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GitLab vs Review Board: What are the differences?

Introduction

GitLab and Review Board are both popular code collaboration platforms used by software development teams. While they share similarities in providing tools for code review and version control management, there are key differences between the two. This Markdown code provides a concise comparison highlighting the six main differences between GitLab and Review Board.

  1. Integration with Version Control System: GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that offers a built-in Git repository and supports other version control systems like SVN. In contrast, Review Board is primarily focused on code review and integrates with various version control systems such as Git, Mercurial, and Perforce. GitLab's extensive support for version control gives it an advantage when it comes to managing different types of projects.

  2. User Interface and User Experience: GitLab has a more modern and intuitive user interface that makes it easier for developers to navigate and access various features. On the other hand, Review Board has a simpler interface that focuses primarily on code review functionality. GitLab's visually appealing and user-friendly interface enhances productivity and usability for development teams.

  3. Built-in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): GitLab offers a built-in CI/CD pipeline to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying applications. This comprehensive CI/CD functionality streamlines the development workflow, making it more efficient and convenient for teams. Review Board, however, does not offer built-in CI/CD capabilities, requiring separate tools or manual processes to achieve the same level of automation.

  4. Code Collaboration Features: GitLab provides a wide range of collaborative features like merge requests, issue tracking, and inline code commenting that facilitate team collaboration and communication. Review Board, being a dedicated code review tool, offers robust code review capabilities with features like diff visualization, commenting, and reviewing changesets. While GitLab's collaboration features are more comprehensive, Review Board's specialized focus on code review provides more in-depth reviewing capabilities.

  5. Community and Marketplace: GitLab has a larger and more active community, providing access to a wealth of resources, support, and community-contributed extensions and integrations. It also has an extensive marketplace with a wide range of plugins and tools that can be easily integrated into the platform. Review Board, although it has an active community, does not have the same level of marketplace and integration options as GitLab.

  6. Pricing and Deployment Options: GitLab offers both a self-hosted Community Edition and a cloud-hosted version with different pricing tiers, including a free tier for small teams. It provides flexibility in deployment options, allowing teams to choose the one that fits their needs and budgets. Review Board, on the other hand, is primarily self-hosted and is available for free as an open-source product. The self-hosted nature of Review Board may require additional infrastructure and maintenance costs.

In Summary, GitLab is an all-in-one DevOps platform with extensive version control system integration and built-in CI/CD capabilities, offering an intuitive user experience and a wide range of collaboration features. Review Board, on the other hand, is a dedicated code review tool with a simpler interface, powerful code review capabilities, and a focus on compatibility with various version control systems.

Decisions about GitLab and Review Board
Elmar Wouters
CEO, Managing Director at Wouters Media · | 7 upvotes · 570.2K views

I first used BitBucket because it had private repo's, and it didn't disappoint me. Also with the smooth integration of Jira, the decision to use BitBucket as a full application maintenance service was as easy as 1, 2, 3.

I honestly love BitBucket, by the looks, by the UI, and the smooth integration with Tower.

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Weverton Timoteo

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?

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Weverton Timoteo

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?

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Weverton Timoteo

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.

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Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 8 upvotes · 714.4K views

Out of most of the VCS solutions out there, we found Gitlab was the most feature complete with a free community edition. Their DevSecops offering is also a very robust solution. Gitlab CI/CD was quite easy to setup and the direct integration with your VCS + CI/CD is also a bonus. Out of the box integration with major cloud providers, alerting through instant messages etc. are all extremely convenient. We push our CI/CD updates to MS Teams.

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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!

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Nazar Atamaniuk
Shared insights
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DeployPlaceDeployPlaceGitHubGitHubGitLabGitLab

At DeployPlace we use self-hosted GitLab, we have chosen GitLab as most of us are familiar with it. We are happy with all features GitLab provides, I can’t imagine our life without integrated GitLab CI. Another important feature for us is integrated code review tool, we use it every day, we use merge requests, code reviews, branching. To be honest, most of us have GitHub accounts as well, we like to contribute in open source, and we want to be a part of the tech community, but lack of solutions from GitHub in the area of CI doesn’t let us chose it for our projects.

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Pros of GitLab
Pros of Review Board
  • 508
    Self hosted
  • 431
    Free
  • 339
    Has community edition
  • 242
    Easy setup
  • 240
    Familiar interface
  • 137
    Includes many features, including ci
  • 113
    Nice UI
  • 84
    Good integration with gitlabci
  • 57
    Simple setup
  • 35
    Has an official mobile app
  • 34
    Free private repository
  • 31
    Continuous Integration
  • 23
    Open source, great ui (like github)
  • 18
    Slack Integration
  • 15
    Full CI flow
  • 11
    Free and unlimited private git repos
  • 10
    All in one (Git, CI, Agile..)
  • 10
    User, group, and project access management is simple
  • 8
    Intuitive UI
  • 8
    Built-in CI
  • 6
    Full DevOps suite with Git
  • 6
    Both public and private Repositories
  • 5
    Integrated Docker Registry
  • 5
    So easy to use
  • 5
    CI
  • 5
    Build/pipeline definition alongside code
  • 5
    It's powerful source code management tool
  • 4
    Dockerized
  • 4
    It's fully integrated
  • 4
    On-premises
  • 4
    Security and Stable
  • 4
    Unlimited free repos & collaborators
  • 4
    Not Microsoft Owned
  • 4
    Excellent
  • 4
    Issue system
  • 4
    Mattermost Chat client
  • 3
    Great for team collaboration
  • 3
    Free private repos
  • 3
    Because is the best remote host for git repositories
  • 3
    Built-in Docker Registry
  • 3
    Opensource
  • 3
    Low maintenance cost due omnibus-deployment
  • 3
    I like the its runners and executors feature
  • 2
    Beautiful
  • 2
    Groups of groups
  • 2
    Multilingual interface
  • 2
    Powerful software planning and maintaining tools
  • 2
    Review Apps feature
  • 2
    Kubernetes integration with GitLab CI
  • 2
    One-click install through DigitalOcean
  • 2
    Powerful Continuous Integration System
  • 2
    It includes everything I need, all packaged with docker
  • 2
    The dashboard with deployed environments
  • 2
    HipChat intergration
  • 2
    Many private repo
  • 2
    Kubernetes Integration
  • 2
    Published IP list for whitelisting (gl-infra#434)
  • 2
    Wounderful
  • 2
    Native CI
  • 1
    Supports Radius/Ldap & Browser Code Edits
  • 3
    Simple to use. Great UI
  • 1
    Review Bots
  • 1
    Diff between review versions
  • 1
    Open Source

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Cons of GitLab
Cons of Review Board
  • 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
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    What is GitLab?

    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 Review Board?

    Review Board is an open source, web-based code and document review tool built to help companies, open source projects, and other organizations keep their quality high and their bug count low.

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    What companies use GitLab?
    What companies use Review Board?
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    Blog Posts

    What are some alternatives to GitLab and Review Board?
    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 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.
    Jenkins
    In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.
    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.
    Git
    Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
    See all alternatives