GitLab

3 things that are wrong with DevOps today

2018-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

I’m continually impressed by the benefits achieved by modern ways of working. Lean processes, Conversational Development</a>, and automation have helped us ship more value, faster. Those achievements have led customers to expect a lot more from their service providers. DevOps has been critical to those gains, but we’ve got more work to do – DevOps still has its problems.</p>

I have the privilege of talking with GitLab users every day. We celebrate impressive technical achievements, work through complex problems with CI/CD, or discuss new needs for their organization. The needs and problems seem to align themselves to one of three different areas:</p>

1. The wall still stands</h2>
Dev and Ops are still at war in some environments. In just the past couple of weeks I’ve heard the lack of collaboration between these groups called “the wall,” a “chasm,” and a “joke” by people in both areas! We’re simply not communicating well enough yet. We’re disappointed that after this much investment, there’s still so much room for improvement. Development and Operations continue to use different tools and to follow different rules.</p>

It's like we're really doing DevSecBizPerfOps</p> </blockquote>
But it doesn't end there. Now we've got more people in the mix analyzing concerns like security, performance, and business metrics. It's like we're really doing DevSecBizPerfOps or some such thing, and so our flow continues to be interrupted. Silos continue to exist, if not multiply. It also feels like Ops hasn’t gotten enough love, which is why GitLab is working toward better Operations views as part of our product vision</a> for 2018.</p>
2. Administration costs are still too high</h2>
As we continue to shift left with build, test, and security, admin costs continue to rise. Developers are often being empowered at the cost of their own productivity. Administration efforts can actually consume half a developer’s time</a> each week! Unfortunately, this is a growing form of waste. A core DevOps goal is to reduce administration time, but the admin costs of DevOps tools can be some of the highest in the the software development lifecycle ecosystem due to extensive plug-in architectures, support of quickly evolving environments, and asynchronous vendor update woes. We continually increase complexity and add requirements to existing stacks without looking for more modern solutions. Despite all the loss of time, I still hear commonly that there's no way to visualize the flow of the code from requirement to production, especially once code is committed to a repository.</p>
The good news is that more of us are taking the time to re-examine our ecosystems because they've become bloated with a wide variety of tools from a wide variety of vendors for very specific purposes. I wouldn't consider the current trend to be a tooling consolidation so much as a streamlining or simplification of toolsets. Questions I hear most often tend to focus on optimizing our efficiency and reliability while minimizing administration of laborious plug-in and trigger-driven architectures. We're trending in the right direction.</p>
3. We're holding onto the past</h2>
We’ve spent and continue to spend billions on software tools annually. Tooling can be extremely costly! Sometimes we’ve invested so much money in old tooling that we simply can’t let it go. Too often we hold onto tools and processes just because we spent a lot of time and money on them while newer, time-saving products are available for less than the cost of the renewal of the old beasts. And so we hold onto the past as we try to implement new technologies. It’s no surprise that shoving new technology into old tools can generate enormous friction and unique problems.</p>

It’s no surprise that shoving new technology into old tools can generate enormous friction and unique problems.</p> </blockquote>
Perhaps we bought best-in-breed tools. Those products commonly require excessive coding efforts to integrate and maintain because "best in breed" typically means we bought from a number of vendors. Interconnectivity of those tools typically doesn’t come out of the box. And of course, once the API is mentioned as a solution, the admin and maintenance burden increases once again. We spend a lot of money on specific solutions but inevitably end up with holes in our end-to-end process, too often as it relates to security or performance.</p>
But this way of looking at tooling is beginning to change! I'm hearing more frequently that dramatic price increases, as well as the outsourcing of product maintenance and support, are triggering enterprises to reconsider the past. When we've invested all that time and money into a product, but that product then gets sold to three different parent companies within a decade, our ROI calculations lose their luster. Outsourcings and vendor-level product sales are being viewed as indicators of a potentially declining market. Enterprises are using that as a trigger to seek out updated tools for the years ahead, reducing cost and enabling modern workflows.</p>
It all impacts delivery efficiency</h2>
No matter whether we’re talking about disappointment in collaboration, shift-left waste, or tooling admin costs, it comes down to this: it all negatively impacts our ability to deliver securely with speed and efficiency. If we truly want to meet and exceed the expectations of our customers, we’ll need to continually hone and improve our DevOps processes and tools to reflect modern ways of working.</p>
Photo</a> by Caleb George on Unsplash</a></p>

GitLab's Functional Group Updates: February 1st - 16th

2018-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Every day from Monday to Friday, right before our GitLab Team call</a>, a different Functional Group gives an update</a> to our team.</p>

The format of these calls is simple and short where they can either give a presentation or quickly walk the team through their agenda.</p>

Support Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Infrastructure Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Engineering Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

