
GitLab 11.4 Released with Merge Request Reviews and Feature Flags - munchor
https://about.gitlab.com/2018/10/22/gitlab-11-4-released/
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atonse
We just moved our whole company's set of repos to Gitlab (the integration was
appealing, so we didn't have to have a half dozen SaaS memberships for
Tickets, CI/CD, devops, etc).

But some basic things seem to be lacking, or not working great. I can't just
easily go to an issue based on number (I try putting in "#85" in the top
search and nothing happens, well nothing happens at all in the top search)

The issues are just the right level of simplicity that we need.

Performance overall is still just nowhere close to Github levels (where
everything feels snappy), but I know Gitlab continues to improve this.

Overall I'm happy I never have to use JIRA again.

~~~
beatgammit
Could you distill your issues with JIRA down to a few items?

I've worked with JIRA and have my own complaints, but I'd really like the
perspective of someone else as well that decided that a simpler issue tracking
system is better than what JIRA offers.

I've used Bugzilla, GitHub issues, and now GitLab issues, but I still feel
like there's an appeal to JIRA that these solutions don't offer, and examining
the pain points helps me understand that a bit better.

~~~
atonse
My issue with JIRA comes down fundamentally to their UI.

I used to be a JIRA power user in the mid/late 2000s. I think that was the
pinnacle of it feeling like a very powerful tool. You could do a lot with
their table views, filters, saved views, etc. It was easy to add fields, etc.
That's when they were an issue tracker and the primary interface for editing
things was just a highly customizable table.

Where JIRA started going off the rails is when they started to bolt on Agile
methodologies to their existing system (which, in their defense, was where the
whole industry was heading anyway).

But the nail in the coffin (for 2 years now) is that their new UI is just so
damn hard to use. I find myself CONSTANTLY frustrated with doing very simple
things. The app is slow and doesn't feel snappy like an SPA does nowadays.

The other day, I was on a screen share and trying to edit my notification
settings (we were bulk editing a lot of stories and wanted to turn off the
deluge of emails). I think the two of us in our screen share spent maybe 10
mins trying to find out where to shut down notifications, and failed. The UI
is so damn convoluted. It's like the designers won every debate over any UX
people, and focused on making things pretty instead of intuitive.

For them to truly compete with today's tools, I don't think they have a choice
but to throw out the existing app and start new.

~~~
beatgammit
Awesome, I feel the same way.

Just today, we were told to use a specific filter on our backlog so we could
plan out the sprint. It took a bit to find it, and they had apparently set up
a new board on an existing project so they could track issues in multiple
projects. We plan a single sprint multiple projects because our team handles
multiple projects (small company).

Since adopting Jira, management kept changing how they wanted to use it
(experimenting, can't blame them), and adjusting within Jira has been super
painful. I ended up building a couple tools outside of Jira so I could get
exactly the view I wanted.

I went through this same process when management kept trying to tweak Bugzilla
to get what we wanted, and I even ended up building a simple issue management
application. I'm getting that itch again, so I'm just trying to figure out
what people hate so I can know what to highlight. I don't think it'll go
anywhere, but who knows!

~~~
atonse
Good luck!

One thing you might want to highlight is all the developer time that's wasted
searching for things (or how to do things) in JIRA. It causes frustration and
is a true waste of time.

But again, I don't think there's one issue tracker to rule them all. Gitlab's
appeal was less about it being way better, and more about it being fully
integrated.

~~~
beatgammit
> I don't think there's one issue tracker to rule them all

Oh, definitely. GitHub and GitLab issues are both pretty nice. However,
they're not meant to be super featureful, and I think there's a niche between
those types of issue trackers and Jira, where most people are actually
probably better served by something simpler than Jira.

Some very large projects are managed with GitHub/GitLab issues, so there's
definitely an advantage there, but they don't work when you want to track
other things with them (e.g. hardware design/release process, customer support
tickets, etc).

I just need to figure out what people dislike about Jira, then match the most
common use cases making Jira's weaknesses my advantages. However, I'm not
fully invested in it yet, but we'll see how much I get fed up with Jira/Gitlab
issues (I work on projects that use both).

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apple4ever
The "File tree for browsing merge request diff" is a GODSEND.

They messed up Merge Requests about a year ago- they made is so hard to find
out what files have changed.

FINALLY they introduced a solution to that!

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dunpeal
I've been using Gitlab for a while, and while it's not yet quite as polished
as Github, it is rapidly improving and the gap is already far too small to
justify Github's restrictive license and policies in general.

I strongly recommend it as an alternative to Github.

~~~
dsumenkovic
Hello, Community Advocate from GitLab here.

Thank you for your comment, we really appreciate your words. It's great to
hear your feedback and you can check out the latest data on stability and
performance here [https://about.gitlab.com/2018/10/11/gitlab-com-stability-
pos...](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/10/11/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-
migration/)

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ggregoire
I didn't know GitLab had "Epics".

What's the main differences with "Milestones"? It's not really clear from the
doc. We use milestones as SCRUM epics at my job.

~~~
dsumenkovic
Hey Gregoire, that's a good question. Epics let you manage your portfolio of
projects more efficiently and with less effort by tracking groups of issues
that share a theme, across projects and milestones. On the other hand
milestones are a way to track issues and merge requests created to achieve a
broader goal in a certain period of time.

Anyway, please check this documentation for Epics
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/)
and Milestones
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/milestones/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/milestones/)

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Diggsey
Nice timing :)

~~~
markdog12
They release every month on the 22nd

