November 2018 Summaries

GitLab has achieved the AWS DevOps Competency certification, marking the highest level of accreditation from Amazon Web Services and reinforcing its role as a key technology partner. This certification highlights GitLab's technical proficiency and customer success in the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery category, demonstrating its ability to deliver production-ready solutions on AWS that align with AWS Security Best Practices. The certification assures potential and current GitLab and AWS users of the platform’s capability to enhance application delivery, build, test, and infrastructure management. Additionally, the AWS Competency Program aids customers in identifying partners with specialized expertise, further emphasizing GitLab’s commitment to broadening its contribution to both small and large AWS users.

GitLab is enhancing its integrated DevOps platform to address the increasing complexity of software development, especially with the proliferation of microservices that demand rigorous testing, security, and monitoring. CEO Sid Sijbrandij highlights the necessity for comprehensive tools that not only streamline workflows but also integrate seamlessly into the development process, reducing the need to manage multiple dependencies. GitLab aims to simplify this by providing an all-in-one solution where code commits automatically trigger a suite of integrated tools for monitoring, security, and deployment, thus promoting faster and more stable software releases. The platform's focus on microservices includes advanced features like Kubernetes and a global Docker registry browser, catering to the needs of cloud-native technologies. As GitLab continues to expand its capabilities beyond its initial strengths in planning, creating, and verifying, the company is committed to offering best-in-class solutions across the entire DevOps lifecycle, ensuring that each stage from managing to securing is robust and efficient.

GitLab's commitment to a monthly release cycle reflects its belief in delivering features rapidly and predictably, which it views as a competitive advantage. While monthly releases help users anticipate new functionalities and aid in planning team capacity, they also pose challenges, such as meeting tight deadlines and managing team morale. The approach requires features to be developed in small, iterative steps, promoting velocity and quality control. Although the model may not suit every organization, especially those requiring extensive testing or dealing with hardware, GitLab encourages experimentation to find the right cadence. Retrospectives play a crucial role in identifying and addressing issues, ensuring the release process remains efficient and aligned with user needs.

Hannes Rosenögger, a Core Team member at GitLab, made his first contribution in December 2014 by fixing a bug that prevented multiple issues from being closed with a single commit. As a Java software developer in Germany, he contributes to various areas of GitLab, primarily backend development and documentation, while also providing support on the #gitlab IRC channel. In his free time, he is involved with his local scout group and enjoys fixing things. Rosenögger emphasizes the accessibility of contributing to GitLab, highlighting that it does not always require programming skills, as contributions can also be made in translation or UX design. He appreciates GitLab's openness to community feedback, citing the Squash and Merge feature as an example of the company listening to users. For those interested in contributing, Rosenögger suggests starting with the "Contributing to GitLab" page and encourages potential contributors to reach out to him for guidance.

AWS re:Invent, held from November 26-30, promises to be an exciting event, with GitLab, an AWS partner, actively participating and offering various activities and resources. To maximize the experience, attendees are advised to strategize, manage their time effectively, set goals, practice self-care, prepare essentials beforehand, and remain open to learning and new experiences. GitLab will be present with a booth at The Venetian, offering demos, tutorials, and a chance to meet experts; highlights include a demonstration of GitLab with Kubernetes and Amazon EKS by CEO Sid Sijbrandij and a live demo of GitLab Auto DevOps. Participants are encouraged to book time with GitLab experts in advance to ensure meaningful interactions and gain valuable insights from the event.

In GitLab 11.5, set to release on November 22, 2018, the Elasticsearch integration will support version 6 while discontinuing support for versions 5.5 or earlier, necessitating an upgrade to version 5.6 or 6.x prior to updating GitLab. This transition requires a reindex due to changes incompatible with previous index versions, affecting only self-managed GitLab users. The upgrade to Elasticsearch 6 introduces significant changes, including the removal of mapping types and the introduction of a join datatype for parent-child relationships, which GitLab 11.5 adopts. These alterations mandate that all documents in an index share the same type, prompting GitLab to implement its own type field to maintain query capabilities based on project membership and permissions. While version 5.6 remains compatible due to enablement of single_type behavior and availability of the join datatype, support for versions 5.5 and earlier is discontinued. The adoption of Elasticsearch 6 is anticipated to enhance performance with improvements like sparsely populated fields, faster query times with sorted indices, and better search scalability across shards.

