UPDATE: We've extended again until Mar. 22, 2020
CI/CD is one of the best parts of GitLab. Our robust feature set and powerful Runner architecture have earned us some strong industry accolades. While we believe using GitLab end to end as a single application is the best experience, we also believe in playing well with others so that you can use the tools you want without vendor lock-in. In this spirit, we built CI/CD for external repos and CI/CD for GitHub to allow you to host your code repositories on GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise, BitBucket, or any Git server, while using GitLab CI/CD to build, test, and deploy your code.
We decided to extend the deadline for using CI/CD for external repos, including CI/CD for GitHub, until Sep. 22, 2019. You’ll now have an additional six months to enjoy CI/CD for external repos as a [Free or Bronze](/user on GitLab.com. This feature will continue to be part of the Premium tier for GitLab Self-managed.
Always free for open source
This extension applies to private repos hosted on GitLab.com. As part of our commitment to open source, public projects get all the features of Gold for free. GitLab CI/CD for GitHub works by automatically mirroring your repos to GitLab.com. As such, if you have a public project on GitHub, it will also be public on GitLab so you can always take advantage of GitLab CI/CD for public projects.
Why we're extending the offer
In full transparency, there are a few reasons we decided on an extension.
The first reason is that we didn’t want to ruin anyone’s day by shutting off functionality without fair warning. We don’t currently have all of the instrumentation in place to give us confidence that we can appropriately notify users, so we'll spend some time in the coming months to build this ability. We want to give ample opportunity for everyone currently enjoying the functionality on GitLab.com Free and Starter to make the choice to upgrade or migrate.
The second reason is the changing CI/CD market landscape. With recent developments – like the consolidation of the CI/CD market and the launch of the Continuous Delivery Foundation – we’ve seen greater interest in using GitLab CI/CD with other Git hosting options. Extending the timeline will allow more folks to test it out.
Finally, we want to take this time to capture additional feedback on how you use this feature so we can improve it. If you are using GitLab CI/CD with any external Git repository, like GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise, BitBucket, or even your own vanilla Git server, we’d love to hear why you keep your code where you do, what you like about GitLab CI/CD, and what we can improve. We have several open channels for feedback so please leave a comment on this post, send us a message on Twitter with the hashtag #GitLabCICD, or log an issue with a bug fix or feature request on our open issue tracker. We hope you enjoy an extra six months of usage and hope to hear from you soon.
