12.5

GitLab 12.5 Release

GitLab 12.5 with EKS Cluster Creation & Environments Dashboard

GitLab 12.5 released with EKS Cluster Creation and Deployment, Crossplane support, Environments Dashboard, and much more!

To deliver high-quality software as efficiently as possible, enterprises need to support a wide range of infrastructure, across multiple clouds. This month’s GitLab 12.5 release makes it even easier to configure, monitor, and manage projects across a variety of configurations.

Create and deploy to an EKS cluster from GitLab

Like 85% of enterprises, GitLab believes in multicloud. It’s critical that you can deploy to the cloud of your choice as seamlessly as possible. With that in mind, we’re thrilled to announce that you can now create Kubernetes clusters on Amazon’s EKS with a few clicks. The workflow is similar to how easy it is to create a cluster with Google’s GKE. Simply select EKS, configure a few cluster options, and GitLab will automatically provision the cluster correctly and prepare it so you can easily deploy your applications to it. GitLab eliminates the need to manually perform the complex task of cluster creation.

This feature is behind a feature flag and enabled in GitLab.com.

Provision multicloud managed services with Crossplane

Building on our commitment to operational efficiency, we’re thrilled to announce that Crossplane is integrated and deployable as a GitLab Managed App. Crossplane removes the friction and effort of provisioning and managing cloud service dependencies by allowing admins to declaratively provision and securely consume managed services from the cloud of your choice, including GCP, AWS, and Azure. Integration with Auto DevOps makes spinning up hosted resources on the cloud as simple as declaring a CI variable.

View environment status at a glance

You're faced with frequent application changes, all making their way toward production. It’s hard to track changes as they flow through your various dev, staging and prod environments. GitLab's new Environments Dashboard surfaces that information, providing a single point of access to the status of environments in all groups and projects. This means you can identify and triage problems (for example, “Is an environment not working because code is being deployed, or because it’s actually broken?”) quickly and visually.

And much more!

12.5 is a big release, and there’s a lot more to see. Highlights include Sourcegraph integration and a host of new security improvements. Read on to get the details!

We’d love to meet you in person. If you're coming to AWS re:Invent December 2 - 6, visit us at booth #1620. Also, registration is now open for the next GitLab Commit User Conference in San Francisco, January 14.

Join us at GitLab Commit Release survey

GitLab MVP badge

MVP This month's Most Valuable Person (MVP) is awarded to gfyoung

gfyoung has contributed over 30 merge requests to add frozen_string_literals to GitLab tests to improve both performance and consistency. This is on top of 30+ merge requests last year for GitLab’s application code! This iterative approach is really awesome to see, and we are really thankful for this series of contributions!

12.5 Key improvements released in GitLab 12.5

Easily create and deploy to an EKS cluster

Easily create and deploy to an EKS cluster

Kubernetes is unapologetically complex, and building a cluster from scratch is no easy task. Even with managed services like AWS’ Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) that abstract some of the complexity, there are a lot of steps to follow just to get started. Manual steps like creating a dedicated Kubernetes control plane and individual nodes in EC2 are a distraction from your main objective to getting code running live. At GitLab, we are strong believers in automating repetitive tasks and that creating a new cluster should be simple. In GitLab 12.5, we’ve added an EKS integration that does just that.

Now, you can choose EKS as an option from the GitLab clusters page and you’ll be prompted to authenticate to your AWS account. Once authenticated, simply specify the desired parameters for your cluster and GitLab will take care of the rest.

EKS integration isn’t just important to allow users to easily deploy to Kubernetes on AWS, it’s part of our broader multicloud strategy. Together with GitLab’s GKE integration, we aim to make not just Kubernetes setup easier, but make multicloud easier. And we’re just getting started. Our vision is that you’ll be able to choose from a wide variety of cloud providers for your deployment. You can use each provider for the unique strengths it provides and gain portability to move your applications and workloads to your cloud of choice, all while maintaining the same consistent workflow in GitLab.