The debate over using open source contributions as a hiring metric continues to stir conversation, as highlighted by Duane O'Brien, head of open source at Indeed.com, in his conference talk. This discussion, which resurfaces periodically, critiques the reliance on GitHub activity as a measure of a candidate's suitability, particularly due to its potential to create bias and perpetuate unrealistic standards of constant coding. Critics argue that this approach can disadvantage individuals with significant personal responsibilities, such as primary caregivers or those with limited free time, and reinforce the notion that true developers must always be coding. While open source contributions can provide insights into a candidate's experience within specific communities or projects, they should not be the sole criterion for evaluation. Alternative methods, such as code samples, panel interviews, or contract work, are recommended to ensure a fair assessment of skills. Job seekers with limited open source experience are advised to be candid about their constraints and explore opportunities like Outreachy internships to gain relevant experience. O'Brien emphasizes the importance of evaluating the whole picture of a candidate's capabilities rather than relying solely on GitHub data.

GitLab announced plans to discontinue support for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on GitLab.com and its API by December 15, 2018, in a move to enhance security, and has provided a canary production environment to test TLS 1.2 compatibility. Users can test their integrations, API tokens, and browsers using the canary environment at canary.gitlab.com to prevent disruptions, and are encouraged to complete testing before the deadline. The majority of GitLab traffic should remain unaffected as most clients already support TLS 1.2, but specific older software versions, such as Git-Credential-Manager-for-Windows before 1.14.0 and certain Red Hat and Java versions, will require updates to maintain compatibility. GitLab is committed to monitoring TLS vulnerabilities, providing updates via Twitter and security alert emails, and offering support through its security team.

A critical bug affecting GitLab's interaction with the Network File System (NFS) was identified and resolved, highlighting the collaborative nature of open-source software development. The issue was characterized by a "Stale file handle" error, which occurred when users attempted to clone certain repositories via Git, particularly after running a manual Git garbage collection (git gc). The investigation, inspired by a similar case study of a memory leak in Ruby, traced the problem to a bug in the Linux NFS client, specifically in version 4.0, which was exacerbated by the customer's use of an Isilon NFS appliance. The GitLab team collaborated with Linux NFS maintainers to pinpoint the problem, revealing that the issue was related to file handle management during file renaming operations. The solution involved a kernel patch by Trond Myklebust to ensure proper inode and dentry revalidation, which was later integrated into the Linux mainline kernel. This process demonstrated the importance of community support and expertise in resolving complex software bugs, underlining GitLab's motto that "everyone can contribute" to open source projects.

In efforts to develop comprehensive personas for each of GitLab's product areas, interviews with several product managers highlighted their roles, challenges, and motivations. The creation of the Product Manager Persona, Parker, encapsulates insights into the responsibilities of product managers, such as prioritizing feature requests, product roadmapping, and maintaining development progress. Challenges identified include communication issues, ensuring team members update tools like Jira, balancing strategic ambitions with practical constraints, and effectively communicating timelines and delays to stakeholders. Despite these challenges, product managers are driven by the goal of delivering high-quality features efficiently and enjoy the process of transforming concepts into solutions for users. This research aims to aid GitLab's product managers in enhancing features and making informed decisions.

GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij emphasizes the importance of transparency and collaboration in running an open source company, advocating for public participation in company operations to bridge the gap between GitLab as a project and as a business. Initially, GitLab experimented with various business models, such as relying on donations, feature request fees, and paid support, but these proved unsustainable. Ultimately, they adopted an open core model, offering basic features for free while charging for advanced features based on the user's role, such as managers, directors, and executives. To foster community engagement, GitLab plans to open its company summit to include community members and customers, increase transparency through videos, and eventually share financials once they are audited, with the goal of eventually becoming a public company.

GitLab utilizes its own platform in its workflow, allowing the team to identify limitations that may hinder productivity, particularly within the user experience (UX) department. Challenges include managing design discussions that often become convoluted and the lack of version control for design files, which results in designers maintaining personal folders for in-progress work. To address these issues, GitLab conducted a competitive analysis of design platforms to explore solutions and identified the need for tools that improve consistency, facilitate collaboration, and minimize context switching. The analysis revealed a market opportunity for a unified platform that integrates UX design into the DevOps lifecycle. GitLab aims to enhance design discussions by making design artifacts more accessible within issues and fostering cohesive collaboration. The company recognizes the potential for growth in the design tool market, valued at over $4 billion, and seeks feedback on proposed improvements to better engage design teams.