GitLab is the perfect balance of aesthetics and functionality!

Item: GitLab
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with GitLab

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use GitLab for all of our versioning and source control for all scripts and code that we run on a regular basis. GitLab helps us maintain consistent code across multiple environments and allows multiple users to develop on multiple branches at the same time. We also use GitLab in correlation with Jenkins to streamline our CI/CD pipeline and deploy code quickly to our environments.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Versioning/Source Control
Provides a source of truth for Argo runner
Interface is clean and easy to use
Git CLI is easy to work with and automate push/pull with GitLab
Merge/Merge Requests/Approvals are very easy to follow and provide detailed errors when there is an issue

Cons

Navigating between branches within a repo can be difficult
In browser file editing is somewhat tedious
Errors relating to CI/CD could be more verbose

Return on Investment

ROI is very high from a business perspective as almost every employee in the company uses GitLab on a daily basis and has few complaints
Maintaining consistency within repos within each team is very easy and increases their effeciency
Our container platform heavily relies on GitLab and has grown rapidly due to it's impact

Alternatives Considered

GitHub, GitKraken and IBM Rational ClearCase

GitLab is easily the preferred tool when it comes to versioning and source control. With other tools the UI often feels outdated and clunky leading to inefficiency and confusion. With some of the sleeker tools such as GitKraken, while the aesthetic is pleasing, the experience is plagued by a lack of support, lack of optional plugins, and a plethora of bugs that cause unnecessary legwork to resolve. GitLab is the best of both aesthetic and functionality

Security

We have used GitLab's security features to scan code for vulnerabilities. While my personal experience with this has been less than others, we certainly benefit from the ability to address vulnerabilities when found instead of after code has been deployed. This has saved us unnecessary legwork and has saved the end customers from having to deal with oversights on our part.

Continuous Integration

The continuous integration opportunities GitLab provides give an excellent environment for our developers and engineers to share projects and code with each other. By operating on branches adjacent to the Master branch our engineers can be certain that our infrastructure ansible scripts are good to go and are tested. On the other hand, our developers can simultaneously use a stable master branch to perform dev testing before it all gets wrapped up into the stable prod environment.

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?

Yes

Would you buy GitLab again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Jenkins, Red Hat OpenShift, Microsoft SharePoint, Jira Software

Likelihood to Recommend

One scenario that implements GitLab well in our environment is the ability to use GitLab in conjunction with our Argo runner. We are able to do builds in Jenkins that update specific values in our yaml files in GitLab that are automatically seen and implemented. We keep each environment on a different branch which helps with clarity and pushing stages up to production. We have had issues with other products in the past in trying to make this work as smoothly as it does with GitLab.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation