GitLab, a rapidly growing private software company in America, has gained popularity for providing a central server to manage Git repositories, simplifying administration tasks for various corporations worldwide. Notably, GitLab has over 100,000 users, including renowned organizations such as IBM, Sony, Goldman Sachs, and NASA.

Goldman Sachs faced unique challenges such as increasing software quality, developer efficiency, enabling concurrent development activities, and achieving faster development cycles. To tackle these challenges, Goldman Sachs turned to GitLab, which helped the engineering teams remove toolchain complexity and accelerate DevOps adoption. With GitLab, the team could develop an application that allowed developers to manage all efforts with one user interface and simplified administration by employing one centralized instance for all repositories.

Git is a version control system that tracks changes in computer files, helping coordinate work among project team members and track progress over time. It can handle projects of any size and allows multiple users to work together without affecting each other’s work.

GitLab is a web-based Git repository that provides free open and private repositories, issue-following capabilities, and wikis. It is a complete DevOps platform that enables professionals to perform all the tasks in a project and allows teams to collaborate and build better software. GitLab reduces product lifecycles, increases productivity, and creates value for customers. It offers tracking from planning to creation to automate the entire DevOps lifecycle.

GitLab was originally a fully free and open-source software distributed under the MIT License. It was split into two distinct versions, GitLab CE (Community Edition), and GitLab EE (Enterprise Edition) in July 2013. GitLab EE was set under a restricted license, but the source code remained publicly visible, whereas the GitLab CE licensing model remained unchanged. In 2017, GitLab announced that their code would become fully open-sourced under an MIT License.

GitLab’s main benefit is enabling team members to collaborate in every phase of the project, automating the entire DevOps lifecycle to achieve the best possible results. GitLab’s popularity has increased as it offers a wide assortment of features and brick blocks of code availability. Customers can opt for the paid version of GitLab, such as the Premium version that costs $19 per user/month.

In summary, GitLab simplifies administration tasks for corporations, enables concurrent development activities, reduces product lifecycles, increases productivity, and creates value for customers. It is a complete DevOps platform that allows team members to collaborate and automate the entire DevOps lifecycle.

What is Git?

Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system used to track changes in computer files and coordinate work among members of a project team. It was created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the same person who created the Linux operating system.

Git’s primary purpose is to manage any changes made in one or more projects over a given period of time. It helps track progress over time and allows multiple users to work together without affecting each other’s work. Git provides developers with a complete history of all changes made to their code and allows them to revert to previous versions if needed.

Git is designed to handle projects of any size, from small personal projects to large-scale enterprise software development. It is widely used in the software development industry and has become the de facto standard for version control systems.

Using Git involves creating a repository, which is a directory that contains all the files and directories needed for the project. Once the repository is created, developers can add files, make changes, and commit them to the repository. Git allows developers to create multiple branches, which are separate lines of development that can be worked on independently of each other. This allows for concurrent development activities and easier collaboration among team members.

Overall, Git is an essential tool for software development, providing developers with a centralized system for version control, collaboration, and project management.

Why Use GitLab?

GitLab is a web-based Git repository that offers a complete DevOps platform to manage and automate software development projects. Here are some reasons why developers might choose to use GitLab:

1. Collaboration: GitLab allows teams to collaborate and work together on projects from planning to creation. It offers issue tracking, merge requests, and real-time commenting to improve communication among team members.
2. Centralized platform: GitLab provides a single, centralized platform for project management, source code management, monitoring, and security. This simplifies the administration of projects and reduces toolchain complexity.
3. Flexibility: GitLab offers both open and private repositories, as well as the ability to choose between self-hosted or cloud-based solutions. This allows organizations to choose the option that best suits their needs.
4. DevOps automation: GitLab enables developers to automate the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and source code management to testing, deployment, and monitoring. This helps reduce product lifecycles and increase productivity, creating value for customers.
5. Customizable workflows: GitLab allows developers to create custom workflows for their projects, providing the flexibility to work the way they want to. This enables teams to adapt to changing requirements and work more efficiently.
6. Extensibility: GitLab offers a wide range of features and integrations, including Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS. This allows developers to build and deploy software using the tools and services they prefer.

In summary, GitLab provides developers with a powerful and flexible platform for managing and automating software development projects. Its centralized platform, collaboration features, and automation capabilities make it an attractive option for organizations looking to streamline their software development processes.

Demo Time!

If you’re new to GitLab and wondering how to get started, a tutorial demo can be a great way to learn. In this demo, we will guide you through making your first project in GitLab.

First, go to gitlab.com or install gitlab on your personal seedbox and create an account if you haven’t already done so. Once you have created an account, log in to access your dashboard.

Once you have logged in, the next step is to create a new project. Simply click on the “New project” button and fill in the required information such as the name, description, and visibility settings. You can choose to make the project private or publicly visible, depending on your needs.

