
GitLab, open source github clone, reaches 3.0 - georgebashi
http://blog.gitlabhq.com/gitlab-3-dot-0-released/
======
khet
Github like any monopoly will come back to bite us. That is why I think we
need an open source Github.

That said, the interface seems a bit too "inspired" by Github. I hope they
rethink how an application like this _should_ work for themselves rather than
allowing Github to influence their designs.

I see this quite frequently among opensource projects, they try to make clones
rather than making a better product.

TLDR: Think about how the UI should work in your application. Its different
for everyone so don't blindly clone others.

~~~
moe
_That said, the interface seems a bit too "inspired" by Github. I hope they
rethink how an application like this should work for themselves rather than
allowing Github to influence their designs._

I don't understand your critique.

My impression of Gitlab is that they've done it exactly right. They copied the
good parts from github but not the clutter, and it's looking pretty damn good
so far.

Most notably they did not copy the non-hierarchical triple-menubar trainwreck
of an UI-disaster (whoever came up with that at github should be fired three
times in a row).

Instead Gitlab has a boring, utterly intuitive two-level hierarchical menu,
_consistently on every page_. I love this boring menubar.

~~~
khet
There are a couple reasons app developers should strive for originality.
Copying Github's design only reminds me of how your app is second to Github.
That Github was the one who thought of the beautiful interface and that by
using your app I will be using a copy and not the original. The copy is
inferior to the original in my mind and I will never see the app as an equal.
This really dampens the excitement I have for it because it might never be
able to compete with the experience Github provides.

Another example is Open Office, everyone uses it and it does the job. But no
one loves it, because its a copy. Its not the original and it will never be
the same as using MS Office. Now compare that with Apple's iWork. Its not a
copy; its an original. When I use it, I feel comfortable in knowing that Apple
has worked to provide an experience that is second to none.

~~~
egonschiele
There are some flaws in your analogy.

1\. Most people I know like Github's UI, so it makes sense to copy it. MS
Office is not known for it's UI experience. So it doesn't make sense to copy
it.

2\. Creating a good UI is hard work. When you're Apple, you have the resources
to throw at iWork. An open source project doesn't have the same resources, and
they might spend a lot of time to end up with something _worse_ than Github's
UI.

To me it's a simple decision: 1\. Spend a lot of time and end up with
something that _could_ be better than Github but will probably be worse OR 2\.
Spend little time to copy a design everyone is familiar with and likes.

I think a better analogy would be Gimp vs Photoshop. Supposedly Gimp can do
almost everything Photoshop can, but what % of designers use Gimp? They have
been slowly moving towards Photoshop's UI because they now realize how much of
a factor that plays in adoption.

------
callmebison
See also RhodeCode, which is more of a BitBucket clone (supports git &
mercurial).

<http://rhodecode.org/>

If you are looking for something a bit different, there's also fossil.

<http://www.fossil-scm.org/>

~~~
lrem
Unfortunately, Fossil's web-facing part is somewhat neglected. Up to the
point, that the issue tracker for Fossil itself has been practically closed
and the docs moved out of the wiki...

I still use it as a nice dvcs though, mainly for the single binary file
installation.

~~~
yebyen
Where do you see docs outside of the wiki? (Duh, the rest of the internet...)

Also, where do you get the idea that the issue tracker has been closed? It's
possible that the maintainer has gone on hiatus, and there's not as much
activity as there was once, but I see they have fresh issues this week and a
release just yesterday.

I think that Fossil is a terrific way to introduce anyone to command line,
database, and scm who you intend to sell or gift with a 'database' of any
kind. It's very odd to me how many people can't wrap their head around the
concept of a file, or database, let alone ./configure; make; make install

I think that SQL is the most accessible language to those people, since it
fits a simple grammar and statements end in semicolons, and the fact that
Fossil repositories can come packaged into a sqlite database file means that
two weeks after you got them to try using Fossil to keep their copy, there
should be no magic left in the box, you can show them a database and they
should 'get it'.

I have not tried this with anyone, but it should work... of course unless they
just aren't trying...

