DevOps Platform Evolution

2/7/2023

This post details how Cube, a software development company, migrated from a fragmented toolchain (Bitbucket, Trello, Jira) to GitLab's all-in-one DevSecOps Platform. They integrated Sentry for error monitoring and extensively use GitLab CI/CD for automated software development, including linters, unit tests, and functional tests. The post highlights the benefits of GitLab CI/CD for preventing bugs, facilitating rollbacks, and improving deployment speed. Cube also leverages GitLab for Agile development, using epics and milestones for project management and client collaboration, and measures success by tracking lead time of delivery and phase efficiency.

1/5/2023

Vestiaire Collective's migration to GitLab is detailed, highlighting the move from Subversion for version control and custom workflows. Key benefits include the adoption of GitLab's container registry to replace a slower ECR setup and reduce self-maintenance overhead of Nexus. The integration with Jira for commit visibility and release syncing is also emphasized. The post also touches on the potential for migrating project management to GitLab issues/epics and the performance improvements observed with GitLab v15. Advice is given on starting with smaller projects and optimizing pipelines with caching.

10/24/2022

This post introduces the market trend towards a platform approach to DevSecOps, highlighting the inefficiencies of 'DIY DevOps' and the benefits of a single application. It cites a Forrester Consulting study on GitLab Ultimate, detailing its ROI, release velocity, and efficiency improvements. The post outlines common DevOps pain points and elaborates on five key benefits of a DevOps platform: vulnerability management, reduced toolchain complexity, efficient development, better code quality, and faster releases. It emphasizes how these benefits are amplified during economic uncertainty.

9/7/2022

This post details how GitLab uses the Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework to understand user workflows at a fundamental level, moving beyond UI-centric research. It outlines a revised research approach focusing on six key stages: Define, Locate, Execute, Monitor, Modify, and Secure/Deploy/Debrief. This research informs the evolution of the DevOps platform by identifying user needs and opportunities for innovation, particularly within the CI/CD space.

9/6/2022

This post focuses on the benefits of adopting a full DevOps platform for SMBs, highlighting how it alleviates pressure on IT teams by automating processes, fostering collaboration, improving software stability and security, and reducing toolchain complexity. It emphasizes the shift from managing disparate tools to a unified platform for increased efficiency and business enablement.

8/31/2022

This post details the evolving responsibilities within DevOps roles, highlighting a significant trend towards DevSecOps. It quantifies the shift with survey data showing developers increasingly involved in production monitoring, infrastructure response, and security. Operations professionals are taking on new challenges like DevOps coaching and compliance. The post emphasizes that security is becoming a team sport, with developers and operations professionals sharing responsibility. It also notes a trend of developers opting out of traditional tasks like testing and code review, suggesting a redistribution of responsibilities within teams.

8/30/2022

This post details the business benefits of adopting an end-to-end DevOps platform for SMBs, focusing on how it helps them multiply their technical capabilities, engage their entire team, eliminate the time and expense of fragmented toolchains, and improve security by integrating it into the development lifecycle. It argues that a unified platform allows SMBs to do more with fewer resources, foster collaboration, reduce costs associated with multiple tools, and build security in from the start.

6/23/2022

This post details Swell's adoption of GitLab as their unified DevOps platform, highlighting their use of CI/CD, review operations for creating per-merge-request environments, and container management. It also covers their use of GitLab for issue tracking, knowledge management, and support ticketing, emphasizing the benefits of a single source of truth for a fully remote organization. The post notes significant speed improvements in build and deploy times and the integration of security scanning tools.

6/21/2022

This post discusses the concept of toolchain technical debt in the context of DevOps and argues for the adoption of a unified DevOps platform like GitLab to mitigate it. It highlights how a consolidated platform can reduce complexity, improve visibility, and enable automation across the SDLC, contrasting this with fragmented, homegrown toolchains. Specific GitLab features mentioned as solutions include dependency lists (SBOM) for scanning dependencies and Value Stream Analytics for optimizing IT resources.

6/15/2022

This post maps the 'Three Ways of DevOps' (maximize flow, feedback loops, continuous experimentation and learning) to GitLab's platform capabilities. It explains how GitLab's integrated nature supports these principles by enabling seamless workflows from planning to production, providing immediate feedback through CI pipelines and security scans, and facilitating data-driven decision-making through metrics like Value Stream and Contribution. The post highlights how a unified platform reduces context-switching costs and allows teams to focus on improvement and innovation.

