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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Code Collaboration Version Control
  5. GitLab vs Rancher

GitLab vs Rancher

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

GitLab
GitLab
Stacks63.4K
Followers54.5K
Votes2.5K
GitHub Stars0
Forks0
Rancher
Rancher
Stacks952
Followers1.5K
Votes644

GitLab vs Rancher: What are the differences?

What is GitLab? 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.

What is Rancher? Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service. Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

GitLab and Rancher are primarily classified as "Code Collaboration & Version Control" and "Container" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by GitLab are:

  • 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

On the other hand, Rancher provides the following key features:

  • Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources
  • User Management & Collaboration
  • Native Docker APIs & Tools

"Self hosted", "Free" and "Has community edition" are the key factors why developers consider GitLab; whereas "Easy to use", "Open source and totally free" and "Multi-host docker-compose support" are the primary reasons why Rancher is favored.

GitLab and Rancher are both open source tools. It seems that GitLab with 20.1K GitHub stars and 5.33K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Rancher with 11.9K GitHub stars and 1.34K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, GitLab has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1233 company stacks & 1475 developers stacks; compared to Rancher, which is listed in 89 company stacks and 35 developer stacks.

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Advice on GitLab, Rancher

Anonymous
Anonymous

May 25, 2020

Decided

Gitlab as A LOT of features that GitHub and Azure DevOps are missing. Even if both GH and Azure are backed by Microsoft, GitLab being open source has a faster upgrade rate and the hosted by gitlab.com solution seems more appealing than anything else! Quick win: the UI is way better and the Pipeline is way easier to setup on GitLab!

624k views624k
Comments
Weverton
Weverton

CTO at SourceLevel

Jul 28, 2020

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?

944k views944k
Comments
Weverton
Weverton

CTO at SourceLevel

Aug 3, 2020

Review

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?

1.19M views1.19M
Comments

Detailed Comparison

GitLab
GitLab
Rancher
Rancher

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.

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

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;Used by more than 100,000 organizations, GitLab is the most popular solution to manage git repositories on-premises;Completely free and open source (MIT Expat license);Powered by Ruby on Rails
Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources;User Management & Collaboration;Native Docker APIs & Tools;Monitoring and Logging;Connect Containers, Manage Disks, Deploy Load Balancers;Docker App Catalog; Included Kubernetes Distribution;Included Docker Swarm Distribution; Included Mesos Distribution;Infrastructure Management
Statistics
GitHub Stars
0
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
0
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
63.4K
Stacks
952
Followers
54.5K
Followers
1.5K
Votes
2.5K
Votes
644
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 508
    Self hosted
  • 431
    Free
  • 339
    Has community edition
  • 242
    Easy setup
  • 240
    Familiar interface
Cons
  • 28
    Slow ui performance
  • 9
    Introduce breaking bugs every release
  • 6
    Insecure (no published IP list for whitelisting)
  • 2
    Built-in Docker Registry
  • 1
    Review Apps feature
Pros
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Simple
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
Cons
  • 10
    Hosting Rancher can be complicated
Integrations
No integrations available
Jenkins
Jenkins
Datadog
Datadog
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Docker Compose
Docker Compose
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
GitHub
GitHub
Docker
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Drone.io
Drone.io

What are some alternatives to GitLab, Rancher?

GitHub

GitHub

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket

Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

RhodeCode

RhodeCode

RhodeCode provides centralized control over distributed code repositories. Developers get code review tools and custom APIs that work in Mercurial, Git & SVN. Firms get unified security and user control so that their CTOs can sleep at night

AWS CodeCommit

AWS CodeCommit

CodeCommit eliminates the need to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to securely store anything from source code to binaries, and it works seamlessly with your existing Git tools.

Gogs

Gogs

The goal of this project is to make the easiest, fastest and most painless way to set up a self-hosted Git service. With Go, this can be done in independent binary distribution across ALL platforms that Go supports, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Portainer

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

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