~~~
lrem
Are you serious? Fossil's docs have been "embedded docs" for quite a long time
now. Even the main page is served from a file within trunk (this is the url /
redirects to):

<http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki>

For the issue tracker: just try to report an issue (without logging in with a
dev account). It has been very long time now that Fossil is accepting issue
reports only through email. It's quite an ironic thing to do for a project
that's providing an issue tracker, isn't it?

~~~
yebyen
So, is that the wiki or not the wiki? It says wiki...

I think you're only telling me things that sound like they've been done to
prevent spam or addition of spammy content.

I get that a file in the trunk is not the wiki. There is a real wiki, with web
browser controls, and it's not what they're using. But it says wiki, and if
you're trying to edit it but not a Fossil developer, you're probably doing it
wrong... you should have your own Fossil repo/server.

I'll admit I did not try to submit an issue, and I'm not using Fossil right
now. I just use Git. My users don't want the timeline on their homepage.
_shrug_

~~~
lrem
As I said, this is a file from trunk. It says wiki, because .wiki is the file
extension for wiki-formatted files. Which you typeset in almost plain HTML,
but that's another story.

And, actually, I am a Fossil developer. Or at least a whiner with a dev
account. Believe me, I know what I'm whining about.

Finally, Fossil is not for homepages. I guess your devs like having a timeline
on their Github...

------
SkyMarshal
Amusing that it's hosted on Github [1].

There's also Gitorious, which has been around a while and is mature, full-
featured, and provides both a SaaS [2] and the FOSS software you can host
yourself [3]. I keep backups of some of my repo's there.

[1]: <https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq>

[2]: <http://gitorious.org/>

[3]: <http://gitorious.com/>

~~~
thomanil
Thanks for that. BTW our new official home page can be found at
<http://getgitorious.com> :)

~~~
cdelsolar
Why is there a gitorious.com, a gitorious.org, and a getgitorious.com? :(

~~~
thomanil
gitorious.org - the free open source hosting service (came first)
gitorious.com - the commercial company behind it (came later) getgitorious.com
- official doc, starting point etc (recently added as a common starting point)

------
mercurial
It's not quite a "github clone" in the sense that it's supposed to be self-
hosted. It would make it more of a trac/redmine concurrent, depending on how
much work has gone into the wiki and project management part. Is anyone
actually using it?

And ironically, the source code is hosted on github.

~~~
axx
There're a lot of people who don't want to use GitHub for whatever privacy
policy.

If you consider using Gitlab as a in-house self-hosted "GitHub-feature like"
alternative, Gitlab is really good! We use it for our projects and it runs
quite well.

~~~
jbverschoor
<https://enterprise.github.com>

Your own private github.

~~~
MetaCosm
We did a 45 day trial. To call it disappointing would be a vast
understatement. Performance problems, no root access, no direct repository
access, poor tooling (had to wait for support to write us a script). We were
actually locked out of our repo with no recovery options for about 4 days
before we gave up on Github support. I do love Github, just hate their "have
your own" VM product, it is bad.

After that we tried Gitorious (back then it was still an unholy nightmare to
install) before finally landing on Gitlab. Gitlab isn't perfect, sometimes the
ruby process likes to eat gigs of memory and has to be restarted (we have very
large repos)...

But Gitlab has a great trajectory, every release is a great step up and I find
the multiple branches working mode more natural than the multiple repos method
that github has...

~~~
Diederich
Huh..we've had full root access since the beginning. (Github FI) Even across
all of their releases. There's a place to drop your public key in.

Github support has been variable, but generally good for us. The switch to a
VM was touchy at first, but once we gave it enough horsepower, things were
fine.

~~~
MetaCosm
[https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-a...](https://support.enterprise.github.com/entries/21243936-ssh-
access)

In order to preserve the integrity of the appliance and ensure that it remains
in a consistent state, we have these limitations in place:

\- Root access is not provided. \- The admin user password is not provided. \-
Installation and execution of third party software is not permitted. \-
Modification of the underlying VM configuration is not permitted.

Bypassing any of these limitations will void all warranties and may put your
installation in an unsupportable state.