6/13/2022

This post provides a retrospective on the evolution of GitLab from version 1.0 to 15.0, detailing key shifts in the DevOps landscape and GitLab's product development. It covers the integration of CI/CD, the move away from DIY DevOps, the adoption of modern programming languages and cloud-native architectures, the integration of security into the development pipeline, and the enhancement of code review processes. It also notes the growth of open source contributions and the normalization of remote work, framing these as integral to GitLab's journey.

5/31/2022

This post details GitLab's takeaways from KubeCon EU 2022, focusing on internal platforms, GitOps, secrets management, infrastructure integrations, and WebAssembly. It outlines how these learnings will impact GitLab's product roadmap, emphasizing continued investment in deployment capabilities, CI/CD Component Catalog, and enhanced secrets management features. It also discusses the potential of WASM and the company's stance on infrastructure integrations, encouraging community contributions.

5/19/2022

This post details how Blonk, a small business, adopted GitLab as its integrated DevOps platform to manage project management, CI/CD, repositories, and version control. It highlights their use of GitLab Premium for developers, data scientists, consultants, and project managers, leveraging features like issue templates, package registry, Docker integration, and automated infrastructure deployment via CDK and gitlab-ci scripts. The post emphasizes the platform's intuitive nature, its role in scaling the development team, and the integration of non-code artifacts within projects. It also touches on how GitLab has supported Blonk's business transformation by providing a professional project creation pipeline and enhancing their employer brand.

3/9/2022

This post defines DevOps, its principles (automation, CI/CD, rapid feedback, Agile planning, IaC, containerization, microservices, DevSecOps), and benefits (customer focus, accelerated delivery, higher quality, easier defect spotting). It highlights key elements for success: communication, collaboration, willingness to change, and accepting failure ('fail fast'). It also offers tips for creating a DevOps roadmap, emphasizing clear objectives, short-term goals, and visual roadmaps. Common challenges like tool selection and cultural clashes are discussed, with a recommendation for using a DevOps platform.

2/15/2022

This post details how the scientific process, with its iterative and collaborative nature, aligns with and benefits from the DevOps lifecycle. It highlights how features like issue tracking, source control management (SCM), and continuous integration (CI) can be applied to scientific research stages such as hypothesis formulation, experimentation, and data analysis. Examples of organizations like the European Space Agency (ESA) and MathWorks are provided to illustrate the practical application of these principles.

2/3/2022

This post argues for the adoption of a unified DevOps platform, like GitLab, over integrating disparate tools. It highlights the significant costs and complexities associated with building and maintaining custom integrations between multiple DevOps tools, citing the example of companies investing eight-figure budgets with long ROI timelines. The post emphasizes the importance of defining clear requirements through value stream assessments and advocates for consuming platform-enabled services rather than building custom solutions. It contrasts the challenges of managing a toolchain of 10-50 different products with the efficiency gains of a single, integrated platform.

1/25/2022

This post details how GitLab can be utilized to plan, manage, and deliver cloud migration projects by providing a consistent methodology and toolchains for planning, prioritizing, automating, and tracking progress. It emphasizes the use of merge requests for setting security protocols and automating testing, scanning, monitoring, and deployment. The platform supports hybrid and multi-cloud models and helps teams refactor applications and adopt new cloud services.

1/5/2022

This post introduces and demonstrates the integration of Liquibase with GitLab CI/CD for automated database change management. It details the setup of a CI/CD pipeline with stages for build, test, and deploy, showcasing specific Liquibase commands like `checks run`, `updateSQL`, `update`, `rollbackOneUpdate`, `tag`, `diff`, and `snapshot`. The tutorial covers prerequisites, project preparation, runner configuration, making database schema changes, and merging to trigger the pipeline, highlighting the use of CI/CD variables and Liquibase Pro features.

11/3/2021

This post introduces GitLab as 'The DevOps Platform,' a single-application solution designed to improve business agility and transform operations beyond just DevOps outputs. It highlights how the platform consolidates tools, increases deployment speed, enables concurrent security scans, and provides visibility across different business functions (Security, Product, Compliance, Finance, etc.) through a single source of truth. The core message is about extending DevOps benefits to a broader range of roles to remove blockers and enable agile thinking across the entire organization.