People Ops Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Prometheus Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Edge Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Discussion Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Customer Success Team</h3>
Presentation slides</a></p>
</iframe> </figure>

Questions? Leave a comment below or tweet @GitLab</a>! Would you like to join us? Check out our job openings</a>!</p>

GitLab Patch Release: 10.4.4

2018-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Today we are releasing GitLab version 10.4.4.</p>

This version resolves a number of regressions and bugs in this month's 10.4 release</a>.</p>

Bug fixes for Community and Enterprise Editions</h2>

Fix 500 error when loading a merge request with an invalid comment.</a></li>
Cleanup new branch/merge request form in issues.</a></li>
Fix GitLab import leaving group_id on ProjectLabel.</a></li>
Fix forking projects when no restricted visibility levels are defined application-wide.</a></li>
Resolve PrepareUntrackedUploads PostgreSQL syntax error.</a></li>
Fixed error 500 when removing an identity with synced attributes and visiting the profile page.</a></li>
Validate user namespace before saving so that errors persist on model.</li>
LDAP Person no longer throws exception on invalid entry.</li>
Fix JIRA not working when a trailing slash is included.</li>
Update Nokogiri to 1.8.2.</a></li> </ul>
Bug fixes for Enterprise Editions</h2>

EES/EEP/EEU:</strong> Handle empty event timestamp and larger memory units.</a></li>
EES/EEP/EEU:</strong> Allow project to be set up to push to and pull from same mirror.</li>
EEP/EEU:</strong> Geo: Fix log cursor failing to process a CI job artifact event</a></li>
EEP/EEU:</strong> Geo: Reset force_redownload flag after successful sync.</li>
EEP/EEU:</strong> Geo: Fix redownload repository recovery when there is no local repository.</li> </ul> Upgrade barometer</h2>
This version includes one new migration, and should not require any downtime.</p>
Please be aware that by default the Omnibus packages will stop, run migrations, and start again, no matter how “big” or “small” the upgrade is. This behavior can be changed by adding a `/etc/gitlab/skip-auto-migrations</code></a> file, which is only used forupdates</a>.</p>`
`Updating</h2> To update, check out our update page</a>.</p> Enterprise Editions</h2> Interested in GitLab Enterprise Editions? Check out the features exclusive to EE</a>.</p> Access to GitLab Enterprise Editions is granted by a subscription</a>. No time to upgrade GitLab yourself? Subscribers receive upgrade and installation services.</p>`

