Placebo Lines on the Pipeline Graph

This post details the refactoring of the GitLab pipeline graph to accurately depict job dependencies ('needs' relationships) instead of drawing indiscriminate lines between all jobs in a stage. It explains the problem of 'placebo lines' in the old graph, the introduction of the 'needs' relationship in v12.2, and the challenges of calculating accurate lines due to potential performance issues with a large number of connections. The solution involves a phased rollout: first, removing the lines entirely (v13.11) to manage computational cost, and then planning to reintroduce accurate lines in a future release. It also mentions the new Job Dependencies view.