What is GitLab?

A DevOps what?

On GitLab's website, you'll find this explanation:

GitLab is a single application that covers the entire DevOps lifecycle.

That might sound interesting, but if you have no idea what a DevOps lifecycle is, it doesn’t say much. Let’s first take a closer look at the term DevOps.

DevOps is a combination of development and operations. It’s a term used to describe a certain approach to software development and management. In our opinion, the clearest explanation comes from the agile admin:

DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.

In other words: DevOps is a way of developing and maintaining software where software developers and other IT specialists work together from start to finish of the development process. This is really different from the old-fashioned ‘silo’ mentality, where different teams barely know what the others are working on.

In the DevOps approach, engineers collaborate much more on the product. Everyone is responsible for all aspects of the software: making sure it works properly and is secure, for example. The chances of someone creating bad software are much smaller, if not impossible.

The big advantage of DevOps is that good software is built faster: mistakes are recognized and solved earlier, and the security of the software is better monitored throughout all stages.

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GitLab and DevOps

And now back again to the definition of GitLab, what does GitLab have to do with DevOps again?

Gitlab is a single application that covers the entire DevOps lifecycle.

Aha.

You might already get an understanding of the concept. With the rise of DevOps, a pretty big problem arose: because the DevOps process is set up in a way that many different people with various roles work on the same product, a lot of tools started to emerge to support all those tasks.

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GitLab: 1 application for all DevOps tools.

For that reason, GitLab decided to build a single application that allows the entire development team (from developers to system administrators) to collaborate. In other words, all those different tools have been brought together into one application for the entire software lifecycle: from designing and building to releasing and securing your new application. This increases the speed of the development process.

Another big advantage of GitLab is that users don’t need much experience to use it. It’s designed to be so user-friendly that new users can quickly make use of it. The vision and roadmap of GitLab, which aligns with that of many other progressive software companies, looks like this:

• Let computers manage more tasks instead of people to reduce the risk of errors.
• Automate more so engineers can focus on the work they excel at.
• Stop building “duct-tape” software structures to make different tools communicate, in order to ensure security in the development process and improve oversight.

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GitLab is open source

‍GitLab is built as open source, which means that anyone who wants to can contribute to its continued development. This is becoming more popular as it gives developers the chance to improve new and existing skills while building products that are used worldwide.

Ukrainian Dimitriy Zaporozhets started the GitLab product in 2011 and has released a new version of GitLab every 22th of the month since then.

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‍Top Dutch‍

Finally, here's something interesting to know: The GitLab product is developed, maintained, and further enhanced by GitLab Inc. Dutchman Sid Sijbrandij co-founded GitLab and served as CEO for several years. In December 2024, he stepped down as CEO and transitioned to the role of Executive Chair of the Board. Bill Staples, formerly CEO of New Relic, succeeded him as CEO.

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Up next...

We hope this has helped clarify things for you. If you’re curious about how GitLab works, click here to check out our other blog. You’ll likely understand even better why we’re so excited about it. If you have any questions about GitLab or our own product, GitLabHost, feel free to reach out. We're happy to help!