Take a look at these tools to help you might you manage your GitLab.

GitLab has become one of the most popular repository management solutions, and especially for enterprise teams due to its extended offerings for DevOps teams. GitLab offers several built-in capabilities that can help development teams to better cope with their increased rate of deployment, but one of the great things about GitLab is that it offers easy integration for a wide range of external tools.

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Here are five plugins that can help you stay on top of your GitLab repos and streamline your CI DevOps more effectively.

1. RenovateBot – Automated Dependency Updates

Staying up to date with all your dependencies reduces many security and quality issues, but it is almost an impossible mission. Unless you can find a way to automate 90% of the process. This is exactly what RenovateBot offers. It integrates with GitLab to detect outdated dependencies in your repositories and generate pull requests automatically, so your developers can update their dependencies with one click of a button, therefore saving time and reducing risks.

RevonateBot's customizable changelogs and commit history list extracted and included with each update.

2. WhiteSource – Open Source Security and License Compliance Management

Open source has become a key building block in applications as it helps software developers speed up their processes. The problem is that using open source components requires developers to track their open source inventory, ensure they are not using open source components with known vulnerabilities and guarantee open source license compliance.

WhiteSource can automate all these processes to help developers use open source without compromising on security or agility. WhiteSource offers native integration to GitLab Core and can alert developers, within the GitLab UI, about open source vulnerabilities with suggested fixes, and even generating fix PR (Pull Request) automatically to shorten remediation time.

3. Rancher Labs – Multi-Cloud Kubernetes Management Platform

Managing Kubernetes clusters across multiple cloud providers is necessary to offer faster performance for users, but it creates unique challenges in resource management and cluster communication. Sharing assets across clusters becomes difficult, and implementing security features is tricky, as there are multiple vulnerable points to account for.

Rancher Labs offers a suite that includes Kubernetes cluster deployments for any infrastructure, management via centralized authentication and access control, and a full ecosystem to deploy Kubernetes. This includes distribution via Docker containers to facilitate small footprint and easy installations, and even Rancher’s own OS for running containers that is purpose-built to be lightweight and optimized for rapid deployments.

Rancher also offers an easy way to integrate with GitLab’s Auto DevOps tools for rapid deployment of apps without having to provision separate CI/CD resources. Thanks to its expedited Kubernetes communication tool, Authorized Cluster Endpoint, GitLab repositories can connect without having to manually retrieve API addresses and Kubeconfig files from ach node.

4. Unito – Integrated Project Management

One challenge many projects face is the disparity in management and communication tools different teams use, and how that impacts overall efficiency. Siloed communications and updates, as well as alerts and pull requests, lead to overlapped work, redundant efforts, and critical errors at inconvenient times. Moreover, managing communications between project management tools and GitLab repositories can be impacted when synchronization of issues isn’t automated.

Unito lets you synchronize multiple project management tools into a single interface, as well as GitLab repositories. You can filter repositories you wish to include in a specific project, and integrate existing platforms such as Asana, Trello, and Jira to manage reports and tasks. Additionally, Unito pushes reports across all your integrated tools whenever a change is made on one of them. Any time you close a project or mark an issue fixed, it will automatically update the corresponding card on your project management suite.

5. Codefresh – CI/CD platform for Docker

Although CI/CD is predicated on automation and fast deployments, the reality of the matter is that even the most efficient pipelines still have significant manual management needs. Implementing specific test builds, running unit tests, and even simply implementing new images of the same container can be complicated. Moreover, with constant rapid integrations, deploying tests at every step can bog down the pipeline.

Codefresh reduces this need for micromanagement by building out containers of compositions and processes that must be run at every step (unit and integration tests, QA) and automating their deployment at every turn. With a simple integration with GitLab, it also offers better deployment without any new steps in your pipeline. It also facilitates building entirely new CI/CD pipelines by building a repository of containers that can be plugged in with minor alterations, and your teams can take advantage of pre-built containers offered by the broader community.

Automate and Simplify

Managing your GitLab repos for a project of any size can quickly become a daunting task if you’re not properly equipped to handle rapidly expanding needs. Using the right tools and plugins can simplify your life and make managing your repositories more efficient and operational.

Further Reading

It's Raining Repos: The Microservices Repo

GitLab Benefits From the Microsoft/GitHub Acquisition