DevOps (Intro to GitLab)

Introduction:-

In this article, I will be focusing on GitLab, which I am frequently using for CI/CD. Competing with other tools in the field of CI/CD, GitLab has got some more user-friendly features, which help users to create a pipeline hassle-free.

What is GitLab:-

It is a DevOps software package that combines the ability to develop, secure, and operate software in a single application. It is a web-based git repository providing open-source free and private repositories. It provides monitoring for a project after the project is released. It also provides a good level of security. Nowadays to use GitLab pipelines we need to provide a credit card so that it can verify the user.

Why should we use GitLab:-

There are plenty of reasons to use GitLab over other software, but I will be focusing on a few important ones below...

1. GitLab is the single platform to provide the entire DevOps cycle -

   This is the first software that has all DevOps cycles on a single platform, it means development, QA, product and operation teams can collaborate more efficiently on a single platform.

2. Open core -

   GitLab core is open source or free but at a higher level, GitLab has both open source and proprietary features, commonly open features provided by the community edition and proprietary features by the enterprise edition.

3. Higher Security -

   It has many security features integrated into it such as Dependency scanning, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Dynamic Application Security Testing, and Container scanning. It has security checks built into the merge request(MRs).

4. Transparency -

   We can build any software and DevOps infrastructure with our teams by maintaining honest and open relationships with each other.

GitLab vs GitHub:-

1. GitLab is open source and freely available for community edition whereas GitHub is not open source.

2. GitLab is a cloud-native application whereas GitHub is a platform to share your project work codes with the public.

3. GitLab is more secure whereas GitHub is less secure and doesn't have a security dashboard, License compliance.

4. It provides an issue tracker, group milestones, time tracking, provides monitoring but GitHub doesn't have all these features.