This feature is behind a feature flag and enabled in GitLab.com. To enable it in self-managed instances, start the Rails console: gitlab-rails console and run Feature.enable(:create_eks_clusters).

Crossplane support in GitLab Managed Apps

Crossplane support in GitLab Managed Apps

Kubernetes applications can be deployed with GitLab today, but cloud service dependencies must be separately provisioned, connected, and secured. With GitLab 12.5, cloud services can now be declaratively provisioned using the open-source Crossplane project, which extends the Kubernetes API for provisioning managed services including PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, and Storage Buckets.

Crossplane is now available as a GitLab Managed App that can be installed into a GitLab-managed Kubernetes cluster. Managed services from GCP, AWS, and Azure can be declaratively provisioned and securely consumed using kubectl in standard GitLab pipelines or via Auto DevOps.

Configuring Auto DevOps to use Crossplane allows users to provision databases out of cluster, providing a production-ready setup. Big thanks to the Upbound team for this great contribution!

Crossplane support in GitLab Managed Apps

Code intelligence powered by Sourcegraph

Code intelligence powered by Sourcegraph

Developers rely on go-to definitions and find references when writing software, but historically these haven’t been available when reviewing code. Sourcegraph’s powerful code navigation is now available in GitLab when browsing code or reviewing merge requests.

In GitLab 12.5, once your instance Administrator has configured the Sourcegraph integration, you will be able to opt in from your user preferences. On GitLab.com, we are incrementally rolling out Sourcegraph for public projects. You can try it out today on the GitLab project after enabling it in your user preferences.

Thank you Sourcegraph for contributing this integration! Read more about the integration.

Environments Dashboard

Environments Dashboard

GitLab environments are a logical construct that allows you to manage the status and health of the physical environments where your code is deployed. It is one of the features that makes GitLab a true CD solution, and not just a CI tool that orchestrates deployment. As great as environments are, they became hard to wrangle when you have more than just a few. Understanding the status of multiple environments across multiple projects was cumbersome, as you needed to navigate to each project to see its nested environments.

The new Environments Dashboard provides a cross-project environment-based view that lets you see the big picture of what is going on in each environment. From a single location, you can now track the progress as changes flow from development to staging, and then to production (or through any series of custom environment flows you can set up). With an at-a-glance view of multiple projects, you can instantly see which pipelines are green and which are red, allowing you to diagnose if there is a block at a particular point, or if there’s a more systemic problem you need to investigate. The Environments Dashboard enables these additional workflows to make you more efficient.

Environments Dashboard

Associate milestones with a release

Associate milestones with a release

The way many teams use GitLab, ourselves included, is to have a milestone for the release that everything tracks to. Some teams may also have more than one sprint that makes up a release. You can now associate a milestone (or more) to a release. This will populate the release page with issues and merge requests included in the release.

Associate milestones with a release

12.5 Other improvements in GitLab 12.5

Audit Events API for groups

Audit Events API for groups

The Audit Events API provides critical insight into your GitLab environment. Previously, this API was only available to administrators for instance events. Since GitLab.com customers do not have administrator access, this API is needed to be able to extend this functionality to group owners.

We’ve made group events data accessible via the GitLab API to help inform your decisions and manage the compliance of your groups. We’ll be making audit events more comprehensive, which will bolster this API to provide more insight and value to you.

Epics can now inherit start and due dates from their sub-epics

Epics can now inherit start and due dates from their sub-epics

Managing the timeline of your epics just got easier! In addition to being able to inherit the milestone dates from its assigned issues, epics can now inherit the start and due dates from their assigned sub-epics. No more guesswork involved when trying to figure out when your epic’s sub-epics and issues are planned to be completed.

Contextual navigation for group, subgroup, and project overview

Contextual navigation for group, subgroup, and project overview

As you begin structuring your organization with additional groups, subgroups and projects, it can become difficult to identify where you are in your hierarchy. Quickly identify if you are viewing a project, group, or sub-group thanks to our improved contextual overview items in the left-hand navigation pane.

