GitLab 4.0 adds group management features

The developers of the open source, self-hosted repository management application GitLab have released the latest version of their software. GitLab is an open source repository management software for the Git version control system used for self-hosted repositories. It is based on Ruby on Rails and Gitolite and includes many of the same features as the GitHub project hosting service, including a very similar user interface.

GitLab 4.0 implements sub-directories for groups and integrates new projects into superordinate groups when they are created. The system now also uses distinct usernames instead of committer emails to identify users. These usernames can be changed and the application will move a user's projects to a URL according to the new username. Together with these changes, the permissions model has been updated so that project owners can move their projects between groups while the site administrator can move all projects between groups and users.

Alongside the new group and project functionality, GitLab 4.0 also includes improved PostgreSQL support, improvements to email notifications and an updated user interface to display patches, diffs and commits. The application's dashboard has also been improved and several bugs have been fixed, including a problem with milestones that could not be closed correctly. Support for gitolite 2 was removed from GitLab 4.0 as was support for SQLite, which, according to the developers, could not handle database access by multiple users at the same time.

Version 4.0 of GitLab is available to download from the project's GitHub page. The software is distributed under the MIT Licence and development is sponsored by Brightbox.

(fab)