Gitpod, an open-source developer platform, recently announced its partnership with GitLab to provide cloud-based development environments. Gitpod uses a version control system as a single source of truth to automate the installation and configuration of a local development environment.
Announcing this integration in a blog post, Sven Efftinge, chief executive officer at Gitpod, said that the Gitpod integration would be the part of GitLab 13.5, released on October 22nd. Furthermore, Efftinge added:
"We are currently helping the GitLab team to build a fully-automated Gitpod configuration for the GitLab source code. This makes contributing to the GitLab source code itself as easy as clicking a button. Once this configuration is merged, you will be able to just click on the Gitpod button of the GitLab repository, and everything will be set up for your first GitLab contribution."
Calling the Gitpod integration the "last missing piece" in the GitLab DevOps pipeline, Efftinge stated that contributing code becomes much simpler when anyone can spin up a ready-to-code development environment in a few seconds. Compared to running the GitLab Development Kit and then installing the required libraries and tools -- which currently takes approximately 30 minutes -- GitPod integration allows engineers to start working within just a few minutes.
Source: https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitlab-integration/
Gitpod already has a browser extension that adds a button to any GitLab, GitHub, or BitBucket repository. Stating that they are continuously improving GitLab integration, Efftinge also mentioned the GitLab VS Code Extension. Using the installation scripts for GCP and AWS, users can also self-host Gitpod on their Kubernetes cluster.
Brandon Jung, VP of alliances at GitLab, stated:
"GitLab is excited to build a partnership with Gitpod. Gitpod’s expertise in automating cloud-based dev environments on GitLab combined with their focus on cloud native development workflows makes them a great fit for our customers helping enable them on their digital transformations."
The tech community has commented favourably on this integration. Twitter user and CTO of the CNCF, Chris Aniszczyk, tweeted, "excited to see more options and competition in the cloud native IDE space, as someone who has worked in developer tools for a good portion of his career, this is the type of experience I've wanted for a long time, will truly make it easier to contribute to open source projects!"
In related news, Gitpod recently marked its first seed funding of $3M from Crane Venture Partners, Speedinvest, and Vertex Ventures US. The Kiel, Germany-based company intends to use the funding further to refine the leading platform for development environment automation and expand its open-source community and relevant ecosystem partnerships.
The GitLab integration is available at GitLab.com with a demo project Spring PetClinic, which has a complete Gitpod configuration committed. The company has invited the community to share their experience at community.gitpod.io, and report bugs in the Gitpod repository.