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Confluence

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Confluence vs GitLab: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this analysis, we will compare Confluence and GitLab, focusing on their key differences.

  1. Ownership and Purpose: Confluence is a collaboration tool that serves as a knowledge management system, allowing users to create and organize content, documents, and pages. GitLab, on the other hand, is primarily a web-based Git repository manager and DevOps platform that facilitates collaborative coding, version control, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes.

  2. Content Creation and Formatting: Confluence provides a rich set of formatting options, including macros and templates, enabling users to structure and style their content with ease. GitLab, while it allows some level of content creation, primarily focuses on code management and collaboration, providing features like code review and merge requests.

  3. Version Control and Branching: GitLab excels in version control and offers advanced features for branching, merging, and resolving conflicts in code repositories. It provides a complete history of all changes, enabling users to track and analyze the evolution of their codebase. Confluence, being a knowledge management tool, does not emphasize version control in the same way, and its capabilities in this area are not as robust.

  4. Issue and Project Tracking: GitLab provides extensive project management facilities, including issue tracking, milestones, and kanban boards. These features enable teams to plan, track, and organize their work effectively. Confluence, although it has some basic task management capabilities, is not designed to be a full-fledged project management tool and lacks the comprehensive issue tracking features found in GitLab.

  5. Integration with Development Tools: GitLab seamlessly integrates with various development tools, such as IDEs, issue trackers, Slack, and CI/CD pipelines. This integration streamlines the development workflow and enhances collaboration between team members. Confluence, while it offers some integrations, primarily focuses on internal collaboration and knowledge sharing rather than deep integration with development tools.

In summary, Confluence and GitLab differ significantly in their purpose, content creation capabilities, version control features, project management functionalities, and integration with development tools. While Confluence is a versatile knowledge management system, GitLab excels in code management, version control, and project collaboration within a DevOps environment.

Decisions about Confluence and GitLab
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 · 649.8K 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
on
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 Confluence
Pros of GitLab
  • 94
    Wiki search power
  • 62
    WYSIWYG editor
  • 43
    Full featured, works well with embedded docs
  • 3
    Expensive licenses
  • 507
    Self hosted
  • 429
    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
  • 34
    Free private repository
  • 34
    Has an official mobile app
  • 31
    Continuous Integration
  • 22
    Open source, great ui (like github)
  • 18
    Slack Integration
  • 14
    Full CI flow
  • 11
    Free and unlimited private git repos
  • 10
    User, group, and project access management is simple
  • 9
    All in one (Git, CI, Agile..)
  • 8
    Built-in CI
  • 8
    Intuitive UI
  • 6
    Full DevOps suite with Git
  • 6
    Both public and private Repositories
  • 5
    Integrated Docker Registry
  • 5
    Build/pipeline definition alongside code
  • 5
    So easy to use
  • 5
    CI
  • 5
    It's powerful source code management tool
  • 4
    Unlimited free repos & collaborators
  • 4
    Security and Stable
  • 4
    On-premises
  • 4
    It's fully integrated
  • 4
    Excellent
  • 4
    Issue system
  • 4
    Mattermost Chat client
  • 4
    Dockerized
  • 3
    Great for team collaboration
  • 3
    Free private repos
  • 3
    Because is the best remote host for git repositories
  • 3
    Low maintenance cost due omnibus-deployment
  • 3
    Not Microsoft Owned
  • 3
    Built-in Docker Registry
  • 3
    Opensource
  • 3
    I like the its runners and executors feature
  • 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
    Native CI
  • 2
    HipChat intergration
  • 2
    Many private repo
  • 2
    Kubernetes Integration
  • 2
    Published IP list for whitelisting (gl-infra#434)
  • 2
    Wounderful
  • 2
    Beautiful
  • 2
    Groups of groups
  • 2
    The dashboard with deployed environments
  • 2
    It includes everything I need, all packaged with docker
  • 1
    Supports Radius/Ldap & Browser Code Edits

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Cons of Confluence
Cons of GitLab
  • 3
    Expensive license
  • 28
    Slow ui performance
  • 8
    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 Confluence?

Capture the knowledge that's too often lost in email inboxes and shared network drives in Confluence instead – where it's easy to find, use, and update.

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.

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What companies use Confluence?
What companies use GitLab?
See which teams inside your own company are using Confluence or GitLab.
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What tools integrate with Confluence?
What tools integrate with GitLab?

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Blog Posts

What are some alternatives to Confluence and GitLab?
Jira
Jira's secret sauce is the way it simplifies the complexities of software development into manageable units of work. Jira comes out-of-the-box with everything agile teams need to ship value to customers faster.
Microsoft SharePoint
It empowers teamwork with dynamic and productive team sites for every project team, department, and division. Share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and seamlessly collaborate across the organization.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a project management and group collaboration tool. The tool includes features for schedules, tasks, files, and messages.
Slack
Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.
Trello
Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.
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