Design annotations are now added to the issue activity

Design annotations are now added to the issue activity

Until now, when a new design annotation/comment was added, the annotation was only listed on the design. Now, when new annotations are added, GitLab will also add a note in the issue activity on the Discussion tab, so everyone involved in the issue is aware. This makes it easier to collaborate on the design discussions so everyone can contribute to the design process.

Caching of Git info/refs (Beta)

Caching of Git info/refs (Beta)

When fetching changes to a Git repository, the Git server advertises a list of all the branches and tags in the repository. In some instances, we have observed up to 75% of all requests to the GitLab web server are requests for the refs. In the best case, when all the refs are packed, this is a relatively inexpensive operation. However, when there are unpacked refs, Git must iterate over the unpacked refs. This causes additional disk IO and can be expensive, especially when using high latency storage like NFS.

In GitLab 12.5, instance administrators can enable the beta info/refs cache to improve the performance of ref advertisement and decrease the pressure on Gitaly in situations where refs are fetched very frequently.

In testing this feature on GitLab.com, we have observed read operations outnumber write operations 10 to 1, and seen median latency reduce by 70%. For GitLab instances using NFS for Git storage, we expect even greater improvements.

The cache is not enabled by default because we are investigating higher than expected write pressure on the cache, possibly caused by parallel cache misses. For updates, follow the issue gitaly#2124.

Caching of Git info/refs (Beta)

Mergeability state added to merge requests API

Mergeability state added to merge requests API

The merge request API now includes more detail about why a merge request cannot be merged. The has_conflicts attribute indicates if there are merge conflicts, and the blocking_discussions_resolved attribute indicates if there are unresolved discussions. These new attributes are particularly helpful for automation, determining what action is required to make the merge request mergeable.

Thanks Brian Kabiro for your contribution!

Pass values in query string to pipelines/new page

Pass values in query string to pipelines/new page

To create a new pipeline via the web, go to /pipelines/new and from there you can fill out different values for the pipeline to be started. It was already possible to add a ref parameter to choose the branch or tag (for example, /pipelines/new?ref=master), and we’ve now added the ability to prepopulate other variables on the query string similarly.

Composable script aliasing in gitlab-ci.yml

Composable script aliasing in gitlab-ci.yml

Creating reusable building blocks of “small primitives” can be a powerful paradigm for pipeline design. It allows you to stay DRY, compartmentalize functionality into understandable chunks, and create dependency chains such that updating a code block once can simultaneously update it for many dependent blocks.

GitLab has several mechanisms that enable this design pattern, including default YAML syntaxes such as anchors and aliases. However, trying to use an alias array with the script, before_script, or after_script keywords would result in a nested array when you tried to merge them, which didn’t work.

In GitLab 12.5, script arrays are flattened when referenced via anchors. This pattern won’t work if you want to use it via include and extends, but you can use anchors within a single file to unlock a powerful array of new pipeline design patterns!

Display JUnit error details in merge request

Display JUnit error details in merge request

Prior to this release, a user could see when a test failed but not get the data needed to resolve the failure and get a passing build easily. With this release, GitLab now displays data about JUnit test results in the pipeline view.

This includes results of passed, skipped, and failed tests and timing and a detailed view of individual tests including a trace of failed tests for faster identification of issues and contribution of fixes.

Display JUnit error details in merge request

Contextual documentation to help users download NPM packages

Contextual documentation to help users download NPM packages

We learned from a recent user survey that a primary reason users navigate to the Package Registry UI is to ensure they are using the correct version of a package. One way we can help with that is by providing easy to copy code snippets for downloading and installing a given package.

In GitLab 12.5, we are excited to launch our first iteration in improving the navigation and workflows of the GitLab Package Registry. Now, users can easily copy npm install and npm setup snippets to easily install the package they are looking for.

