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Comment by encryptluks2 | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but feel like GitHub is like 5 years behind GitLab.

Agreed, while Github Actions seems more modern at first glace (mostly because of the marketplace listing of public Actions), it's got a lot of rough edges, after thought features, unreliable behaviour (such as flaky build console output) and limited supported off-the-shelf auto-scaling self-hosted runners implementation.

99% of feature requests / bugs I've Github support result in a "Check the Roadmap, it might be on there" - you check the roadmap - it's been there for years with no progress. New features/offerings seem to get prioritised over stability and core functionality.

Is this feature available in Gitlab CI? I'd love to use it if it is...

How can you tell ? Their product page is the worst:

https://about.gitlab.com/stages-devops-lifecycle/

None of those sections seems to correlate to actually building code.

That is their sales page. Have you looked in the actual docs yet?

GitLab team member here.

In GitLab, the best way to view a summary of your jobs is the pipeline details page. This page provides a clear overview of each job including status and allows for jobs to be grouped by both stage and dependencies for easier review.

On the whole I think the GitHub Actions experience is really nice, but there are some baffling decisions for sure, like requiring GitHub Enterprise just to put a manual approval step in a workflow.

I’m not sure that last part is true. I definitely use a workflow on an OSS repo that includes a manual approval step. (A team has to approve it before the rest of the workflow completes)

> Environments, environment protection rules, and environment secrets are available in *public* repositories for all products. For access to environments in *private* repositories, you must use GitHub Enterprise.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/managing-workflow-runs/re...

They also put generic DRY features like 'internal' repos behind their most expensive paywall. Thanks M$.

Looking at the pricing page I see "unlimited public/private repositories" in their free "plan".

Could you explain what type of internal repos you are talking about?

Internal repositories, for example, make it easier to have one set of Git Actions that is available to any Git Actions runner in your Org. What this means in practical terms, is cleaner code that is less repetitive. It's a total cop-out for GH to act like this is a feature worth paying for enterprise. It's not just useful to enterprise users, it's useful to everyone, including free users.

TL;DR: GH encourages bad coding practices unless you pay them enough. It's not consumer friendly and they can barely keep Actions running consistently enough to justify a paywall for such a staple feature.

I suspect parent is asking you to explain how this is different than a "private" repository.

Private repositories can only be used by the Git Actions runner for that repository. For a monorepo, this works fine. If you have any semblance of microservices in their own repos, orchestrating CI/CD and other build/artifact processes is a nightmare. Internal repositories allow the Git Actions runner access from any other private repository, meaning you can have one repository for all of your git actions that can be neatly called from any other repository (private or public) in the org.

Ah ok. So "private component re-use" for CI is not possible with a free account, even though such an account _does_ allow private repos. Thanks.

Do you feel you’re entitled to those features for free? You can always run your own GitLab.

I feel that our organization paying for five heads at the mid-tier enterprise level entitles us to such a basic feature. I actually _do_ think this feature should be available to all users, even free.

GitHub is encouraging bad coding practices in the name of money, I'm sorry you can't see it for what it is.

GitHub is encouraging bad coding practices in the name of money,

At alternative way of looking at that is that your company isn't willing to pay for the tools you need to do your job properly.

A 5 person startup doesn't need a dedicated GH enterprise account manager and the bill that comes with that. It's lazy market segmentation, and you know it is.

A 5 person startup doesn't really need internal repos either though. At that size a private repo works fine.

If you knew what the startup was, that might be good advice.

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