June 2018 Summaries

GitLab's culture of appreciation led to a playful challenge where a team member sought to automate breakfast using GitLab CI/CD and an Anova Sous Vide device. Inspired by a humorous comment during a Slack conversation, the author decided to automate the process of making sous-vide egg bites, a favorite breakfast item, by integrating the cooking process into GitLab's CI/CD pipeline. Leveraging a Raspberry Pi and PyCirculate, a project that handles Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connections with the Anova device, the author managed to set up a pipeline that, with a single button click, executed the breakfast preparation. Though it required initial effort and technical setup, this experiment demonstrated the versatility of CI/CD beyond software deployment, resulting in a repeatable and efficient way to prepare a gourmet breakfast, albeit with some kitchen mess and a bemused spouse.

GitLab has introduced a tool called Reviewer Roulette, a Slack slash command designed to randomly select a reviewer for merge requests, addressing the challenge of knowing whom to contact for reviews in a rapidly growing team. This tool, initially conceived during a frontend team meeting, aims to distribute review opportunities more evenly among team members, helping both experienced and less experienced reviewers engage with different parts of the codebase, thereby enhancing overall team knowledge. Built using Node.js, js-yaml, and express, Reviewer Roulette not only reduces decision fatigue and unconscious bias in selecting reviewers but also embodies GitLab's values of collaboration and efficiency. Originally intended for the frontend group, the tool has been expanded to be applicable across all engineering teams and is seeing regular use, with plans for further enhancements, including potential company-wide applications and integration with GitLab's Auto DevOps for easier builds and deployments. The tool invites feedback and interest from both internal teams and the broader GitLab community for potential wider deployment.

GitLab's first anonymous engineering engagement survey revealed that the frontend team felt the least safe in expressing their opinions, prompting the company to implement several initiatives to improve team culture. These initiatives include monthly themed frontend calls to encourage casual, non-work-related conversations, a shared frontend calendar to ensure team members are included in important discussions, and a #frontend_maintainers Slack channel for maintainers to share knowledge and align on best practices. Although formal survey results are pending, these efforts have shown promising improvements, as evidenced by the frontend team's high participation in a recent Content Hack Day, despite it coinciding with a public holiday for some members. The proactive steps taken have led to a noticeable positive shift in the frontend team culture, setting a potential example for other teams within the organization.

GitLab has been focusing on improving the performance and reliability of GitLab.com by migrating its infrastructure from Microsoft Azure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), leveraging the robust Kubernetes support provided by Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). This transition aims to enhance the platform's scalability and reliability, with a particular emphasis on utilizing Geo for maintaining synchronized mirrors for disaster recovery and facilitating the migration process. As part of the migration strategy, GitLab is also transferring approximately 200TB of data from Azure-based file servers to Google Cloud Storage to eliminate single points of failure associated with NFS servers and improve availability. The migration process involves regular rehearsals in a staging environment to ensure a smooth transition, with rigorous testing and quality assurance to protect user data integrity. The failover is planned for July 28, 2018, contingent upon ensuring all potential issues are resolved and the new environment is fully prepared for production workloads.

Leah Petersen's journey from a professional motorcycle stuntwoman to a DevOps engineer at Samsung SDS highlights her transition into the tech world and her experiences with GitLab CI/CD. Initially apprehensive about switching from Jenkins to GitLab, Petersen quickly embraced the new platform, finding it user-friendly and effective for continuous integration and continuous delivery. Working with Samsung's Cloud Native Computing Team, she has been involved in helping companies modernize and transition to Kubernetes and cloud computing. Petersen's path into tech began with an online Python course, which led her to Ada Developers Academy and eventually to specializing in Kubernetes. Despite facing gender stereotypes, she advocates for more women in tech roles and values the autonomy and innovation within her team. Her positive experience with GitLab has set a high standard for how technology should support developers, enhancing her workflow and career satisfaction.

GitLab has joined the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, a coalition of over 40 technology companies dedicated to enhancing security for users and customers through collaborative efforts and shared security principles. Emphasizing transparency as a core value, GitLab aims to contribute to these collective initiatives while sharing their experiences in making security more transparent. The company is dedicated to protecting user data and enhancing security capabilities within its products to aid customers in improving their software development lifecycle. GitLab underscores that security is a shared responsibility and values collaboration with industry peers to gain deeper insights into threats and enhance protection strategies.

GitLab CI/CD, combined with GitLab Runner, offers a scalable and cost-effective solution for testing code before deployment by creating and destroying servers as needed. This guide provides a detailed tutorial on setting up a scalable GitLab infrastructure on DigitalOcean that automatically adjusts server capacity in response to demand, thus managing costs and reducing administration overhead. The setup involves configuring three components: a GitLab instance for storing code repositories, a bastion server that controls the creation and destruction of temporary runner servers, and the GitLab Runner that executes CI/CD jobs. The tutorial covers prerequisites, such as configuring GitLab and DigitalOcean accounts, and steps for importing a sample JavaScript project, setting up infrastructure with Flexible Droplets and DigitalOcean Spaces, and configuring GitLab Runner with Docker caching. It also guides users through obtaining necessary tokens, editing configuration files for autoscaling, and testing the setup to ensure functionality. The comprehensive instructions aim to empower users to build a responsive CI/CD pipeline that scales with project demands while highlighting troubleshooting tips and further optimization options.

GitLab has evolved beyond its initial role in source code management and versioning to encompass the entire DevOps lifecycle, enhancing the application development workflow through the introduction of features like the Web IDE. Initially conceived by developer Jacob Schatz to simplify multi-file editing for non-developers, the Web IDE emerged from a proof of concept into a robust, integrated development environment within the GitLab UI, eliminating the need for additional installations. The journey from a basic "repo editor" to a comprehensive Web IDE involved collaborative efforts from product managers, UX designers, and frontend engineers, leading to the adoption of the Monaco editor and a design inspired by existing code editors like VSCode. This integration facilitated an intuitive "editing to committing" workflow that caters to both novice and seasoned developers, incorporating new features such as a review state and an activity bar for seamless state transitions. As GitLab continues to refine the Web IDE, future updates aim to include advanced features like live code testing environments and integrated code review discussions, further contributing to the open-source community and enhancing developer confidence.

During a DevOps transformation, IT executives play a pivotal role in guiding development and operations teams to successfully adopt the DevOps model, as highlighted by DevOps consultant Gary Gruver. Gruver emphasizes the importance of executives in aligning teams under a common understanding of inefficiencies within the deployment pipeline and adjusting to cultural changes. He identifies one of the main challenges as ensuring everyone is aligned and suggests that executives should act as investigative reporters to understand the objectives of software development processes. In a discussion with GitLab, ahead of his webcast on June 19, Gruver offers tactical steps for executives to support their teams and urges them to focus on analyzing their current deployment pipeline to address the greatest inefficiencies in software development and deployment.

Netlify CMS, an open-source content management system, has announced support for GitLab as a back end, enhancing its mission to enable everyone to contribute to site content. This integration caters to the growing trend of using static site generators (SSGs) for building secure and fast websites by allowing non-technical users to easily manage content through a familiar WYSIWYG interface. Netlify CMS syncs content edits from its UI directly to a Git repository, treating content changes like code with features such as versioning and continuous deployment. This development, driven by high demand and resulting in the project's largest contributor joining, allows GitLab users to streamline their publishing processes with any SSG. Users can easily deploy a prepackaged template with the Hugo static site generator to see the integration in action.

GitLab's UX team is dedicated to enhancing the user experience by prioritizing open issues, tracking progress, and conducting research to guide design improvements. Through a structured workflow, the team engages in UX research to understand user needs, using methods like surveys, usability testing, and interviews to gather insights. A recent study focused on the needs of operations professionals revealed challenges such as lack of automation, redundant tools, insufficient resources, and difficulty in adopting DevOps culture. These findings highlighted the need for streamlined workflows and tools, which informed GitLab's product development efforts, particularly in creating a flexible Operations dashboard. The broader impact of UX research extends beyond mere design improvements, influencing brand loyalty, product quality, and organizational collaboration, underscoring its significance in business and technology.

GitLab is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline the entire DevOps cycle by integrating product development, QA, and operations into a single application, significantly accelerating the software development lifecycle. It offers robust built-in features such as continuous integration and delivery, project management, issue tracking, and private repository hosting, alongside strong Kubernetes support. Security is a priority, with features like dependency scanning and various application security testing methods integrated directly into the workflow. As an open-core platform, GitLab encourages community involvement and transparency, allowing users to contribute and influence its development while also providing both open-source and proprietary options. The platform fosters collaboration among all stakeholders, ensuring organized communication and regular public contributions, highlighted by monthly releases that incorporate community feedback.

GitLab experienced a surge of enthusiasm with the trending hashtag #movingtogitlab, prompting CEO Sid Sijbrandij to acknowledge both new and long-standing users by offering limited edition "GitLab Originals" T-shirts. These shirts are available to users who had accounts before June 2, 2018, and reside in the US, due to logistical and cost considerations. Despite the global interest, shipping constraints and high international costs have limited distribution to within the US, but GitLab plans to offer more inclusive freebies in the future. As of a recent update, only 383 of the 1,250 available shirts have been claimed, encouraging eligible users to act quickly to secure their piece of GitLab history.

