February 2017 Summaries

Research highlights the significant impact that development tools have on software developers' happiness and job retention, with 81% asserting the necessity of using the latest tools and 36% willing to reject job offers from organizations that lack them. As the industry shifts towards more distributed and collaborative workflows, individual developers are gaining influence in tool selection, with 44% of respondents from a Global Developer Survey indicating they choose their own tools and only a minority leaving these decisions to higher management. This empowerment reflects developers' insistence on using modern tools to optimize their effectiveness and efficiency, as well as a preference for consistency across work and personal projects. The survey underscores developers' growing agency in shaping their work environment and the critical role of tool selection in maintaining competitive advantage in the software development landscape.

During a summit in Cancún, the UX team conducted workshops to brainstorm and design a smart project dashboard by utilizing an adapted version of the Google Ventures Design Sprint process. The primary goal was to create a tool that reflects the status of a project throughout its lifecycle while ensuring that relevant information is accessible to both familiar and unfamiliar users. The team followed a structured ideation process using the Four-Step Sketch, which included individual note-taking, rapid idea generation through Crazy 8s, solution sketching with storyboards, and a silent critique session. This approach encouraged quick idea generation and collaborative evaluation, leading to the emergence of several potential solutions and common ideas for the new dashboard design. The workshop concluded with a collection of ideas and an invitation for further contributions and feedback as the team continues to develop the dashboard.

Continuous integration (CI) is a development practice where developers frequently integrate their code into a shared repository, allowing for automatic testing and rapid error detection and correction. This approach has become essential for companies to remain competitive and retain talent, as it automates time-consuming manual testing and minimizes the risk of releasing faulty code. According to a Global Developer Report, CI is increasingly mainstream, with over 75% of developers using it regularly, and 77% considering it vital to their work. The report suggests that companies not adopting CI may face challenges in attracting developers, as 36% of developers would decline a job offer from a company not using modern tools. Furthermore, the continuous approach extends beyond development teams to encourage more efficient and collaborative work across entire organizations by embracing frequent releases and feedback integration.

GitLab emphasizes transparency by making its release retrospective and kickoff notes and calls available to the public. After each release, a retrospective meeting is held to discuss successes, issues, and improvements, with notes open for public comment and participation in the call encouraged. Similarly, before the next release, a kickoff meeting outlines forthcoming expectations, again inviting public interaction. Specific examples, such as the retrospective for release 8.16 and the kickoff for 8.17, illustrate the process, and recordings of these meetings are accessible on GitLab's YouTube channel, where community engagement through comments and attendance is welcomed.

GitLab is hosting an "Issue Bash" event from March 4th to March 5th, inviting contributors to help address over 6000 open issues on GitLab CE. Open to anyone, including non-technical participants, the event aims to close, categorize, and address existing feature proposals and bugs. Contributors stand a chance to win prizes, such as T-shirts, pajama pants, Moleskine notebooks, PocketCHIPs, and a grand mystery prize if more than 200 issues are resolved. The GitLab team, including @markglenfletcher and @ClemMakesApps, will be available to assist participants throughout the event.

On January 31, 2017, GitLab.com faced a significant outage due to an accidental deletion of data from its primary database server, which led to several hours of downtime and the irreversible loss of production data, including around 5,000 projects, 5,000 comments, and 700 user accounts. The issue was compounded by a flawed backup process, caused by mismatched PostgreSQL versions and failed notifications, and inadequate disaster recovery procedures, which prolonged the restoration process to over 18 hours. GitLab's CEO issued an apology, and the company outlined efforts to improve its operations and recovery strategies, which included enhancing backup procedures, implementing better monitoring systems, and increasing database redundancy. The incident and recovery efforts were publicly documented and live-streamed, demonstrating GitLab's commitment to transparency and accountability.

GitLab organized a summit in Cancún, Mexico, where 201 team members from 35 countries gathered for a week of meetings, team-building activities, and leisure. This biannual event aims to foster in-person connections among its remote workforce, enhancing collaboration and understanding of each other's roles. The summit featured various engaging activities, including a keynote challenge involving Google Kubernetes Engine, a competitive scavenger hunt, snorkeling with sea turtles, and visiting the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá. The highlight for attendees was the chance to connect with colleagues, share innovative projects, and feel inspired by the collective enthusiasm and creativity, setting a positive tone for the upcoming year.

The text provides a step-by-step guide on how to integrate a free Cloudflare SSL/TLS certificate with a GitLab Pages site, allowing users to deploy a static website with custom domains and secure HTTPS connections. It assumes familiarity with SSL/TLS, DNS, GitLab Pages, and Cloudflare, and addresses a common user request for support in adding Cloudflare certificates to GitLab Pages. The guide involves creating a DNS record on Cloudflare, generating a certificate, and adding it to GitLab Pages, with specific instructions on handling PEM and root certificates. The process concludes with configuring encryption settings on Cloudflare to ensure the site runs securely on HTTPS with the custom domain.

GitLab is enhancing its frontend development by integrating Vue and webpack to improve performance, maintainability, and ease of development. The team is progressively incorporating Vue into specific parts of the application where it can provide significant benefits, such as making UI components more reactive and efficient without rewriting the entire frontend. Additionally, webpack is being introduced to manage JavaScript dependencies more effectively, allowing for better code bundling, hot module replacement, and dependency management, which streamlines the development process and reduces technical debt. The removal of Turbolinks, which previously complicated JavaScript handling, is expected to further optimize page performance by enabling each page to function more independently, potentially as standalone Vue applications. This strategic approach aims to make GitLab's frontend more robust and developer-friendly while avoiding the pitfalls of converting the entire site into a single-page application.

GitLab.com experienced a critical incident resulting in the loss of six hours of database data due to a series of unfortunate events involving spam attacks and database replication issues. The incident began with spammers overwhelming the system, leading to database instability and a subsequent lockup. Attempts to fix the replication problems were hampered by configuration issues and human error, including the accidental deletion of critical data. Backup systems proved unreliable, compounding the problem. Despite the setbacks, the team managed to restore GitLab.com using a six-hour-old backup, and they are working on a postmortem to understand the root causes and to implement preventive measures. Throughout the incident, the GitLab team received substantial support from the community.