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GitLab vs Jenkins X: What are the differences?
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; Jenkins X: A CI/CD solution for cloud applications on Kubernetes. Jenkins X is a CI/CD solution for modern cloud applications on Kubernetes.
GitLab belongs to "Code Collaboration & Version Control" category of the tech stack, while Jenkins X can be primarily classified under "Continuous Integration".
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, Jenkins X provides the following key features:
- Automated CI and CD - Rather than having to have deep knowledge of the internals of Jenkins Pipeline, Jenkins X will default awesome pipelines for your projects that implements fully CI and CD
- Environment Promotion via GitOps - Each team gets a set of Environments. Jenkins X then automates the management of the Environments and the Promotion of new versions of Applications between Environments via GitOps
- Pull Request Preview Environments - Jenkins X automatically spins up Preview Environments for your Pull Requests so you can get fast feedback before changes are merged to master
"Self hosted" is the primary reason why developers consider GitLab over the competitors, whereas "Kubernetes integration" was stated as the key factor in picking Jenkins X.
GitLab and Jenkins X are both open source tools. GitLab with 20.1K GitHub stars and 5.33K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Jenkins X with 2.93K GitHub stars and 518 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, GitLab has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1789 company stacks & 7899 developers stacks; compared to Jenkins X, which is listed in 6 company stacks and 37 developer stacks.
We are a mid-size startup running Scala apps. Moving from Jenkins/EC2 to Spinnaker/EKS and looking for a tool to cover our CI/CD needs. Our code lives on GitHub, artifacts in nexus, images in ECR.
Drone is out, GitHub actions are being considered along with Circle CI and GitLab CI.
We primarily need:
- Fast SBT builds (caching)
- Low maintenance overhead (ideally serverless)
- Everything as code
- Ease of use

I think I've tried most of the CI tools out there at some point. It took me a while to get around to Buildkite because at first I didn't see much point given it seemed like you had to run the agent yourself. Eventually it dawned on me why this approach was more ingenious than I realised:
Running my app in a production (or production-like) environment was already a solved problem, because everything was already in some form of "everything as code". Having a test environment where the only difference was adding the Buildkite agent was a trivial addition.
It means that dev/test/prod parity is simple to achieve and maintain. It's also proven to be much easier to support than trying to deal with the problems that come with trying to force an app to fit into the nuances and constraints that are imposed by the containers/runtime of a CI service. When you completely control all of the environment the tests are running in you define those constraints too. It's been a great balance between a managed service and the flexibility of running it yourself.
And while none of my needs have hit the scale of Shopify (I saw one of their engineers speak about it at a conference once, I can't find the video now though 😞) it's good to know I can scale out my worker nodes to hundreds of thousands of workers to reduce the time it takes for my tests to run.

I would recommend you to consider the JFrog Platform that includes JFrog Pipelines - it will allow you to manage the full artifact life cycle for your sbt, docker and other technologies, and automate all of your CI and CD using cloud native declarative yaml pipelines. Will integrate smoothly with all your other toolset.

more configurable to setup ci/cd: * It can provide caching when build sbt, just add this section to yml file * Easy to use, many documentation
Weakness: * Need use gitlab as repository to bring more powerful configuration
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.
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.
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!
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.
Pros of GitLab
- Self hosted504
- Free427
- Has community edition337
- Easy setup240
- Familiar interface239
- Includes many features, including ci135
- Nice UI111
- Good integration with gitlabci82
- Simple setup55
- Has an official mobile app33
- Free private repository32
- Continuous Integration29
- Open source, great ui (like github)20
- Slack Integration16
- Full CI flow12
- Free and unlimited private git repos10
- User, group, and project access management is simple8
- All in one (Git, CI, Agile..)7
- Intuitive UI7
- Built-in CI7
- Both public and private Repositories4
- Full DevOps suite with Git4
- CI4
- Integrated Docker Registry3
- It's powerful source code management tool3
- So easy to use3
- Build/pipeline definition alongside code3
- Mattermost Chat client3
- Issue system3
- Excellent3
- Because is the best remote host for git repositories2
- Dockerized2
- Free private repos2
- Great for team collaboration2
- Unlimited free repos & collaborators2
- It's fully integrated2
- I like the its runners and executors feature2
- One-click install through DigitalOcean2
- Security and Stable2
- Low maintenance cost due omnibus-deployment2
- On-premises2
- Kubernetes integration with GitLab CI1
- Multilingual interface1
- Review Apps feature1
- Powerful software planning and maintaining tools1
- Groups of groups1
- Built-in Docker Registry1
- Beautiful1
- Wounderful1
- Opensource1
- Not Microsoft Owned1
- Many private repo1
- Published IP list for whitelisting (gl-infra#434)1
- The dashboard with deployed environments1
- Powerful Continuous Integration System1
- Kubernetes Integration1
- Native CI1
- HipChat intergration1
- It includes everything I need, all packaged with docker1
- Supports Radius/Ldap & Browser Code Edits0
Pros of Jenkins X
- Kubernetes integration7
- Scripted Pipelines5
- GitOps4
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Cons of GitLab
- Slow ui performance27
- Introduce breaking bugs every release7
- Insecure (no published IP list for whitelisting)5
- Built-in Docker Registry1
- Review Apps feature0
Cons of Jenkins X
- Complexity1