Great tool to handle your git needs

Item: GitLab
Rating: 8
Author: Sean Patterson

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Gitlab is used by one of our major clients as a means of hosting 20+ repositories for a major software platform that we are building. It allows us to intelligently manage the flow of code through its gated software review process and traditional git support instead of trying to be a new custom solution.

Pros and Cons

Merge rules
Custom templates
Pricing
Code reviews

User interface

Return on Investment

Time saved
Code assurance

Alternatives Considered

Bitbucket and GitHub

Gitlab provided a great middle-ground between the full-fledged features of a higher-priced Bitbucket premium plan and the free but not private needs of GitHub. We are using a self-hosted Gitlab instance, which was another benefit that wasn't available at the time with the other platforms. The custom templates was also another factor that played in our favor.

Security

We have not used any of the security features in Gitlab, as we have opted for Snyk instead.

Continuous Integration

We have not used the continuous integration features in Gitlab as we have opted to use Jenkins to fulfill our CI/CD needs.

Key Insights

Do you think GitLab delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with GitLab's feature set?

Yes

Did GitLab live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of GitLab go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy GitLab again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

For most project scenarios, Gitlab is a solid choice to manage your code. While there are plenty of free platforms out there to give you a git repository, Gitlab particularly shines by providing gated merge requests for you at the basic paid tier while others require higher levels. The code review interface is more sophisticated and makes it easy for you to start a code review without necessarily doing a merge right away through a single checkbox. The code review templates were particularly powerful for us because it allowed us to provide custom documentation and a checklist to remind the developers what needed to be done. The custom fields can't prevent a merge programmatically, but it makes for a good user flow.