Contextual documentation to help users download NPM packages

Public API for Feature Flags

Public API for Feature Flags

We have added API functionality that will allow configuration and management of Feature Flags. This was previously only available from the UI.

CI-based cluster application management

CI-based cluster application management

One-click Kubernetes application installation is useful to get up and running quickly. However, there are times when customizing a Helm chart prior to installation is necessary. The new CI-based cluster application management approach will allow users to designate a “cluster management project” that will receive cluster-admin privileges to the cluster and have the ability to interact with it via CI. This will not only allow the installation of templated applications, but will also allow users to customize the charts prior to installation. Furthermore, users will be able to use all the existing GitLab features around security, authentication, version control, and CI when managing Kubernetes applications. We intend to eventually combine one-click installation with the CI-based installation of applications in the future.

CI-based cluster application management

OpenFaas runtimes support in GitLab Serverless

OpenFaas runtimes support in GitLab Serverless

GitLab Serverless now supports OpenFaaS classic runtimes. Using OpenFaas runtimes, your developers can write serverless functions for Knative in any of the 6 supported languages.

Automatically close GitLab issues with recovery alerts from Prometheus

Automatically close GitLab issues with recovery alerts from Prometheus

Incidents resolve for one of two reasons:

  • Someone resolved the problem.
  • The system resolved itself.

Following resolution, the incident issue needs to be closed for tracking purposes so that there is no confusion around which incidents are active and which ones still require remediation. When an alert is resolved because someone fixed the problem, Prometheus will emit a recovery alert, giving GitLab the ability to automatically close the issue related to the incident.

This eliminates unnecessary manual work for incident responders and ensures that every open incident issue is an active problem and requires attention.

Filter list of Sentry errors by title in GitLab

Filter list of Sentry errors by title in GitLab

Triaging errors requires the ability to filter and sort that list based on criteria that is custom and specific to your use case. You can now search the list of Sentry errors within a GitLab project that is integrated with Sentry. Simply navigate to Operations > Error Tracking using the left-hand bar to view Sentry errors in GitLab and search them.

Slack slash command to add comment to issue

Slack slash command to add comment to issue

ChatOps is all about enabling operations via intuitive commands and actions that can be typed and integrated into one’s chat tool. We’ve extended our existing suite of Slack slash commands with a command that allows you to add a comment to a GitLab issue without leaving Slack. This reduces context-switching and eliminates having to navigate multiple UIs just to update a teammate or stakeholder on an issue.

Edit Metrics Dashboard

Edit Metrics Dashboard

Previously, in order to define a custom dashboard, users would have to create a YAML file under the repository’s root directory and fill out its content from scratch. This was a bit difficult to achieve and required manual work.

Now, in GitLab 12.5, we’ve made it easier then ever! By clicking on the “Edit dashboard” button, you will be redirected to the web IDE where you will be able to update a pre-populated YAML file.

Edit Metrics Dashboard

SAST for React Framework

SAST for React Framework

This release expands our SAST Javascript scanning to support React-specific files and projects.

This helps you to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities in your React applications.

SAST for React Framework

Blocking Mode for Web Application Firewall

Blocking Mode for Web Application Firewall

The Web Application Firewall (WAF) can now be put into blocking mode.

This means that whenever the WAF identifies potentially malicious traffic, it can drop that traffic before it ever reaches your app, protecting it from a variety of different attacks.

You can enable this behavior by setting the AUTO_DEVOPS_MODSECURITY_SEC_RULE_ENGINE environment variable in your project. If this variable is not set, the WAF will operate in logging-only mode.

Improved resilience of Geo updates

Improved resilience of Geo updates

As part of our effort to simplify the Geo upgrade process, we fixed a number of small issues when updating Foreign Data Wrapper (FDW) tables during Geo updates and updated the corresponding documentation. This means that fewer manual interventions are required by systems administrators, which should increase the overall robustness of Geo updates.

