non-fiction" story. A little creepy I'm saying. Gitlab needs some branding design love.

sytse 12y ago
Feel free to suggest one

mekael 12y ago

At my current job we didn't have any kind of version control for our source,(not even a sharepoint to dump things into).I spent some time trying out a whole bunch of different intalls and finally settled on Gitlab. It's pretty nice and I was able to get it up and running relatively quick once I put it in it's own instance rather than sharing a postgres install with something else.

jevinskie 12y ago

I just got my install of Gitlab working last night. I used the omnibus package (bundles its own nginx, ruby, postgresql, etc). I had to tweak the omnibus settings out of the box because unicorn was timing out on the initial page load. After I fixed that, I disabled the bundled nginx so I could instead use the system's nginx. I had to modify the chef configuration scripts to change directory permissions so the www-data nginx could read the git-owned socket. I'm very happy now that I got it working! My only nitpick (aside from some installation frustrations) is that the syntax highlighting for large files can be very slow. Does anyone have any tips for that?

davidgerard 12y ago

Grocer's Apostrophe alert! "wiki's"

sytse 12y ago
Thanks for commenting, I made a note to change it.

krob 12y ago

At my work, we aren't using gitlab, but looked into it for our own hosted git and it's pretty nice, considering you can do properly managed repos. We do currently use phabricator though for source-code review, which is pretty nice. You can also introduce new code into the system through it using their arc tool. I think a mixture between gitlab & phabricator is pretty nice. Using phabricator for new feature buildout & gitlab for bug tracking would be the ultimate setup for me.

balls187 12y ago

I run a local gitlab appliance (provided by Bitnami) in VMWare on my dev box, so I can easily browse various source code I have, using their web gui. Big fan of it.

parfe 12y ago

For solo work as a dev surrounded by hardware people, I set up GitLab. Installation took a lot of effort and had a surprising number of service dependencies. For a single user it wasn't worth my time to install or maintain. Though, it is a really nice product once running. I switched to Gitweb and sd (http://syncwith.us/sd/using/ http://syncwith.us/sd/using/). I don't love sd, but the overhead of managing source and tickets for myself makes the combo worth it.

avenger123 12y ago
This hasn't been mentioned it seems but I just used a turnkey vm (from http://www.turnkeylinux.org/ http://www.turnkeylinux.org/) to setup Gitlab. Looks like the vm is not the latest version but it was a painless install.
- krob 12y ago
  This is the way I'd prefer to use gitlab. KVM/Vmware/openvz instances are the way to go. I think they also have an amazon instance.
bnycum 12y ago
Gitlab now has prepackaged downloads available for Ubuntu and CentOS[0]. I originally setup 2 Gitlab servers a long time ago, one I replaced with the new package version and the other I'm fixing to. It was tough to maintain and upgrade if it worked, but the package versions have been super simple. [0]: https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://www.gitlab.com/downloads/
thinkersilver 12y ago
Been using gitlab for solo dev at work and at home for everything that needs tracking, not only coding. Like you, attempted an install and gave up and used bitnami in the end. The only disadvantage is that the bitnami installers are a few point releases behind.

jbrooksuk 12y ago

We use GitLab where I work. I was finally able to set it up a few months ago and we've been using it quite heavily since. Whilst we like using it, the UI doesn't always feel intuitive and has changed a lot over the last few versions, 6.8.0 feels worse to us — mainly due to the weird Merge Request UI changes. https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/6842 Still, I personally prefer the look and feel of GitHub. But it's a good free solution and we're really grateful for the work people put into it.

suyash 12y ago

Can anyone explain why would someone use GitLab vs Enterprise Github?

oddevan 12y ago
I'm at a school. We've got hardware for VMs but zero budget. I was/am tasked with getting a basic Git server up-and-running, and GitLab hit the necessary points of (a) running on a Linux VM (b) having a GUI for Git and (c) being free. I could see us using GitHub further down the road after we get some best practices in place and start using Git more, but for the time being GitLab is an excellent way to test the waters, especially since the GitHub Windows and Mac apps will work with an arbitrary 'origin' URL.
panzi 12y ago
Because you don't want to push your business secrets to a (US) company?
- suyash 12y ago
  That's a silly reason, where do you think your emails, facebook, twitter feed is hosted? I trust US companies over any other.
  - panzi 12y ago
    Out emails are hosted on our company's server. Facebook and Twitter are publicity channels with public information only. And we don't even have that important corporate secrets. You might trust US companies, but after Snowden many people don't trust the US anymore (industry espionage). And there is no reason if you aren't a one man shop to not host such things yourself.
- tom9729 12y ago
  Isn't GitHub Enterprise self hosted? I'd imagine the main reason to go with GitLab is that it's free. GitHub Enterprise costs more than Stash (although it offers more).

exabrial 12y ago

+1 for gitlab. Heavy use in prod with both business and engineering users!

exabrial 12y ago

I'm curious what other cool webapps people use? I use Gitlab, Graylog, Nexus... anything I'm missing out on?

sdesol 12y ago
I'm obviously biased since I wrote it, but my Git and GitHub pull request browser is a pretty cool webapp. If you are a JavaScript hacker, I think you'll like its programmable metadata technology. http://gitsense.com/blog/features/programmable-metadata/ http://gitsense.com/blog/features/programmable-metadata/ I wouldn't download the current beta version though. I'm currently testing a newer version with some enhancements which should be available for download by tomorrow.
tom9729 12y ago
I've never heard of Graylog, but Kibana (frontend for LogStash) looks pretty similar. http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/ http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/ What about CI (builds)? There's a lot of options here, but Jenkins is pretty good. It's a bit of a hack, but I sometimes use it as a quick way to put a frontend on a shell script. The build history is an audit log and the job config history tracks changes to the script. http://jenkins-ci.org/ http://jenkins-ci.org/
jgrowl 12y ago
Shipyard if you use docker.

munimkazia 12y ago

My organization has been using Gitlab for a while now. We had a few issues earlier with integrating LDAP authentication and sorting out attachments for the wall, but the latest version does seem to fix most issues. I am still not very happy with the wiki though (doesn't support folders, no way to upload images, doesn't look very good)

da4c30ff 12y ago

I was thinking what GNU could be if they launched GitLab or some alternative to replace the archaic Savannah. It could take the project to a whole new level.

marciopl 12y ago

Our company has been using Gitlab since Dec 2012, we had a small team and small code base back then. While searching for a good inhouse github replacement I found GitLab had what I wanted and was worth the time effort. It has been nice to see the evolution and all the features available now.