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GitLab for DevOps teams

Assembly Line

Outlook

Although the focus of GitLab CI in recent years has been primarily on source code management and continuous integration, the company has set itself the goal in 2019 of driving forward project management, continuous deployment and release automation, application security testing, and value stream mapping. The roadmap for 2019 includes more than two dozen features (Figure 3).

Figure 3: For 2019, the GitLab project has shifted its focus to continuous deployment and security testing. Source: GitLab; CC BY-SA 4.0 [18].

The most interesting novelties from a DevOps point of view include features like Incident Management and Serverless, but also the previously mentioned IAST, as well as Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP). Some of these features are already available for evaluation in the alpha or beta version.

The GitLab team plans to use the software not only in the DevOps area, but to establish it as a single application for other work areas, too, including security, QA, product owner, tester, and user experience designer.

Both the Community and Enterprise editions have publicly available issue trackers [19] [20]. Their existence motivates users of GitLab to contribute feedback, feature requests, or code. This form of transparency not only forms the basis of a fast feedback loop, but increasingly makes GitLab a versatile tool for DevOps teams.

Infos

  1. GitLab: https://gitlab.com
  2. GitLab Community Edition: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/
  3. GitOps: https://www.weave.works/blog/gitops-operations-by-pull-request
  4. "How To Use GitLab for Agile Software Development" by Victor Wu, March 5, 2018: https://about.gitlab.com/2018/03/05/gitlab-for-agile-software-development/
  5. Smart commits: https://confluence.atlassian.com/fisheye/using-smart-commits-960155400.html
  6. GitLab Runners: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/
  7. TOML format: https://github.com/toml-lang/toml
  8. GitLab Runner documentation: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/configuration/advanced-configuration.html#the-runnerscache-section
  9. Pipeline configuration: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/README.html
  10. Alpine Linux: https://alpinelinux.org/about/
  11. Artifactory: https://jfrog.com/artifactory/
  12. Helm charts: https://github.com/helm/charts
  13. Auto DevOps pipeline: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/lib/gitlab/ci/templates/Auto-DevOps.gitlab-ci.yml
  14. Review Apps: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/index.html#doc-nav
  15. Gemnasium: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/gemnasium.html
  16. Clair: https://github.com/coreos/clair
  17. Clair scanner: https://github.com/arminc/clair-scanner
  18. CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
  19. Community Edition issue tracker: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues
  20. Enterprise Edition issue tracker: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues

The Author

Peter Förger is DevOps Coach with DB Systel GmbH, the digital partner of the Deutsche Bahn railway company in Germany.

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