Version Control repository management services are considered as a key component in the software development workflow till date. If you observe in the last few years, GitHub and GitLab positioned themselves as handy assistant development tools for developers, particularly when working in large teams.
With the latest release of GitLab 10.0, GitLab took a major leap forward for developing code management for the process of deployment and monitoring. GitLab defines it as Complete DevOps. They aim for the entire software development, deployment and DevOps market.
Both, GitLab and GitHub are web-based Git repositories.
The aim of Git version control system includes a management of software development projects and maintains all versions of files. Git stores this information in the respective data structure as a repository. A git repository contains a set of commit objects and includes set of references to commit objects.
A git repository is a central structure where developers store, share, test and collaborate on web projects or any software projects.
The various repository management tracking tools are mentioned below:
- Bitbucket
- GitHub
- GitLab
Bitbucket was launched in 2008 which was designed to include Mercurial projects. In 2010, it was taken over by Atlassian and from 2011 it also started to support Git version control system.
It can be said that it supports Mercurial VCS (version control system) in addition to Git. It is not open source but by buying the self-hosted version the full source code is provided.
Bitbucket is written in Python programming language and uses the specific Django web framework. A user gets access to free private repositories on Bitbucket. It offers both commercial plans and free accounts. It offers free accounts to the users and developers with an unlimited number of private repositories. Bitbucket imports existing Git projects from Excel, Github, etc.
Some remarkable features of Bitbucket are:
- Issue tracking
- REST APIs to build third-party applications which can use any development language
- Code search is possible
- Pull requests with code review and comments
- Snippets that allow developers to share code segments or files
GitHub was launched in 2008. It is git-based repository hosting platform. GitHub only hosts projects which use GIT version control system. It is free for public repositories and for private one it is paid. GitHub is written in combination with two programming languages namely Ruby and Erlang
It has something called Gist (a way to share code snippets). It comes up with the combination of its own wiki and issues tracking system.
GitHub is considered as the largest repository host with more than 38+ million projects. It has size limitations which can be also called memory issues. The limit of file size is 100 Mb while the repository can extend it to 1Gb of information.
Some remarkable features of GitHub are:
- Commit History can be seen
- Graphs: pulse, contributors, commits, code frequency, members of it.
- Pull requests with code review and comments
- Issue Tracking
- Email notifications
GitLab was launched as a project in 2011 which provides an alternative to the available repository management solutions. But the official website GitLab.com was launched in 2012
It includes almost everything that GitHub does so it can be considered as the similar version of Git, but here we have free private repositories that GitHub doesn’t. GitLab Community Edition is a free and open source. In GitLab we can set and modify developer’s permissions according to their role. This feature is not available in GitHub. The source code of GitLab Community Edition is available on their website. It includes various features as mentioned below:
- It has a relatively slow interface
- It supports Git import
- Some remarkable features of GitHub are
- Issue Tracker
- Commit graph and reporting tools
- Create new issues from the Issue Board
- Ease of migration from other providers
Which one to choose?
If a user wants to just contribute to other open source projects, then use GitHub. Nowadays, GitHub acts as an online portfolio for a person, where one can upload some of his own projects and mention the GitHub account in his resume or any portfolio. Having an active GitHub account helps to distinguish a developer from others and shows how much he has worked for open source.
GitLab is considered a decent solution as it provides free access for private repositories while GitHub charges for creating private repositories. Many organizations use GitLab while they want their codebase to be private. Bitbucket restricts you to work with only 5 people for free, GitLab.com is completely free.
Bitbucket is considered as one of the most popular while it comes at company’s point of view. More organizations host their projects in Bitbucket compared to GitLab, due to its user-friendly interface and free access to repository feature. Bitbucket Cloud includes Mercurial support. Bitbucket also offers free private repositories so only members can access the codebase.
So if your organization wants to host a project, it is always suggested to opt for Bitbucket, and a user can individually host some projects there too, apart from an organization.
Conclusion:
GitLab is a great way to manage git repositories especially with a centralized server. GitLab gives a developer complete control over your repositories or projects and allows you to decide whether they are public or private for free. GitLab hosts your (private) software projects for free. GitLab is a platform for managing Git repositories. GitLab offers free public and private repositories, issue-tracking feature for bugs and wikis. GitLab includes a user-friendly web interface layer on top of Git, which increases the speed of working with Git. GitLab includes a feature of own Continuous Integration (CI) system for the management of projects and it provides user interface along with other features of GitLab. GitLab provides GitLab Community Edition version or basically a forum for users to locate, on which servers the repositories are present. GitLab provides an unlimited number of private and public repositories for free. GitLab includes a snippet section which shares a small amount of code from a project, instead of sharing the complete project.
About the Author
Hello! I stumbled upon your blog while searching the web. Your insights were great and very helpful to me. Thanks for sharing your ideas. Also, I found another blog all about Gitlab that you might find interesting.
https://expertguru.ai/blogs/tech-insights/syncing-success-unveiling-gitlabs-power-with-expertguru