Updates to alert banner styles

Updates to alert banner styles

Based on the new specifications in our Pajamas Design System, we’ve updated the Alert component throughout the application. These new styles make alert banner text easier to read, particularly in the case of banners that also contain links.

Updates to alert banner styles

Additional project service counts in usage ping

Additional project service counts in usage ping

In an effort to better understand what integrations are most used by our users, a count of the number of projects using the Custom Issue Tracker, Jira, Jenkins, Slack, and Mattermost project services has been added to the usage ping payload. This work will be continued in the next few releases as we add additional project services to this payload.

You can learn more about what data is collected and how it’s aggregated in the Usage Ping documentation.

GitLab Chart improvements

GitLab Chart improvements

In GitLab 12.5, support has been added for configuring external Redis Sentinel servers in the GitLab Helm charts. You can now provide a list of the hostnames, ports, and password for the Sentinel servers in your Redis HA cluster, as global settings. Note that this configuration is only supported for Sentinel servers deployed separately from the GitLab chart.

Search and autocomplete when adding issues and sub-epics to epics

Search and autocomplete when adding issues and sub-epics to epics

When adding issues or sub-epics to a parent epic, take advantage of search and autocomplete to find issues or sub-epics rather than having to copy and paste a target link.

View epic tree from within an epic

View epic tree from within an epic

Easily viewing and organizing all the work nested under an epic is critical when planning future work and understanding the current state of progress towards your goals. GitLab now provides a full tree view on the epic page that shows all attached child epics and issues. Now, you can easily prioritize and order your child epics and issues via drag and drop within the epic tree!

View epic tree from within an epic

Group milestone parity with project milestone

Group milestone parity with project milestone

Prior to GitLab 12.5, if you promoted a project milestone to a group, you would lose a lot of the meaningful metadata that project milestones provide. Group milestones now have parity with project milestones and include an overview of issues, merge requests, participants, and labels related to the milestone.

Color chips for AsciiDoc

Color chips for AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc files now support color chips. Wherever AsciiDoc is supported such as in wikis, snippets, and repository file previews, typing a color code will render a helpful color chip next to it. This is especially useful when designers and engineers collaborate on color details within GitLab.

Thanks Guillaume Grossetie for your contribution!

Color chips for AsciiDoc

Delete source branch once merged

Delete source branch once merged

It is easy to forget to delete branches from merge requests that have merged, causing the number of branches to grow quickly. In GitLab 12.5, feature branches are deleted by default to keep your project clean and tidy.

A new toggle has been added to the project settings to disable the Delete source branch option if you’d like to opt out and delete them adhoc.

Thanks Zsolt Kovari for your contribution.

Delete source branch once merged

Faster rebases using sparse checkout

Faster rebases using sparse checkout

Fast forward and semi-linear merge methods require that there are no changes in the target branch that are not in the source branch. When there are changes in the target branch that are not in the source branch, a Rebase button is shown to bring the merge request up to date.

When Git performs a rebase, a worktree is used to complete the operation. In GitLab 12.5, a sparse checkout is used when creating the worktree, which means that the worktree used to perform the rebase doesn’t include the full working copy of a repository, but just a few files. Previously, checking out the full worktree would take an order of magnitude longer than the rebase. On GitLab.com, we have observed an 80% reduction in median rebase duration.

Faster rebases using sparse checkout

Job logs expanded by default

Job logs expanded by default

Job logs sections will be expanded by default in order to make log views more convenient to navigate, allowing you more quickly find what you need on failed jobs.

Show custom build results in the merge request view

Show custom build results in the merge request view

The build process can generate artifacts like test results, code metrics, and stats that users want to see as visual representation, but these items are not readily available in the MR today. Previously, getting access to build artifacts required navigating to the artifact browser and leaving the context of the MR.

With GitLab 12.5, we’ve brought custom artifacts to the pipeline section in the MR widget. Using the expose_as: keyword in your gitlab-ci.yml, you can now show artifacts right in the MR widget. This is a highly requested and upvoted feature that was in the backlog for a long time, so we are very excited to ship the first iteration of this functionality.