10/11/2021

This post reflects on ten key decisions made over ten years that shaped GitLab into a comprehensive DevOps platform. It highlights the foundational principles of working in parallel, integrating CI with Git, embracing cloud-native technologies, centralizing workflows around merge requests, prioritizing developer-first security, offering a broad spectrum of security scans, operating as an all-remote company with asynchronous communication, ensuring visibility across the development lifecycle, and measuring results. These decisions have influenced the company's culture, product development, and overall strategy, leading to the current state of the DevOps platform.

9/10/2021

This post details how GitLab's DevOps platform can be integrated with IBM Z environments to bridge the gap between mainframe and distributed development teams. It highlights the benefits of using a unified platform for source code management, Git commit and merge-request workflows, and DevSecOps methodologies to improve security, compliance, and collaboration. The post also discusses how CI/CD tooling and automation can be leveraged for efficient application deployments in hybrid environments.

9/8/2021

This post makes the case for a DevOps platform by citing survey data and customer testimonials. It highlights the 'DevOps tax' associated with toolchains and argues that a unified DevOps platform reduces this tax, leading to faster releases, improved collaboration, and better visibility. It provides specific examples from BI Worldwide and Glympse to illustrate the benefits of consolidating tools into a single platform.

9/2/2021

This post introduces the concept of a DevOps Platform as the evolution from fragmented toolchains ('BYO DevOps', 'BIC DevOps', 'DIY DevOps') to a unified application. It highlights the historical pain points of managing disparate tools and the industry's shift towards platform-based solutions, referencing Gartner's 'DevOps Value Stream Delivery Platform' Market Guide. It also cites customer survey data showing benefits like reduced MTTR and quicker time to market. The post advocates for adopting a DevOps Platform to replace blockers with enablement and reduce the 'DevOps tax'.

8/4/2021

This post details how UBS built their internal DevOps platform, 'DevCloud,' using GitLab. It highlights the benefits of a unified DevOps platform in increasing development velocity, lowering infrastructure costs, and improving collaboration. The post also touches on the value of open-source collaboration between UBS and GitLab, and mentions the acquisition of UnReview to enhance machine learning capabilities within the DevOps platform for code review.

8/3/2021

This post defines four phases of DevOps tool adoption: Siloed DevOps, Fragmented DevOps, DIY DevOps, and the DevOps Platform era. It positions GitLab as the leader in the DevOps Platform era, characterized by a single application with a unified UI and data store that encompasses all stages of the DevOps lifecycle. The post also discusses future trends in DevOps, including embedded security, the role of machine learning, and the predicted increase in DevOps platform adoption.

7/20/2021

This post introduces the concept of DevSecOps 2.0, emphasizing that security must be an integral part of the DevOps platform, not just an add-on. It highlights the need for end-to-end visibility and control throughout the SDLC, moving beyond 'shifting security left' to include testing, monitoring, and protecting application infrastructure and IaC. The post also mentions the evolution of security dashboards and vulnerability reports for streamlined management and remediation, and the importance of compliance management as a key part of DevSecOps 2.0.

6/22/2021

GitLab 14 introduces enhancements focused on modern DevOps principles, aiming to provide a streamlined experience with velocity, trust, and visibility. Key technical contributions include the Pipeline Editor for visual authoring and validation of CI/CD configurations, the Kubernetes Agent for secure cloud-native deployments, and out-of-the-box DORA metrics for measuring software delivery performance. Security is bolstered with a Semgrep analyzer and a new browser-based DAST crawler for modern APIs and SPAs. The post highlights the platform's ability to integrate various stages of the DevOps lifecycle, reducing maintenance overhead and improving developer happiness.

5/19/2021

This post details how GitLab's evolution into a DevOps platform addresses the need for integrated planning and execution, moving away from disparate toolchains. It highlights the benefits of accuracy, visibility, efficiency, and actionability for roles beyond traditional DevOps engineers, such as portfolio managers and product owners. The post emphasizes that the platform allows for drill-downs into code changes and scan results, and enables learning, planning, and execution within a single system. It also mentions customer success stories and industry recognition from Gartner.

