GitLab - Great addition to our toolset.

Item: GitLab
Rating: 8
Author: Lisa Krol

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use GitLab for storing our code repos as well as storing the applications that we use to test our product and test applications. We integrate GitLab with Jenkins, SonarQube, blueOcean, and a variety of other applications to ensure code quality in our CI/CD pipeline. We use GitLab to track changes to applications as well as have multiple versions. GitLab is great for version history as well.

Pros and Cons

Version history - having the ability to see when things were last changed and by who.
Integration with our other tools - to help ensure code quality.
Multiple repos.
Easy navigation.

Checking for duplications - we have ended up with two applications being the exact same for a while, and then one gets updated, and one doesn't cause issues.

Return on Investment

Better code quality.
Faster time to code reviews.
Pipeline works well with our other applications and reports all in one spot.

Alternatives Considered

Gerrit Code

We migrated from Gerrit to GitLab, and minus a few minor bumps during migration, GitLab has been hands down better. Our devs have faster time to code review with notifications, the UI is easy to navigate and, and our pipeline is integrated and automated, so once everything is in place, our merges happen automatically. Gerrit was lacking in the UI, and notifications were hit or miss, so code reviews were delayed. Our pipeline is much smoother with GitLab.

Security

We do not have a paid plan.

Continuous Integration

As stated, our code reviews are much faster with this integration; our unit tests and integration tests are triggered and reported back to GitLab, so we have all the information related to a code change in one spot rather than chasing pieces of information down to figure out what happened.

Key Insights

Do you think GitLab delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

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?

Yes

Would you buy GitLab again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Jenkins, ReadyAPI, SonarQube, Docker

Likelihood to Recommend

I use GitLab to store our applications - GitLab makes it easy to make small changes in the online IDE and push changes to the rest of the team. We use GitLab to store our repos - Easy navigation between projects, and the versioning is top-notch. We integrated our CI/CD pipeline and GitLab, we manage code reviews, can track pipeline status, and if our integration tests fail, then the merge is blocked, which is great for not pushing code that will break our environments.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Integrations with our other CI/CD tools.
We integrate with Jira and the connection there is fantastic.
We integrate with Jenkins and can easily report build failures back to gitlab and block the merge.

Difficult Tasks

Nothing particularly difficult, I do wish there was some better compare features when creating a new/updated code base because we have had issues with duplication.

Usability

I find it easy to use, I haven't had to do the integration work, so that's why it is a 9/10, cause I can't speak to how easy that part was or the initial set up, but day to day use is great!