If you do business in Europe, you need to know about GDPR 2018-02-16T00:00:00+00:00 An explainer on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which is set to take effect in May 2018.</p> If your company does business involving the personal data of EU residents through the offering of services and goods or otherwise, there's a good chance that your firm may need to be compliant with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).</p> The law will go into effect on May 25 and replaces the EU’s 1995 Data Protection Directive. It’s meant to give EU residents more control over their personal data, specifically in how it is collected, controlled, and processed. As a result, companies that control and/or process the personal information of EU residents for their own company’s purposes, or on behalf of another business, will be required to adhere to GDPR standards.</p> FAQs</h2> What counts as personal data?</h3> Personal data includes a vast range of information including social security numbers, gender, location, ethnicity, online identifiers, and genetic or biometric markers, such as fingerprints and facial recognition.</p> What are data controllers?</h3> Controllers are a company or organization that determines the purpose for and manner in which personal data is processed.</p> Controllers can also be processors.</p> What are data processors?</h3> Data processors take the information controllers have accumulated and process the personal information.</p> What do companies need to do to be compliant?</h3> Have a legal basis for data collection and processing</li> Be transparent about how the data is collected and used</li> Provide prompt notification of security breaches</li> Put data protection safeguards in place early in the development process and as the default setting in their products and services</li> </ul> It is recommended that companies conduct data discovery activities like data mapping and a gap analysis in order to get a true handle on the amount and nature of the personal data they control and process. A recent report from Forrester warned against approaching GDPR readiness from a fragmented framework that relies heavily on IT for specific compliance requirements – like focusing on data breach notifications, stating that such tactics are “short-sighted, and most likely will need radical revision after the enforcement of GDPR rules start in May.”</p> Failure to comply with the GDPR requirements could result in serious penalties, with the worst case scenario being a fine of €20 million or 4 percent of the company’s previous year’s total global revenue, whichever is greater.</p> For a more detailed look at the law and how organizations can ensure they’re compliant, check out GitLab’s GDPR page</a>.</p> Cover image licensed under CC0 1.0</a></p> Join GitLab's March Issue Bash 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00 This March we'll be holding another of our quarterly issue bashes to allow the community to get involved in helping to squash some issues in the GitLab Community Edition issue tracker. We have over 1,900 GitLab contributors</a>, and we are always looking for more people to join in and contribute to the project in any way that they can.</p> Of course, some lucky contributors will be rewarded with awesome swag! 🙌</p> We now have the issue bash landing page</a> with all the information about how exactly the Issue Bash works. Please take a look there and provide any feedback to our feedback project</a> or propose changes directly here</a>!</p> When is it going to happen?</h2> We'll kick it off at 00:01 UTC on Saturday, March 3rd</strong> and will keep it up until 23:59 UTC on Sunday, March 4th</strong>.</p> Who can contribute?</h2> </i> At GitLab, everyone can contribute!</strong> </i></p> This is your chance to get involved! Most of the tasks don't require technical expertise, therefore, non-technical community members are definitely welcome and prize worthy!</p> How do you get involved?</h2> Please see the FAQ on the Issue Bash landing page</a> to learn more about how to get involved.</p> Prizes</h2> As prizes, we have some awesome swag available:</p> 14 T-shirts</li> 1 T-shirt and Hoodie for a lucky contributor</li> </ul> Users making any contributions to the project, between the start and end times of the event, will be entered into the random draw to win a prize. The contributions will be collated after the end of the event and prize winners, drawn at random, will be contacted in the weeks that follow.</p> To see how we draw winners at random please take a look at the prize winner calculator project</a></p> Questions? More info?</h2> GitLab team</a> and GitLab core team</a> members will be on hand to answer questions and close issues. Please mention them if you need any help or need attention on an issue</p> @markglenfletcher</a></li> @tnir</a></li> </ul> Setting up GitLab CI for Android projects 2018-02-14T00:00:00+00:00 My first experience with continuous integration was using Bitbucket in combination with Jenkins</a>. I was pretty happy with my setup. Jenkins would run on every commit: making sure my code compiles, run Android Lint and run my unit tests. I also set up continuous deployment using Fabric</a>. Now, at work, we use GitLab as a code repository. GitLab also offers continuous integration</a>. When we decided to start using continuous integration at work we decided to give GitLab a chance.</p> </p> It was already integrated with GitLab and to use it we just needed to install a runner</a>.</p> Using CI with GitLab is simple, after you install a runner you need to add a .gitlab-ci.yml</code> file at the root of the repository. GitLab even offers template .gitlab-ci.yml</code> files for various languages and frameworks. The Android template is based on this blog post</a> from 2016. It is a great guide but unfortunately today it doesn’t work. Google introduced a few changes in the command line tools.</p> Installing Android SDK</h2> To install the Android SDK on a CI we need to install the command line tools</a> (scroll to the bottom to get just the command line tools). The command line tools include the sdkmanager</a> – a command line tool that allows you to view, install, update, and uninstall packages for the Android SDK. So instead of</p> - wget --quiet --output-document=android-sdk.tgz https://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r${ANDROID_SDK_TOOLS}-linux.tgz - tar --extract --gzip --file=android-sdk.tgz </code></pre>we can use</p> - wget --quiet --output-document=android-sdk.zip https://dl.google.com/android/repository/sdk-tools-linux-3859397.zip - unzip -q android-sdk.zip -d android-sdk-linux </code></pre> to download and install the Android SDK tools.</p> There is also an improvement in accepting licenses for the Android SDK. After you accept the licenses on your development machine the tools will generate a licenses folder in the Android SDK root directory. You can accept the licences for all Android SDK components by running sdkmanager --licenses</code> on your development machine. You can transfer the licenses from your development machine to your CI server. To accept the licenses on the CI server you can use:</p> - mkdir android-sdk-linux/licenses - printf "8933bad161af4178b1185d1a37fbf41ea5269c55\nd56f5187479451eabf01fb78af6dfcb131a6481e" > android-sdk-linux/licenses/android-sdk-license - printf "84831b9409646a918e30573bab4c9c91346d8abd" > android-sdk-linux/licenses/android-sdk-preview-license </code></pre> This will create a folder licenses with two files inside. The values written in the files are from my local machine. Depending on which components you use there might be other files on your machine like license for Google TV or Google Glass. Once the licenses are accepted we can install packages:</p> - android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager --update > update.log - android-sdk-linux/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platforms;android-${ANDROID_COMPILE_SDK}" "build-tools;${ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS}" "extras;google;m2repository" "extras;android;m2repository" > installPlatform.log </code></pre> A sample project based on the Android Testing codelab</a> with the full .gitlab-ci.yaml</code> file can be found here</a>. The rest of the script for building and unit testing is the same as the original post. The latest x86 emulator requires hardware acceleration to run so I’ll skip the functional tests for now.</p> About the guest author</h2> Stojan Anastasov is a pragmatic developer with four years' experience in building native apps for Android. Now working at Cosmic Development</a>, he previously worked on the Claxi app at Bransys. You can find him on Stack Overflow</a> in the android</code> and rxjava</code> tags.</p> Setting up GitLab CI for Android projects</a> was originally published on dev.to.</em></p> Cover image by Jamison McAndie</a> on Unsplash</a></p> How eslint-plugin-vue improved our code reviews 2018-02-13T00:00:00+00:00 We've (finally) integrated eslint-plugin-vue</a> successfully into our codebase!</p> When we added Vue</a> to our codebase back in April 2016, eslint-plugin-vue</a> did not yet exist</a> and we had not yet started using eslint</a> at all.</p> One of the things I love the most about GitLab being an open source tool is that anyone can contribute! Winnie Hellmann</a>, who has since joined the team, did this amazing work adding eslint</a> as a community contribution. Thanks Winnie! 🙇‍</p> The start of a style guide</h2> As our Vue codebase grew from a few features to quite a large usage (issue boards</a>, environments</a>, cycle analytics</a>, pipelines</a>) we noticed that each of our Vue apps followed a different style. At that time we felt the need to document how to architecture a Vue application</a> to ensure a consistent codebase. Once we defined and documented how to use the component system and Flux architecture with our codebase</a>, we noticed that our Vue code also differed in very small things, such as indentation or the order we declared the methods. These inconsistencies, although small, increased the complexity of the review process and for maintaining a healthy codebase.</p> With the goal of decreasing the time we spent reviewing Vue code and debating on each of these aspects, and because at the time there wasn't an official Vue style guide, we started our own</a>! You can check out our documentation here</a>. As the Vue community grew, the need for an official style guide and for an eslint plugin for Vue grew with it. Thanks to the wonderful team Michał Sajnóg</a>, Toru Nagashima</a>, Armano</a> and Chris Fritz</a> leading the development of such a tool, we are now able to use it in production! And we even got to act as source of inspiration for the official one</a> ❤</p> Adding eslint-vue-plugin</h2> After waiting a couple of months</a> for a stable version of eslint-plugin-vue</a>, we finally gave it a try once version 4.0.0</a> was released.</p> </p> Frontend team working together to resolve all the vue eslint problems</small></em></p> It took a couple of days to fix all the problems eslint identified in our code, but we were able to successfully add it and thanks to a huge team effort, the second row of conflicts was solved very quickly. Thanks again Luke, Eric, Kushal and José!</p> Now our review process is even faster, we don't have to manually check for the style guide rules anymore! 🎉</p> Cover image</a> by Free-Photos</a> is licensed under CC0 1.0</a></p> Have your say: Which AWS integration do you want? 2018-02-12T00:00:00+00:00 We want your input: which AWS tool combined with GitLab would make your life easier?</p> We recently met with the developer tools team at AWS to talk tools and integrations. AWS is asking the GitLab community which integrations with AWS tools you're interested in seeing developed. We’re calling for votes for the respective issues below:</p> AWS CodeDeploy</a></li> AWS CodeBuild</a></li> AWS CodePipeline</a></li> </ul> You can read more about each of the integrations in the issues mentioned above. Let us know which is your idea of developer nirvana by voting in our Twitter poll below. Cast your votes away!</p> .@awscloud</a> wants you to help decide which integrations with GitLab to develop next! 💥 Let us know: which tool combined with GitLab would make your life easier?</p>— GitLab (@gitlab) February 12, 2018</a></blockquote>