3/22/2021

This post introduces a '5 minute production app' template that leverages GitLab CI/CD and Terraform to automate the deployment of web applications to AWS. It demonstrates deploying a simple Node.js application by importing a GitHub repository into GitLab, configuring AWS credentials as CI/CD variables, and including a remote CI/CD template. The template provisions AWS resources, including a PostgreSQL server, Redis cluster, and S3 object storage (though these are disabled by default for the demo app). It highlights the benefits of using managed cloud services and IaC for simplified application deployment and persistence, contrasting this approach with the manual CLI-driven process of Heroku. The post also briefly mentions integrating dependency scanning and SAST into the pipeline.

2/24/2021

This post details the 'Five Minute Production App' initiative, which demonstrates achieving production-grade infrastructure and DevSecOps workflows in under five minutes by converging AWS, Hashicorp Terraform, and GitLab. It outlines a three-stage process: Build (containerizing the application using Auto DevOps), Provision (using Terraform to create AWS resources like EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, and S3, tied to Git branches), and Deploy (retrieving the container image and infrastructure credentials to deploy the application, with automated SSL certificate generation via Let's Encrypt). The post emphasizes the complete GitOps convergence where application code, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, state, secrets, and environment configurations all reside within a GitLab project.

1/20/2021

This post introduces the concept of the 'Outer Loop' in DevOps, which focuses on product effectiveness and value delivery, contrasting it with the 'Inner Loop' that emphasizes technical efficiency. It describes the current fragmented state of tools for the 'Outer Loop' and envisions a future where a unified platform enables creators (engineers, testers, designers, operators) to directly analyze user feedback (qualitative and quantitative), perform hypothesis testing, and iterate on prioritization frameworks, potentially reducing the reliance on traditional Product Managers. The post invites collaboration on this vision.

12/15/2020

This post introduces and details the implementation of official GitLab Docker images for AWS deployments, including AWS CLI, CloudFormation stack creation, and S3 push/EC2 deploy scripts. It also covers the creation of `.gitlab-ci.yml` templates for deploying to AWS ECS and EC2, enhanced security through Docker image digests, and expanded Auto DevOps support for AWS targets. Future plans for AWS deployment integration are also outlined.

10/29/2020

This post details how a single engineer's idea to combine GitLab SCM and CI into a single application led to the creation of the DevOps Platform category, fundamentally changing how engineers build software. The initial contribution of a faster, easier-to-run GitLab runner by Kamil Trzciński was pivotal, leading to his integration into the engineering team and the strategic shift towards an all-in-one DevOps application. This evolution emphasizes the efficiency gains from a unified data store, reduced context switching, and streamlined development processes.

9/30/2020

This post details how GitLab's integrated DevOps platform enables rapid innovation by simplifying the adoption of DevOps practices. It highlights features such as: easy collaboration across multiple roles and asset types (design files, code, IaC, SQL), built-in security and compliance templates for CI pipelines, Review Apps for pre-merge application change review, deep Kubernetes integration for cluster management and supplemental application deployment, automatic environment management for CI/CD pipelines, pipeline template creation for reusability, and Auto DevOps for a predefined CI/CD pipeline. The overarching theme is that by reducing the burden of managing disparate tools and infrastructure, developers can spend more time creating and innovating.

7/14/2020

This post introduces and defines GitOps as an operational framework that applies DevOps best practices (version control, collaboration, compliance, CI/CD) to infrastructure automation. It highlights the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and merge requests (MRs) for managing infrastructure changes, and presents poll results indicating community adoption and interest in GitOps. It also links to related content on GitOps and infrastructure management.

5/18/2020

This post announces the strategic direction of Meltano, focusing on building an open-source, self-managed platform for ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) data pipelines. It argues that data integration should be a commodity and that an open-source alternative is needed to compete with proprietary solutions. The post draws parallels with GitLab's open-core model and emphasizes the power of community collaboration to develop and maintain data source connectors (extractors and loaders). The core technical contribution is the strategic positioning and justification for building Meltano as a self-managed ELT platform, aiming to democratize data integration.

5/5/2020

This post details the integration of GitLab Auto DevOps with Amazon EKS for deploying applications. It outlines the steps to set up a project by importing a sample application and enabling the Auto DevOps pipeline. It also explains the deployment process, including the automatic creation of subdomains and the use of Let's Encrypt certificates. The post further describes how to make changes to a deployed application, including the use of merge requests, Review Apps for pre-production review, and the subsequent deployment to production upon merging.