Show custom build results in the merge request view

Generate a new CI cache and key only when important files change

Generate a new CI cache and key only when important files change

GitLab CI/CD allows you to specify a list of files and directories which should be cached between jobs. Pulling files from cache rather than building from scratch can be a great way to speed up your pipelines. But caching can be bad if there’s a new version of the file and the cache isn’t updated so the old version of the file is used. Now in GitLab 12.5, managing caching has become much easier with the cache:key:files keyword. You can now connect caching to one or two files, such as Gemfile.lock or yarn.lock, and the cache will only be rebuilt when those selected files are changed. This means that repeated pipeline runs can re-use the cache for as long as the files remain unchanged, which will make your pipelines faster.

Use CI/CD to update the GitLab NPM Registry

Use CI/CD to update the GitLab NPM Registry

In GitLab 12.5, we are excited to announce that users can now leverage GitLab CI/CD to build and push packages to their project or group’s NPM Registry. Moving forward, users can now leverage the job token CI_JOB_TOKEN invoked from .gitlab-ci.yml to authenticate to and update their NPM Registry.

Improved availability of the GitLab Container Registry

Improved availability of the GitLab Container Registry

In GitLab 12.5, we released an updated version of the GitLab Container Registry that significantly improved the availability of the feature. The issue was due to Docker Registry using a version of Google Cloud Storage SDK that did not support MD5 checksums. This resulted in an increased amount of errors and images uploaded to the registry with 0 bytes.

When we released the update to GitLab.com, we saw an immediate and drastic improvement in availability for the Container Registry. We’ve also submitted a change to Docker Registry and look forward to working with Docker to get those merged.

Improved availability of the GitLab Container Registry

Guide for running GitLab Pages Daemon in a separate server

Guide for running GitLab Pages Daemon in a separate server

You may want to run GitLab Pages Daemon on a separate server in order to decrease the load on your main application server. Thanks to a community contribution by @kominoshja, we prepared a guide to help you do this.

Build serverless functions locally for testing

Build serverless functions locally for testing

To run tests locally, developers can now build their serverless functions using the gitlabktl command-line tool.

The command-line tool gitlabktl was extended to support local builds using either Kaniko or Docker Engine.

New project template for JavaScript developers

New project template for JavaScript developers

With our new JavaScript-oriented project template, you can start building and publishing your projects using GitLab Pages and AWS Lambda quickly. Start coding your frontend using your favourite framework, have Serverless and AWS Lambda serve your backend needs, and use GitLab Pages to host your solution with a 1 minute setup.

Render charts in GitLab issues using a Grafana URL

Render charts in GitLab issues using a Grafana URL

When something goes wrong, having quick access to clear metrics visualizations is critical. As your team triages and resolves problems, metrics charts let you understand which parts of your services/systems are affected and how the customer is impacted, as well as communicate this information to teammates and stakeholders. But using copy and paste to manually move screenshots from Grafana to GitLab issues is error-prone and can slow you down when speed is of the essence.

In GitLab 12.5, we have added the ability to render Grafana metrics in issues via GitLab charts by simply including a URL to the Grafana chart in the description of the issue. This can be added manually or automatically rendered in an issue by adding the URL to an issue template. No more copy and pasting screenshots during a fire-fight! We’ve enabled simple knowledge sharing via our integration with Grafana.

View important Sentry error details in GitLab

View important Sentry error details in GitLab

Context switching slows everyone down. The unique UIs and interaction patterns of different tools make daily triaging tasks cumbersome. To overcome these challenges, we’ve added to our integration with Sentry the ability to view a detailed overview of errors from within GitLab.

This allows you to review pertinent aspects of the error such as first/last seen, number of events, number of impacted users, and the stack trace in GitLab—without ever needing to switch to Sentry. Of course, we also link to the Sentry error record in case you need to dig deeper.