GitLab

3 things that are wrong with DevOps today

GitLab's Functional Group Updates: February 1st - 16th

GitLab Patch Release: 10.4.4

Upgrade barometer</h2> This version includes one new migration, and should not require any downtime.</p>

If you do business in Europe, you need to know about GDPR

FAQs</h2>

What counts as personal data?</h3> Personal data includes a vast range of information including social security numbers, gender, location, ethnicity, online identifiers, and genetic or biometric markers, such as fingerprints and facial recognition.</p>

What are data controllers?</h3> Controllers are a company or organization that determines the purpose for and manner in which personal data is processed.</p> Controllers can also be processors.</p>

What are data processors?</h3> Data processors take the information controllers have accumulated and process the personal information.</p>

What do companies need to do to be compliant?</h3> Have a legal basis for data collection and processing</li> Be transparent about how the data is collected and used</li> Provide prompt notification of security breaches</li>

Join GitLab's March Issue Bash

How do you get involved?</h2> Please see the FAQ on the Issue Bash landing page</a> to learn more about how to get involved.</p> Prizes</h2> As prizes, we have some awesome swag available:</p> 14 T-shirts</li>

What counts as personal data?</h3>
Personal data includes a vast range of information including social security numbers, gender, location, ethnicity, online identifiers, and genetic or biometric markers, such as fingerprints and facial recognition.</p>

What are data controllers?</h3>
Controllers are a company or organization that determines the purpose for and manner in which personal data is processed.</p>
Controllers can also be processors.</p>

What are data processors?</h3>
Data processors take the information controllers have accumulated and process the personal information.</p>