To get started with configuring your user name and email ID in Git, you will need to open your Git Bash terminal. Once you have opened the terminal, you can proceed to the next step.

To configure your user name and email ID, you can use the following commands in your Git Bash terminal:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email [email protected]

Next, you can create your first repository. To create a new repository in your working directory, you can use the following commands:

mkdir my-first-git-repo && cd my-first-git-repo

If you check the folder at this point, you will notice that it is currently empty. To get started with using Git, you will need to initialize a new Git repository. To do this, you can use the following command:

git init

Upon creating a Git repository, you may notice a branch named “main” displayed on the screen. This branch is automatically created when a new Git repository is initialized.

To locate the hidden “.git” folder, just use the following command

$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   3 user  staff   96 Apr 10 10:37 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 39 user  staff 1248 Apr 10 10:36 ..
drwxr-xr-x   9 user  staff  288 Apr 10 10:37 .git

Upon initializing a Git repository, you may notice various directories and configurations within the repository’s root directory. Be cautious not to modify any of these directories unless you understand their purposes.

Next, create a text file within the repository that you can later push to the GitLab repository.

To create a text file use the following commands:

touch my-text-file.txt && vi my-text-file.txt

This will open the editor, you can press i for interactive mode, and input some text:

  1 this is my new text file!
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
 NORMAL > my-text-file.txt + >                      > >   1:25

You can save this by pressing CTL + C then : and then typing wq and pressing enter.

The following step is to verify the file status.

git status

This should show something like:

$ git status
On branch main

No commits yet

Untracked files:
  (use "git add ..." to include in what will be committed)
	my-text-file.txt

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

By checking the Git status, you can see that there are currently no committed files and some untracked files are displayed in red.

To add the file to the staging area, use the following command:

git add .

The next step involves committing the file changes made. To do so, use the commit command.

git commit -m "My insightful commit message"

Verify the status of the file by running the following command:

git status

This should show something along the lines of:

$ git status
On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

Since there was only one text file committed in the previous step, there are no more commits pending.

The next step is to push the file to the GitLab repository. To do this, first, go to your GitLab account and copy the “git remote origin” command, which is shown below.

Once you have copied the Git remote origin command from your GitLab repository, switch back to your Git Bash and paste the command. This will push all of your current commits and changes!

$ git remote add origin ssh://[email protected]:10002/rid/my-first-project.git && git push -u origin --all && git push -u origin --tags

Enumerating objects: 3, done.
Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 248 bytes | 248.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
To ssh://git.cylo.net:10002/rid/my-first-project.git
 * [new branch]      main -> main
branch 'main' set up to track 'origin/main'.
Everything up-to-date

To confirm that the text file was successfully pushed to GitLab, go to the project page on GitLab and check if the file is listed there. You should see the file you just pushed listed in the project’s file directory.

You can click on the file to view its contents and verify that it matches the contents of the local file you created earlier.

Key Features of GitLab

GitLab is a powerful Git repository that offers a range of additional features, including:

1. Powerful CI/CD Pipelines GitLab offers powerful Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, making it easy to automate software testing and deployment processes.
2. In-Built Registry GitLab has an in-built container registry that can be deployed instantly without any additional configurations.
3. Kubernetes Integration GitLab can be perfectly integrated with Kubernetes, a popular container orchestration platform, to make container deployment and management even easier.
4. Easy Project Import/Export GitLab makes it easy to import enormous projects and export code from existing projects.

Advantages of GitLab

GitLab has several critical advantages for developers, including:

1. Easy to Set Up GitLab is easy to set up and can be installed on-premise or on the cloud.
2. User-Friendly UI and Tools GitLab has a user-friendly interface and a range of tools that make it easy to manage and collaborate on code.
3. Unlimited Free Private Repositories GitLab allows an unlimited number of free private repositories, making it an ideal choice for small teams and solo developers.
4. API and Third-Party Service Integration GitLab can integrate with many APIs and third-party services, making it easy to use with your existing tools and workflows.
5. Reliable Uptime GitLab has a strong track record of reliable uptime, ensuring that your code is always accessible and available when you need it.

Disadvantages of GitLab

Like any tool, GitLab has its share of disadvantages, including:

1. Complicated UI for Reviewing The UI for reviewing code changes can be a bit complicated, especially for new users.
2. Bugs and Issues GitLab, like any software tool, has some bugs and issues that can make it a bit sloppy at times.

Conclusion

In conclusion, GitLab is a powerful Git repository with a range of additional features that make it a popular choice for developers. With its easy-to-use interface, powerful CI/CD pipelines, and reliable uptime, GitLab is an excellent choice for small teams and solo developers. However, the complicated UI for reviewing changes and occasional bugs and issues may require some patience and technical know-how to overcome. Overall, GitLab is a great tool for managing code and collaborating with other developers.