Anomaly charts for Metrics Dashboard

Anomaly charts for Metrics Dashboard

When it comes to visualizing metrics, users often like to choose different types of visualization for different metrics, and set upper and lower bound to better spot anomalies in the charts.

To help achieve this, we added anomaly charts as a part of our effort to enhance our dashboard offering around monitoring.

Anomaly charts for Metrics Dashboard

Offline Container Scanning

Offline Container Scanning

For users running self-managed instances, you can now enable Container Scanning in offline (air-gapped) installations. This allows container scans to be done without the need for web access.

Docker-in-Docker dependency no longer a requirement for Dependency Scanning

Docker-in-Docker dependency no longer a requirement for Dependency Scanning

Previously, our Dependency Scanning leveraged a Docker-in-Docker configuration. By removing the Docker-In-Docker requirement, you no longer need to use privileged Runners and the Runners can now cache the images. Eliminating the need for privileged runners makes it easier to have a more secure use of Dependency Scanning.

Instructions for upgrading a multi-node/HA deployment with Geo

Instructions for upgrading a multi-node/HA deployment with Geo

As part of our effort to simplify the Geo upgrade process, we added instructions for zero-downtime upgrades of a Geo multi-node / high-availability deployment.

These instructions are especially valuable for GitLab customers that maintain larger GitLab installations with many users because they eliminate the need for additional downtime.

Checking Geo nodes only displays node-specific output

Checking Geo nodes only displays node-specific output

When running gitlab-rake gitlab:geo:check on a Geo primary node, we presented a lot of information that was only relevant for secondary nodes. No more!

In GitLab 12.5, we cleaned up the gitlab:geo:check output and only run checks that are relevant for the node type (primary or secondary) the command is run on.

Support for Geo in cloud native installs

Support for Geo in cloud native installs

Having code hosted in physical proximity to your developer can make the difference between git clone on large repos being a small, few second pause before moving on, or needing to grab coffee while your command line chugs along. GitLab Geo provides geographic replication of your git repos so you can have developers collaborating across the city or across the globe. Previously, Geo has only been available for Omnibus GitLab, while folks using Kubernetes have been left drinking lots of coffee. As such, Geo support for the GitLab Chart has been a highly requested feature.

Today, we are excited to announce that as of 12.5, the GitLab Helm chart supports configuring primary and secondary Geo instances!

Omnibus improvements

Omnibus improvements

  • GitLab 12.5 includes Mattermost 5.16, an open source Slack-alternative whose newest release includes a new Plugin Marketplace, faster installation on desktops, and more. This release of Mattermost removes support for IE 11 (Internet Explorer). GitLab now includes a new Mattermost plugin that brings GitLab notifications and slash commands to Mattermost. Subscribe to notifications, stay up-to-date with reviews, and see the status of your pull requests at a glance right in Mattermost. Learn more in the documentation.
  • When upgrading Omnibus GitLab, /etc/gitlab is now automatically backed up. This ensures that GitLab configuration data is included in pre-upgrade backups. If the backup of configuration data fails for some reason during an upgrade, you will see a warning but the upgrade will continue. For more details, refer to the Backups documentation.
  • GitLab High Availability uses Consul to manage service discovery, health checks, and failover for PosgreSQL database nodes. In 12.5, the version of Consul that is packaged in Omnibus has been updated from 0.9.0 to 1.6.1. For important instructions on upgrading Consul nodes in your high availability cluster, see Upgrades for bundled Consul.
  • The GitLab Container Registry is now enabled by default in Omnibus. This provides a quicker path to building and using containers by ensuring that containers can be uploaded to your Container Registry during the build stage, without the need for configuration changes. To disable Container Registry, see the administration docs.

Deprecations Deprecations

Dropping support for Knative version 0.5 in GitLab 12.6

Dropping support for Knative version 0.5 in GitLab 12.6

As we move towards Knative 1.0 support, in GitLab 12.6 we are dropping support for Knative version 0.5. We invite customers to upgrade Knative to benefit from all the developments in the past months.