4/29/2020

This post details the integration of GitLab with Red Hat's RHEL and OpenShift platforms to enhance secure software development. It outlines how GitLab's CI/CD, AutoDevOps, container registry, and Kubernetes integration can be deployed on RHEL and target OpenShift. It also mentions upcoming product integrations like the GitLab Runner Operator for OpenShift.

4/17/2020

This post introduces and advocates for GitOps as a convergence of infrastructure-as-code and continuous delivery, positioning it as the next iteration of DevOps. It highlights how GitOps enables a developer-like experience for managing applications and infrastructure by using Git as the central source of truth and integrating changes into the merge request workflow for collaboration and automated deployment via CI/CD pipelines.

3/24/2020

This post details how Ask Media transitioned from a monolithic system to a microservices architecture using GitLab and AWS. Key technical aspects include leveraging GitLab for building images and as a command and control interface for Kubernetes clusters running on EC2 instances. The post highlights the benefits of microservices for independent development, parallel work, and full visibility prior to deployment. It also emphasizes the role of Docker and Kubernetes in enabling the microservices architecture and AWS for auto-scaling, cost control, and providing a mature platform with a wide range of services.

2/5/2020

This post discusses how Kubernetes, by providing abstractions, helps manage the complexities of multicloud environments, enabling consistent workflows across different cloud providers and reducing the burden on DevOps teams. It highlights the challenges of varying networking, storage, and auto-scaling capabilities across clouds and positions Kubernetes as a solution that abstracts these differences. It also touches upon the role of open-source projects within the CNCF ecosystem in further enhancing Kubernetes for multicloud adoption.

11/20/2019

This post introduces Gravitational's Gravity, an open-source Kubernetes packaging solution, as a complementary technology to GitLab's CI/CD and Kubernetes integration. It explains how Gravity allows developers to build 'cluster images' that can contain an entire Kubernetes cluster pre-loaded with applications, enabling deployment across diverse environments (multi-cloud, private data centers, air-gapped rooms). The post highlights how GitLab can be used as the single source of truth for application development and continuous delivery, while Gravity handles the scaling and deployment to multiple environments.

11/19/2019

This post announces GitLab's collaboration with Google Cloud to support Cloud Run for Anthos, enabling CI/CD and GitLab Serverless capabilities for serverless solutions. It details three deployment options for Cloud Run: fully managed Cloud Run, Cloud Run for Anthos on Google Cloud, and Cloud Run for Anthos on-premise. GitLab's support for these involves using GitLab Runners to build and test functions and defining deployments via `serverless.yml` files. The post also highlights upcoming support for newer Knative versions and provides links to sample code and documentation.

11/13/2019

This post introduces GitLab's design for cloud-native architectures, highlighting its integration with Kubernetes, built-in container registry, and advanced CI/CD features that support microservices and monorepos. It emphasizes workflow portability across multiple clouds and mentions native capabilities for Kubernetes integration and advanced deployment flows like progressive delivery and canary deploys, as well as built-in feature flagging.

10/17/2019

This post details Delta Air Lines' journey to cloud native, highlighting their adoption of GitLab for version control and CI/CD as part of their strategy to achieve business agility. They evaluated tools based on the AEIOU criteria (Applicability, Enterprise-ready, Integration, Overhead, Usefulness) and selected GitLab, Sonatype Nexus, and Jenkins. The post also mentions Delta's consideration of expanding options to include GitLab CI and the concrete benefits realized, such as API creation for customer check-ins and enhanced employee decision support for weather events. It emphasizes the ability to leverage best-of-breed public cloud features and the creation of a first-class developer experience.

9/17/2019

This post details how MRI Technologies, in collaboration with NASA, implemented a new software development platform called APPDAT. The platform utilizes Kubernetes and GitLab to unify toolchains, enable CI/CD, and create a single source of truth, replacing a legacy Oracle-based SCM solution. Key goals included empowering teams, promoting open collaboration, creating a prototyping sandbox, eliminating data silos, and establishing platform-level security controls with a 'compliant by fault' approach. The implementation emphasized cloud-native, Zero Trust, and open-source principles, along with a cultural shift towards a more opinionated and unified toolchain.

