Re: Proposal to deploy GitLab on gnome.org

[Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net>]

On 2017-05-16 09:22 AM, Allan Day wrote:
> We are confident that GitLab is a good choice for GNOME, and we can’t
> wait for GNOME to modernise our developer experience with it. It will
> provide us with vastly more effective tools, an easier landing for
> newcomers, and lots of opportunities to improve the way that we work.
> We're ready to start working on the migration.

I only lurk here, so I don't often offer an opinion, but I do maintain 
the GitLab install at my medium-sized company.

My problem with GitLab is how fluid it is. The underlying technologies 
keep changing, and it's a real pain staying up to date. If you get 
behind at all with the updates, it's quite a chore to upgrade, and half 
way through you find out you need a new Ruby, need to upgrade through a 
couple of packaging systems for node, and really, you should just 
upgrade to Debian unstable (that last one is a bit of an exaggeration). 
Expect a new user interface experience every four months.

That's not to say that it's fragile. It's been rock-solid for us. It's 
just hard to recommend something you can't predict, running 
ever-changing technologies that no sysadmin can comfortably stay on top of.

--Pat