Planned removal date: Nov. 22, 2019

Deprecating support for openSUSE Leap 15.0

Deprecating support for openSUSE Leap 15.0

openSUSE 15.0 reaches end of life at the end of November 2019. Support for openSUSE 15.0 will be dropped in GitLab 12.5. Packages for openSUSE Leap 15.1 are now available.

Planned removal date: GitLab 12.5

Planned deprecation of PostgreSQL 9.6 and 10.x in GitLab 13.0

Planned deprecation of PostgreSQL 9.6 and 10.x in GitLab 13.0

To take advantage of improved performance and functionality in PostgreSQL 11 such as partitioning, we plan to require PostgreSQL versions 11 and 12 in GitLab 13.x. To accomplish this, we will be introducing support for PostgreSQL 11 in an upcoming release of GitLab 12.x while maintaining support for 9.6 and 10.x. With the arrival of GitLab 13.0, PostgreSQL 11 will be required.

By minimally requiring PostgreSQL 11, we are able to leverage the new features introduced, without the overhead of maintaining multiple code paths. Going forward, we will be maintaining a yearly cadence of PostgreSQL upgrades, with support for the second and third most recent versions as soon as we are able to add them. We welcome your feedback on the proposed removals. Please comment in the Move to PG 11 and 12 epic.

Planned removal date: GitLab 13.0

Limit returned projects when requesting group details via API

Limit returned projects when requesting group details via API

GitLab’s API response when returning details for a group through a GET or PUT request previously returned a full list of group projects, sometimes resulting in a large number of Gitaly calls. In GitLab 12.6, we plan on limiting the number of projects returned to 100 to improve performance when serving these requests.

Planned removal date: Dec. 22, 2019

Elasticsearch 5.6 no longer supported

Elasticsearch 5.6 no longer supported

As we continue to improve and enhance our integration with Elasticsearch, support for Elasticsearch 5.6.x will end with the release of GitLab 12.7. Elasticsearch 5.6 reached its end of life with the release of Elasticsearch 7.x. Updated version requirements for GitLab 12.7 will include support for only Elasticsearch 6.x.

At this time there is no timeline for support of Elasticsearch 7.x with GitLab; you can follow this issue for updates. GitLab recommends self-managed customers upgrade to ElasticSearch 6.x.

Planned removal date: January 22, 2020

Removals and breaking changes Removals and breaking changes

The complete list of all removed features can be viewed in the GitLab documentation. To be notified of upcoming breaking changes, subscribe to our Breaking Changes RSS feed.

Important notes on upgrading to GitLab Important notes on upgrading to GitLab 12.5

The version of Consul in Omnibus GitLab was updated from 0.9.0 to 1.6.1 in GitLab 12.5. When upgrading Consul nodes in a high availability cluster, the Consul nodes must be upgraded one node at a time. The upgrade procedure is documented in Upgrades for bundled Consul.


Changelog Changelog

Please check out the changelog to see all the named changes:

Installing Installing

If you are setting up a new GitLab installation please see the download GitLab page.

Updating Updating

Check out our update page.

Questions? Questions?

We'd love to hear your thoughts! Visit the GitLab Forum and let us know if you have questions about the release.

GitLab Subscription Plans GitLab Subscription Plans

  • Free

    Free-forever features for individual users

  • Premium

    Enhance team productivity and coordination

  • Ultimate

    Organization wide security, compliance, and planning

Try all GitLab features - free for 30 days

Cover image licensed under Unsplash License

We want to hear from you

Enjoyed reading this blog post or have questions or feedback? Share your thoughts by creating a new topic in the GitLab community forum.

Share your feedback

Take GitLab for a spin

See what your team could do with The DevSecOps Platform.

Get free trial

Have a question? We're here to help.

Talk to an expert
Edit this page View source