9/12/2019

This post analyzes serverless architecture, discussing its pros (less operational overhead, scalability, lower operating costs) and cons (less control, potential security risks, unpredictable costs). It argues that serverless is not the end of operations but rather a new way of managing systems that can be outsourced. The post also touches upon GitLab's exploration of integrating serverless functions with Knative and Kubernetes, and supporting serverless functions in AWS Lambda, alongside existing support for monoliths and microservices.

8/8/2019

This post details the strategic decision and technical rationale behind merging GitLab Version Control and GitLab CI into a single application. It highlights the initial technical and philosophical debates, the eventual realization of efficiencies and improved user experience, and how this integration enables advanced features like auto-remediation. The post also notes market validation of this single-application approach by competitors like Bitbucket and GitHub.

5/30/2019

This post discusses the impact of IT automation on developer productivity within the broader context of the DevOps lifecycle. It emphasizes how automation reduces manual tasks, allows engineers to focus on strategic initiatives, improves scalability, minimizes human error, and accelerates the path from code to deployment. It highlights CI/CD as a key enabler of this automation and mentions the use of tools integrated with GitLab to achieve repeatable processes.

5/20/2019

This post details the integration of GitLab with Crossplane, enabling the deployment of GitLab into multiple clouds using the Kubernetes API and external managed services (Redis, PostgreSQL, object storage). It outlines the steps for cluster administrators and application owners to achieve this, highlighting the benefits of workload portability and separation of concerns in a multicloud environment.

5/2/2019

This post details the integration of GitLab with Google Cloud Run and Knative to enable serverless deployments on Kubernetes. It highlights how GitLab can automatically build and deploy applications/functions as Knative services, provide endpoints, and display load/invocation metrics. The integration simplifies the deployment of Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) by abstracting infrastructure complexities.

4/18/2019

This post discusses the industry trend towards single DevOps lifecycle applications, citing the acquisition of Electric Cloud by CloudBees as validation of GitLab's long-standing approach. It reiterates GitLab's value proposition as a single, integrated application built from the ground up to support the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning to monitoring, and its native support for cloud-native deployments. It invites users to get started with GitLab.

4/9/2019

This post introduces the concept of continuous improvement and its application to DevOps, drawing parallels from 'The Goal' and 'The Phoenix Project'. It outlines the 'Three Ways' of DevOps (Systems Thinking, Amplify Feedback Loops, Culture of Continual Experimentation and Learning) as principles for increasing operational efficiency and speed. It suggests simplifying scope, empowering teams, and measuring value streams to reduce cycle time. The post advocates for a Kaizen approach to continuous improvement through small, incremental changes to identify and address bottlenecks in the value stream.

3/27/2019

This post contributes best practices for application modernization, emphasizing the creation of cross-functional teams, the 'disagree, commit' principle, mapping development workflows, setting small iterative goals, prioritizing legacy data, avoiding modernization of bad habits, and closing skill gaps.

3/14/2019

This post discusses legacy system modernization as a key challenge for enterprises. It highlights the true cost of legacy systems, including maintenance resources, lost productivity, and security vulnerabilities. The post advocates for application modernization strategies that focus on specific challenges rather than full rip-and-replace. It provides four examples of how teams have modernized applications: leveraging microservices, improving automation, simplifying the toolchain, and reducing lifecycles. These examples illustrate practical approaches to achieving development efficiency and innovation.

2/25/2019

This post introduces a pragmatic approach to application modernization, advocating for starting small with cross-functional teams, making minimally viable changes (MVC), and mastering continuous delivery and deployment (CD). It emphasizes that successful digital transformation requires practical, incremental, and iterative progress rather than just following trends. The post outlines three key steps: 1. Start small with a small team or innovation group and scale up. 2. Make smaller changes, adopting the MVC mindset. 3. Prioritize mastering continuous delivery and deployment (CD) by documenting and automating the entire process from idea to production.

12/4/2018

This post details the integration of GitLab with Crossplane, an open-source multi-cloud control plane. Crossplane introduces workload resource abstractions on top of existing managed services and cloud offerings to enable workload portability across cloud providers. GitLab is the first complex application to be deployed using Crossplane, demonstrating its capability to orchestrate clouds and simplify multi-cloud strategies.

