CircleCI vs GitLab: What are the differences?
Developers describe CircleCI as "Automate your development process quickly, safely, and at scale". Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp. On the other hand, GitLab is detailed as "Open source self-hosted Git management software". GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.
CircleCI belongs to "Continuous Integration" category of the tech stack, while GitLab can be primarily classified under "Code Collaboration & Version Control".
Some of the features offered by CircleCI are:
- Language-Inclusive Support
- Custom Environments
- Flexible Resource Allocation
On the other hand, GitLab provides the following key features:
- Manage git repositories with fine grained access controls that keep your code secure
- Perform code reviews and enhance collaboration with merge requests
- Each project can also have an issue tracker and a wiki
"Github integration", "Easy setup" and "Fast builds" are the key factors why developers consider CircleCI; whereas "Self hosted", "Free" and "Has community edition" are the primary reasons why GitLab is favored.
GitLab is an open source tool with 20.1K GitHub stars and 5.33K GitHub forks. Here's a link to GitLab's open source repository on GitHub.
Coderus, Webedia, and Ticketmaster are some of the popular companies that use GitLab, whereas CircleCI is used by Instacart, Lyft, and StackShare. GitLab has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1219 company stacks & 1431 developers stacks; compared to CircleCI, which is listed in 925 company stacks and 372 developer stacks.
Do you review your Pull/Merge Request before assigning Reviewers?
If you work in a team opening a Pull Request (or Merge Request) looks appropriate. However, have you ever thought about opening a Pull/Merge Request when working by yourself? Here's a checklist of things you can review in your own:
- Pick the correct target branch
- Make Drafts explicit
- Name things properly
- Ask help for tools
- Remove the noise
- Fetch necessary data
- Understand Mergeability
- Pass the message
- Add screenshots
- Be found in the future
- Comment inline in your changes
Read the blog post for more detailed explanation for each item :D
What else do you review before asking for code review?
Using an inclusive language is crucial for fostering a diverse culture. Git has changed the naming conventions to be more language-inclusive, and so you should change. Our development tools, like GitHub and GitLab, already supports the change.
SourceLevel deals very nicely with repositories that changed the master branch to a more appropriate word. Besides, you can use the grep linter the look for exclusive terms contained in the source code.
As the inclusive language gap may happen in other aspects of our lives, have you already thought about them?
One of the magic tricks git performs is the ability to rewrite log history. You can do it in many ways, but git rebase -i is the one I most use. With this command, It’s possible to switch commits order, remove a commit, squash two or more commits, or edit, for instance.
It’s particularly useful to run it before opening a pull request. It allows developers to “clean up” the mess and organize commits before submitting to review. If you follow the practice 3 and 4, then the list of commits should look very similar to a task list. It should reveal the rationale you had, telling the story of how you end up with that final code.
Pros of CircleCI
- Easy setup175
- Fast builds151
Pros of GitLab
- Self hosted488
- Free415
- Easy setup234
- Nice UI105
- CI2
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Cons of CircleCI
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