------
potench
I'm confused by one thing. I found this awesome jpg checked in on the GitLab
Django demo project:
[http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474...](http://demo.gitlabhq.com/uploads/note/attachment/2449/687474703a2f2f692e716b6d652e6d652f333667347a352e6a7067.jpg)
Seems like everything else on the demo repo requires me to log in but I can
access this file without authorization... Why is that? Found it in the Django
demo project attachments tab: <http://demo.gitlabhq.com/django/files> which
requires login.

It's gloriously ironic! A photo mocking Rails security attached to a private
repo... that's not secure.

~~~
sytse
You are right that attachments are only hidden and not protected by default.
GitLab uses the CarrierWave gem to store attachments and this defaults to a
publicly accessible directory. You can configure the behaviour of the
attachment in
[https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/...](https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/app/models/note.rb)

------
kennytm
It's not mentioned in the release note, but I find implementing "Mix commit
notes with merge request notes on MR show page"
(<https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/pull/1630>) the greatest change in 3.0.
We are using merge requests as a tool in code review, and this commit finally
allow us to go through all comments of an MR in a single page. It would be
perfect if the issue "Save few lines of code with Merge Request comment like
github does" (<https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/issues/1007>) is
implemented, as this would allow us to finally reliably comment directly on
the "diff" tab.

------
benjamincburns
I wonder if the grammar mistakes are beneficial for adoption or if it drives
people away (no, really). The "who is already use" line on the homepage
reminds me of "All your base are belong to us." I could see it appealing to a
certain audience of programmers, IT support, and the like -- particularly
those with a background in gaming.

Has anyone done any A/B testing on something like this?

[Edited: I'm _really_, _really_ not trying to be the grammar police here. I'm
in no position to do so, and my grammar is faaar from perfect. I'm just
wondering about the actual impacts (or lack thereof).]

~~~
rrrene
Judging from the grammatical errors and the core dev's last names, they sound
eastern european (ukraine).

~~~
benjamincburns
Judging by the downvotes and this reply I think I made a mistake in making
whether or not it's meant to be humorous the focus of my question. It seems
like it should be intuitive that grammar mistakes == bad conversion, but I'd
love to see numbers on it since I really doubt it's hurting them much, if at
all, in this case. C'est la vie.

------
floydprice
This is a great! Well done guys you deserve real credit for building and
maintaining such a well written and well thought out piece of software.

Congratulations on reaching 3.0!

------
waffle_ss
We've been using GitLab for about six months and it has been great. The
developers iterate very quickly and they are totally receptive to pull
requests (have had a couple accepted and one rejected for good reason).

If you install it on Ubuntu, their wiki has instructions that you can pretty
much copy and paste; the most complicated bit probably being the gitolite
setup, which is what it uses internally for repo auth.

------
paddyoloughlin
Timely for me. At my workplace, we are migrating to git and the devs would
like to use github, but management is expressing reluctance to either rely on
an external host or fork out for github enterprise, despite our arguments.

I was already planning on installing gitlab this week to try it out. Anyone
here got any advice or suggestions on using it as a Github replacement for a
small team?

~~~
X-Istence
I haven't used Gitlab, but Gitorious has their source code completely open as
well, and it is fairly simple to get set up and running!

~~~
benjamincburns
We're on an old install of gitosis at my shop, and also keeping an eye out for
something to switch to. Gitlab certainly looks appealing, especially given its
similarities with github. Having used Gitorious, are there any strengths or
weaknesses you see in GitLab that would have either prevented you from using
it or made you choose it over Gitorious were you to make the decision over
again?

~~~
X-Istence
At the time when I was looking Gitlab was in its infancy, and Gitorious was
pretty much the only thing out there. The search wasn't exhaustive as it was a
"we need to get this working, now." kind of project where we didn't really get
a lot of time to play with different platforms.

------
FuzzyDunlop
I liked Gitlab when I ran it for myself for a while. It was great; couldn't
knock it in anyway except for (at the time) setup instructions that weren't
detailed/accurate enough to rely upon, especially regarding the main
dependency gitorious. The big sell for this is simple, or even trivial, setup.

