GitLab v4.1 released | Hacker News Reader

GitLab v4.1 released

blog.gitlab.org

85 pointskossmac33 comments

While I love that this is being built, am I the only one that feels a bit dirty about the blatant UI ripoff they are doing of GitHub.

GitHub is a company that in my opinion can't get enough hacker karma, they have done a brilliant job of innovating time and time again and delivering a brilliant product that makes all our lives better. I can't even bring myself to use open source projects on Google Code, it just isn't worth the time. They always seem to act honorably and do their best to provide an incredible product.

Taking all that hard work, in features AND look and feel and blatantly ripping it off would make me worry about my karma. The authors may just find themselves reincarnated as Cobol programmers in their next life.

I don't think they are actually driving any business away from github or I'd be more angry. This seems to fit a niche for people that would like to use github but legally can't put their code online (even in a private repository). It's github for intranets.

Agree though, github deserves all the karma we can throw at it.

GitHub does cater to that niche: https://enterprise.github.com/

However, it starts at $5000 per year and the main group amongst people I've heard using GitLab has been companies not willing to pay that $5000 (but who otherwise would probably go with GitHub - that is, they're 'satisficing' rather than choosing GitLab as such).

I know of some fairly sizeable clients who are looking at gitlab because they need a github they can modify - github enterprise doesn't include source code does it?

Atlassian offer Stash, an enterprise Git product: https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/overview

It's priced more competitively than Github and you get access to the source code.

We've tried switching from GH Enterprise to Stash (because of the $5000 thing, which pisses me off and makes me feel like I'm being ripped off at the same time!), but it's really "not there yet".

The file browser sucks, the repo management doesn't make sense (repos live in projects, instead of organization/project or person/project), you can't run git via ssh on port 22, no activity stream (so you need to combine it with Fisheye), etc.

The price of Stash is really the price of Stash + Fisheye. At that point you're only looking at $2500, but still. Unfortunately for us, GitHub issue tracking and wiki suck compared to Jira/Confluence. So we run GH Enterprise + JIRA + Confluence. :)

I guess make a bad UI just for difference with github is a worse

They have actually changed the UI from earlier versions, probably to make it look less like github, and it does look very different[1] to github now.

I like the new look (I think it's more usable than github). In particular I find the "Commits"-tab more intuitive for inspecting code across multiple branches, even though I can't exactly put my finger on the reason. On github I often have to double-check which branch I'm looking at, on GitLab it feels more natural to me.

Basically the only UI-change I would make at this point is on the project-homepage. I'd show those tooltips to the right of the filter-buttons (not above) so they don't cover the other buttons while you hover.

[1] http://demo.gitlabhq.com/

Looks pretty similar to GitHub for me http://gitlab.org/screenshots/

Well, of course it still looks similar (albeit not identical). Why should they change perfectly fine visual elements unless they can improve on them?

I see nothing questionable in copying a good layout anyway, as long as you don't try to fool the user into thinking you are the product that you are borrowing from. There is no point reinventing an existing wheel unless you can make it significantly rounder.

Github, as good as they are, aren't the only company doing what they do. Gitorious, Tigris, Bitbucket and Sourceforge (et al.) have all been around a long time. Suggesting Github have had their features "ripped off" is harsh, and more than a bit rude to the other developers.

Also Assembla: https://www.assembla.com/home

Google docs and Open Office look very similar to MS Office... And why should it look different? :)

I run GitLab on my development VPS and use it for all my projects (and everything to do with them, including client interaction via the wall and issues). It's quite brilliant.

I nearly decided to hack in a Public Mode myself last year, I'm glad it's finally implemented!

This has prompted me into getting back to work on my KanBan SPA, that hooks into GitLabs issues api. I do wish they gave the api a bit more love in this release, but I can't really complain: My $20/m VPS gives me self-hosted Github, Dropbox, and Gmail/Gcal/Contacts "clones". Not bad!

What do you use for the webmail/calendaring/contacts?

For webmail I can recommend roundcube + dovecot, for calendaring/contacts davical has all I need.

Yep, roundcube, integrated into ownCloud for CalDAV/CardDAV

I'd love to hear more about the 'Dropbox clone' you're using here. The idea of keeping a VPS around as my own private cloud is something I've been thinking about for a while; I'm very interested to learn from someone who's already done it.

Could possibly be Sparkleshare[1] which uses Git as the underlying sync technology, especially if he has already got git set up.

[1]: http://sparkleshare.org/

Like I said in reply to someone else, ownCloud works perfectly for me. Syncing apps for Linux and Mac OS X, web access on my tablet, Android client, and I think iphone is either out now or very near. Check it out!

> My $20/m VPS gives me self-hosted Github, Dropbox, and Gmail/Gcal/Contacts "clones". Not bad!

GitLab replaces GitHub, but ...

what gives you the dropbox functionality? (alternatives I'm familiar with are sparkeleshare and seafile, but neither works as well as dropbox)

what gives you the gmail/gcal/contacts functionality? specifically, do you have good iphone sync?

I use ownCloud!

It has a CalDAV and CardDAV server, works perfectly with the iphone. It also has file sync built in, which replaces Dropbox for me. :)

Anyone know whether the public mode is just a list of URLs that you can clone from, or does it allow public users to browse the full gitlab UI? Thanks!

It only gives a list of URLs you can clone from :)

Requests for web-browsable public view:

https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/12

Project lead sees it as outside of scope, possibly to not get into trouble with Github?

Why would they get into trouble with Github?

so nice this gitlab project is, so sad it is that it'll get hit by the commercial hammer, since the dev is spending his full time on it.

nice release btw :)

;-)

Finally. Resque is such a PITA with Gitlab. Hopefully the upgrade script will work properly now. I have to fix quite a few bits and pieces every upgrade. Top piece of software, though.

Agreed. It was also eating a lot of memory.

Upgrade (4.0 -> 4.1) ran smoothly. Only thing that was missing in the upgrade guide was installing a new version of the post-receive hook, but since gitlab:check mentioned that and even provided the command to fix this, it wasn't a problem.

gitlab:check is doing a great job at keeping the insanity of the gitlab pace at bay. I started pre-2.0 and have had to go through some hard upgrade steps (just recently went from 3.1 to 4.1 and had to move sqlite to mysql).

I've been recommending Sidekiq to people for the past few months and it's great to see it being picked up by more projects. It's quicker than Resque for everything I've tried it on.

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