GitLab

This was bit difficult during the pandemic then able to mange and establish the framework to address those changes. It's better end to end control now

We are using Gitlab for the peer code review. We have added a template in the Gitlab which is required to be followed during the code review phase. It is easy to review the code when referring to the template. Also, we have added Sonar Qube in the pipeline stages so most of the code related issues are already captured in the Sonar Qube report. Thanks to the Giltab for easy integration of such plugins.

The platform has so many features and documentation. It also provides some of [the] best practices we know and love in other platforms.

Gitlab itself has some support on applying best practices, but it only serves as a base for that. It's gitlab ci system allows us to create jobs and workflows, which is quite easy to learn and easy to maintain. It serves as an excellent foundation for the said techniques, but it's not a guarantee.

I had the chance to use Gitlab when working on-premise and now working remotely for more than 3 years. In both cases, Gitlab enabled a great collaboration setup for my team. We used the open-source version installed locally at the time and now I'm using their own SaaS version. Both work seamlessly.

The merge request feature is probably the most used part of my team's workflow. Git and Gitlab are great for tracking code changes as it is, but we're benefitting from capturing the conversation as well. Most comments might boil down to "LGTM!" (looks good to me) but longer conversations are easy to follow in the UI.

We're also working to get into automated workflows with Gitlab CI so that our commits trigger the next logical action, like a push to the main branch deploying the latest version of the code. We've automated quite a bit of our continuous delivery but growing into continuous deployment with Gitlab is a goal.

Gitlab has enabled us to make full use of continuous integration and continuous delivery with their pipelines and shared runners. We were able to set up automated tests to run on pull requests and require practically anything through configuration.
We were also able to setup code reviews to require a set of rules or checks before being approved.

Using Gitlab really drives home remote collaboration. There are so many tools in this space now, but Gitlab really practices what they preach as they are a remote first company. As such, they have thought through what challenges remote and on-prem teams face that are the same, but have made a huge effort to deliver a product that makes sure regardless of locale you're able to work together and collaborate effectively. At the end of the day, that's the important part. From a user experience perspective, Gitlab really nails this 100%.

Most importantly, Gitlab has saved us from one team member having their software on their personal computer, and we face the loss of both the code and any history of the code. Beyond that, Gitlab has allowed us to be able to create structure around our roll outs of software and to be able to make sure all the code we send out is reviewed by peers.

We use gitlab issue and Pull requests to assign bug or features request to developers on our team and to merge code from different environments