A Brief History of GitLab Workhorse

This post details the evolution of GitLab Workhorse from a weekend project to a critical component. Initially designed to solve Git clone timeouts via HTTP, it expanded to handle 'download zip' buttons, Git LFS, and CI build artifacts. It was renamed from 'gitlab-git-http-server' to 'gitlab-workhorse' due to its expanded functionality. The project then evolved into a smart proxy handling all HTTP traffic to GitLab, simplifying NGINX configurations and improving performance for features like CI artifact browsing and serving raw Git blobs.