The web-based Git-repository management company GitLab Inc. is reportedly moving its business to Google’s Cloud Platform (GCP). That’s according to a recent official blog post from the company, outlining the decision and its motives. For those who aren’t already aware, GitLab is a collaborative Git-repository manager that boasts a wiki, issue-tracking features, and which previously utilized Microsoft’s Azure platform. In the shortest possible terms, it’s very similar to GitHub in that it allows development groups to work together on applications and software. It features strong version control and backups before a finalized update or initial piece of software is compiled. It would be difficult to determine what, if any, significance there is in the company’s decision to switch to the GCP but, as shown by the announcement, there are some very obvious reasons.
The first is that the platform falls squarely in line with GitLab’s decision to integrate another Google product – namely Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The company is even offering up to a $500 credit for new subscribers who sign up to get continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and Kubernetes deployment set up. Kubernetes deployment had already been available from GitLab but integration will make it much less time intensive and more automated. Since it’s become a very popular choice on the GitLab platform, the move to GCP makes a lot of sense. Beyond that, the switch has enabled a new tool called GitLab Auto DevOps, which automatically configures CI/CD pipelines for testing, building, and deployment, to be easily used by anybody. On GCP, Google takes care of cluster management and updating for developers to improve the automation for code quality control and security testing, as well as deployment. Finally, the company says that moving to the new platform brings new security functions that just weren’t present on the previous platform, in addition to faster caching.
In terms of the actual migration between platforms, the move is obviously going to take some time. There is going to be quite a lot of data stored in association with these types of sites and services that needs to be moved over. So there’s not really a publicly available set timeframe for it, as of this writing. However, those who are interested in keeping tabs on the progress can head over to the GitLab site for more information and updates on the progress.