10/16/2018

This post argues that the trend in software development tools is moving from a marketplace model with many disparate point solutions towards an all-in-one integrated platform. It highlights GitHub's launch of GitHub Actions as an example of this trend, competing directly with its own marketplace vendors. The post posits that this shift is driven by the increasing complexity of the technology landscape, the need for speed and simplicity, and the challenges of managing complex toolchains, especially with the rise of microservices and cloud-native architectures. GitLab is presented as a complete DevOps platform delivered as a single application, with integrated CI/CD as a critical first step. The post predicts more acquisitions across the technology landscape as the demand for all-in-one solutions grows.

10/1/2018

This post outlines GitLab's product vision for 2019 and beyond, focusing on increasing depth in existing features and expanding breadth across the DevOps lifecycle. It introduces three new capabilities: Value Stream Management (automating issue board progression), Incident Management (centralized incident response with integrated context), and Auto Remediate (automating dependency vulnerability patching and deployment rollbacks).

9/10/2018

This post announces the default enablement of Auto DevOps in GitLab 11.3, building upon its general availability in 11.0. It introduces a mechanism to automatically disable Auto DevOps if a pipeline fails, notifying project owners. The rollout strategy includes a gradual enablement on GitLab.com before the self-managed release.

8/10/2018

This post introduces and demonstrates GitLab Auto DevOps, highlighting its role in automating the entire DevOps lifecycle from code commit to deployment and monitoring. It emphasizes how Auto DevOps integrates testing, security scanning, packaging, and deployment into a single, automated pipeline, enabling faster and more secure software delivery.

6/11/2018

This post highlights GitLab's core value proposition as a single application for the entire DevOps cycle, emphasizing its built-in CI/CD, project management, issue tracking, and security features. It also touches upon its open-core model and transparency by default, and the principle of 'everyone can contribute'. The post serves as an introductory overview of GitLab's capabilities rather than detailing specific technical implementations or evolutions of a particular system.

2/26/2018

This post outlines GitLab's 2018 product vision, emphasizing the expansion of the platform to cover the complete DevOps lifecycle, including Operations and Security as primary user groups. It details a prototype demonstrating how developers, operations, and security teams can work concurrently on the same data. For developers, it showcases enhanced merge request views with test summaries, artifact/container image links, security testing (SAST, DAST, dependency scanning), performance analysis, license compliance checks, and code quality/coverage alerts. For operations, it introduces an operations health dashboard with project status indicators, cluster resource usage, and the vision for autoscaling and automated issue resolution. The security flow highlights a dedicated Security Audit view for vulnerability tracking and automated remediation via merge requests created by a bot, including automatic deployment and rollback capabilities.

12/8/2017

This post from 2017 introduces and advocates for test and release automation, specifically highlighting GitLab's Auto DevOps feature as a solution for accelerating development. It discusses the changing landscape of software development, the impact of AI, and the critical role of efficient release cycles. The post references a webcast featuring Joel Krooswyk discussing release management, automation challenges, and unified CI/CD, with a demonstration of Auto DevOps.

10/11/2017

This post introduces the concept of 'Complete DevOps' as a reimagining of traditional DevOps. It argues that while DevOps brought collaboration, the continued use of separate tools for development and operations creates friction. 'Complete DevOps' aims to unify these tools into a single solution to reduce context switching, increase collaboration, and provide a competitive advantage. It mentions ongoing work on new features and improvements to existing ones to realize this vision.

10/9/2017

This post announces $20 million in Series C funding led by GV, with a new board member Matt Mullenweg. It introduces the "Complete DevOps" vision, aiming to unify development and operations into a single user experience. This is presented as an evolution beyond traditional DevOps, addressing the friction caused by disparate tools used by developers and operations teams. The post highlights the benefits of a single UI, deep integration, built-in best practices, and a unified install/upgrade process. It also mentions the initial iteration of Auto DevOps shipped in 10.0 and reiterates the company's commitment to open source development principles and transparency.

10/4/2017

This post details the engineering strategy behind GitLab's DevOps vision, focusing on the evolution from CI/CD to a comprehensive DevOps platform. It introduces Auto DevOps as a key component and outlines future directions including an Ops Dashboard for monitoring production environments from an operator's perspective and a pipeline view of environments to visualize the flow of changes across different deployment stages (review apps, staging, production). The post emphasizes the technical rationale for integrating operations concerns into the DevOps lifecycle and the benefits of using a unified toolchain.