I was just a single user so most of the functionality was a loss, so I
transferred to bitbucket (free private repos) knowing full well the potential
risks. It saved me the effort of keeping my own server up to date and secure
(I'm not the pro, I can trust github or bitbucket to know and do better) at
the cost of no longer being self sufficient.

That said, I'd recommend this for any organisation that wants its own github,
doesn't want to pay enterprise money, and doesn't mind doing all the hard work
itself. And that's not faint praise, because it was fucking good when I did
use it (while it was mid-Twitter Bootstrap conversion).

------
stevedomin
I think it's great that this kind of project exists. But why copying so much
on Github ?

There is always room for something new.

~~~
slurgfest
Probably because people are used to Github's interface and prefer it to many
other things?

------
_pferreir_
I am using it for a small project in my company and I'm pretty happy with it.
It's nice for enterprise-level projects that are not Open Source. You could
pay for GitHub or even get a private BitBucket repo for free, but some
companies just prefer having their own thing.

~~~
jbverschoor
Or you can just get your own real github on your own servers for $5k/year:
<https://enterprise.github.com>

~~~
drivebyacct2
Yeah, uh, there's plenty of room for people like me who have lots of repos
that either MUST or should stay private, but neither wants to use BitBucket,
nor pay $5k/year, although that is pretty cheap to start with, my projects
aren't for revenue generation.

------
InclinedPlane
I've been using gitlab for a while, and so far I like it. It has a few
weaknesses here and there for sure, and the UI has some wonky aspects, but
overall it works quite well.

------
adnans
We've been using Gitblit (<http://gitblit.com/>) in the office for new
projects and are quite happy with it. It all comes together when you hook up
Groovy push scripts which we use to notify our Jenkins instance to test and
build which in turn pushes it to our dev server for deploy.

~~~
slashdotdash
Agreed, Gitblit is probably the best solution if you're forced to self-host
git on a Windows server.

------
mattdeboard
Awesome. I hope this is fairly straightforward to roll out. I've tried out
Gitorious and iirc it was pretty messy.

~~~
thomanil
mattdebord and estel: I'm one of the core Gitorious committers. What
specifically did you find messy? The initial setup or GUI/UX? Honest question,
as we're constantly trying to prioritize based on the painpoints of users. :)

BTW we've recently addressed the complicated manual setup with a new,
automated installer that gets you set up within 30 minutes:
<http://getgitorious.com/installer>

Also, a new and improved UI is due to arrive in Gitorious soon:
[http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-
repositori...](http://blog.gitorious.org/2012/08/21/sexy-looking-
repositories/)

All feedback is very welcome.

~~~
mattdeboard
It's been quite a long while for me, so I couldn't be more specific for you.
My recollection is that it was very complex, that's really all I've got.

------
ergo14
Actually there is one other interesting project that has some high profile
users and can be used as self hosted bitbucket/github:

<http://rhodecode.org/>

It supports both hg and git, adn while the ui could look better - its very
functional and can do a lot.

------
allr
This looks great. Currently using Bitbucket, but always a good thing that an
Open-source alternartive exists!

------
sandGorgon
How does this handle ssh key lookup - does it do something like Github? (key
lookup in mysql? )

~~~
sytse
It uses Gitolite to create 'virtual' user accounts
<https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite>

------
Evbn
GitHub should GPL their UI and compete on server execution.

~~~
benmanns
Why should they do that? For their sake or for yours?

------
yakshay
Does the web editor support editing files in a bare repo ?

~~~
sytse
I assume you mean an empty repo (without any files) and not a bare repo? A
bare repo has no working copy and is pushable, see
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-
convert-a-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2199897/how-to-convert-a-
git-repository-from-normal-to-bare)

I don't think the editor allows you to create new files.

------
MatthewPhillips
Fonts look really horrible in Chrome on Windows. That has been a problem for a
long time and they've still not done anything about it. I know that Google
doesn't let any employees use Windows so that explains why they overlook stuff
like this. But it's a big deal, so I'm uninstalling Chrome from all of my
Windows computers now.