Git commits are crucial to a repository's history, serving as a log of changes and developments over time, making meaningful commit messages essential for understanding and tracking progress. Clear commit messages aid developers in identifying changes, fixing bugs, and managing complex projects. Common situations requiring changes to commits include altering the most recent commit, editing a specific commit, adding, removing, or combining commits, and cleaning up confusing commit histories. Techniques such as using `git commit --amend`, `git rebase`, and creating patch files help manage these scenarios, ensuring a streamlined and understandable commit history. These practices not only facilitate smoother collaboration among team members but also enhance the overall maintainability and reliability of the codebase. Understanding these processes is key to effective Git usage, and further exploration of Git's capabilities can be found in its official documentation.

With the general availability of Amazon's Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS), GitLab now offers official support for integrating EKS, allowing users to efficiently manage Kubernetes clusters on AWS. This integration simplifies the deployment process, as Amazon handles provisioning, upgrades, and patching, while maintaining compatibility with existing Kubernetes plugins and tools. GitLab's Kubernetes integration enhances its features, enabling users to utilize powerful tools such as Auto DevOps, Deploy Boards, and Incremental Rollout. Auto DevOps automates the building, testing, and deployment of applications; Deploy Boards provide real-time visibility into the deployment status across environments; and Incremental Rollout allows for gradual deployment to minimize user disruption. Users can connect their EKS clusters to GitLab projects through a straightforward setup process, leveraging the tight integration with AWS services to optimize their DevOps workflows.

Apple announced an integration at WWDC that simplifies the workflow between Xcode and GitLab by introducing a new "Open in Xcode" button, which allows users to clone Xcode projects directly from GitLab. This feature is compatible with projects containing a .xcodeproj or .xcworkspace file and is accessible through the GitLab interface next to the Git URL for cloning. It is currently available on GitLab.com and will be extended to self-managed GitLab instances with the release of GitLab 11.0 on June 22, 2018, requiring Xcode 9 or above. Future enhancements are planned with the upcoming GitLab 11.0 update.

GitLab recently experienced a surge in interest, with over 2,000 tweets about #movingtogitlab, over 100,000 repositories imported, a sevenfold increase in orders, and an appearance on Bloomberg TV, all coinciding with Apple's announcement of Xcode 10's integration with GitLab. In response to questions from the community, GitLab revealed that its Ultimate and Gold offerings are now free for educational institutions and open source projects, providing them with comprehensive features such as Epics, Roadmap, Static Application Security Testing, and Container Scanning. While these free accounts do not come with support, GitLab aims to encourage the use of its advanced features in educational settings and open source projects, allowing students to gain valuable experience and fostering the growth of open source initiatives. This strategy supports GitLab's sustainable business model by offering free services to educational and open source entities while maintaining paid services for non-open source organizations.

Following Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, a notable trend of developers migrating to GitLab has emerged, characterized by the hashtag #movingtogitlab gaining traction on social media. The migration is driven by GitLab's seamless integration of code repositories, documentation, issue tracking, and CI/CD, along with its adherence to FSF ethical criteria. GitLab has reported a tenfold increase in repository migrations and is scaling its infrastructure to meet demand. The process of transferring projects from GitHub to GitLab is streamlined, often taking less than five minutes. GitLab is also offering new users a 75% discount on its top-tier plans, contingent on tweeting about the migration and completing specific steps before set deadlines.

Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub is a significant milestone reflecting the growing influence of software developers and the importance of modern DevOps practices. Historically, code collaboration evolved from cumbersome methods like mailing floppy disks to more sophisticated platforms like SourceForge, and eventually GitHub, which introduced social coding and streamlined code management. GitHub's user-friendly interface and community-building capabilities have made it a central hub for open-source projects. Microsoft's acquisition is seen as a strategic move to integrate GitHub with its Visual Studio Team Services, ultimately driving Azure cloud adoption. While GitHub has been pivotal in code collaboration, GitLab's approach focuses on a unified DevOps lifecycle within a single application, emphasizing open-source contributions and a streamlined user experience. The acquisition highlights the growing value and influence of developers in the tech industry and Microsoft's interest in leveraging GitHub's community for cloud service expansion.

In anticipation of the release of GitLab 11 on June 22, 2018, all integrations using API v3 connected to GitLab.com will cease functioning on June 4, 2018, as the API v3 will be removed entirely. Users are urged to update their integrations to API v4 before June 4 to prevent any service interruptions. The deprecation of API v3 was initially announced in the GitLab 8.17 release post, and comprehensive documentation is available to guide users through the upgrade process from v3 to v4.