8/10/2017

This post details the initial implementation and setup of GitLab's Auto Deploy feature, which automates the deployment of applications to Kubernetes. It explains the core functionality of Auto Deploy, its integration with CI/CD pipelines, and the process of packaging applications into Docker images. The post also outlines the steps required to tie GitLab Auto Deploy with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), including project setup, cluster creation, credential configuration, and applying the auto deploy template to `.gitlab-ci.yml`. It highlights the benefits of automated deployment for new commits and manual deployment to production.

6/29/2017

This post announces the future direction of GitLab, focusing on Auto DevOps as a concept to fully automate the DevOps lifecycle. It highlights GitLab's existing strengths in self-managed Git market share and its position as a popular next-generation CI system. The post introduces Auto Deploy as an evolution and presents a vision for Auto DevOps, including Auto Create, Auto Build, Auto CI, Auto Deploy, Auto Code Quality, and Auto Review Apps, aiming to deliver more from idea to production with out-of-the-box functionality.

6/29/2017

This post details the integration of Vue.js into GitLab's stack, moving from CoffeeScript to EcmaScript 6, and outlines a specific architecture for building small Vue applications with a focus on state management using a service and store pattern. It also discusses strategies for handling complex cases where full Vue.js rewrites are not feasible, employing a mediator pattern to share state and avoid duplicate network calls.

5/16/2017

This post demonstrates how to build, test, and deploy a basic application in a container from GitLab to an OpenShift container cluster using GitLab's built-in CI/CD and its integration with OpenShift. It explains the concept of containers and their benefits for DevOps at scale, including consistency across environments and faster code shipping.

4/18/2017

This post demonstrates the practical application of cloud-native development principles using GitLab. It showcases a workflow that includes installing GitLab on Kubernetes, building a project, creating review apps, utilizing a container registry for Docker images, deploying to production on Kubernetes, and monitoring with Prometheus, all within a short timeframe.

3/21/2017

Introduced the Review Apps feature, which creates ephemeral environments for each topic branch. The initial release in 8.12 provided basic name and URL configuration. Subsequent releases added the ability to stop/delete apps and automatically remove them when a branch is merged and deleted, based on user feedback.

2/6/2017

This post details GitLab's frontend evolution plan, focusing on the strategic adoption of Vue.js and webpack. It outlines a phased approach to rewriting parts of the frontend in Vue, prioritizing new features and areas with significant performance gains, rather than a complete rewrite. The integration of webpack is highlighted for its benefits in dependency management, code bundling (including tree shaking and code splitting), hot module replacement for faster development, and improved SVG handling. The removal of Turbolinks is also discussed as a means to improve page load performance and simplify event management, enabling better JavaScript organization and the potential for pages to become independent Vue applications.

1/4/2017

This post details the iterative development and release of the Review Apps feature across GitLab versions 8.12, 8.13, and 8.14. Key technical contributions include: 1. In 8.12: Allowing specification of environment URLs directly in `.gitlab-ci.yml` and enabling the use of variables within environment names and URLs, enabling dynamic environments. 2. In 8.13: Reusing manual actions to script app deletion/stopping and introducing a new keyword to identify stop jobs, with a corresponding UI change to a stop button. 3. In 8.14: Automatic detection and execution of the stop job when a branch is deleted, and the introduction of a convention for grouping environments into folders based on naming prefixes to manage the environments list.

11/22/2016

Introduced Review Apps, a feature that dynamically creates ephemeral environments for each branch, automating deployment and deletion. This allows for testing and demoing individual merge requests without manual intervention, improving the review process for developers, product managers, QA, and designers. The post details the benefits of Review Apps in solving problems related to multi-stage testing, issue attribution, and UX testing, and provides a basic `.gitlab-ci.yml` example for implementation.

6/9/2016

This post details the integration of GitLab with Convox for Continuous Delivery (CD). It explains how to set up a Convox deployment environment on AWS, authorize Convox with GitLab and Slack, and leverage GitLab webhooks and deploy keys to automate builds, tests, and deployments. It also provides an example of a `.gitlab-ci.yml` file for integrating automated testing with Convox deployments.