GitLab vs Ansible

GitLab is a free and open source project licensed under MIT. Source code for Enterprise Edition can be found here and Community Edition here.

Gitlab is very close to Github in use and feel, written in Ruby on Rails, open source and hosted on Github as well as on GitLab.com

GitLab is being constantly worked on and has a new release every month on the 22nd. Updating is also very easy through a single apt-get command.

Wiki and pages support out of the box.

Has pull request (AKA, merge request) support.

With the packages available here, GitLab can be installed in two minutes.

A protected master branch means that no code can be merged to master without passing a code review by an authorised developer. With GitLab this comes out of the box.

GitLab's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information.

It displays the activity in a feed-type way in the most prominent part of the view. On top of that, there's a toolbar with buttons which can filter this feed by pushes, merge events or comments.

On the left, there's a menu that displays all the links that take you to the different views. For example, a file directory which displays all the files in that repo, a commit view which displays all the commits in cronological order, a network and a graph view that display important information graphically etc...

All these details make GitLab's UI extremely intuitive and easy to use, no view is overflown with information and every view displays only the most useful and crucial information needed at that time.

Has issue tracking out of the box. Creating tickets, commenting on issues, closing issues etc... It's all there out of the box.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

GitLab EE adds additional functionality over CE such as support for multiple LDAP servers and group sync.

GitLab CI makes it easy to set up CI and deployment for projects in GitLab. It supports parallel testing, multiple platforms, Docker containers and streaming build logs.

It has private/public repositories, roles for users (master, developer, reporter, guest). All of these can be set from the user interface. Same permissions set for the UI work for the SSH as well.

Since 7.12 you can define a minimum number of approvers for merge requests.

Snippets are similar to (well-known) GitHub "gists". They are a way to share code or have conversations about anything without needing a full git repo. The implementation here reminds more of a sort of pastebin.

A single instance can handle up to 40,000 users (requires a server with 64 core CPU and 64 GB of RAM) and it can run on multiple application servers to grow beyond that.

Integrates out of the box with services like Bugzilla, Pushbullet, Microsoft Team Notification and many more - one can also add own webhooks to integrate with own services.

Git Annex enables Git to manage large files (esp binaries) without checking them into Git.

The default docker.io registry is the docker hub but you can also login to other docker registries. And GitLab provides one for all Repos that make use of this feature.

EE is the commercial Enterprise Edition, CE is the free and OpenScource Community Edition. Features such as Cycle Analytics were first a part of the EE and are now also available in CE.

GitLab integrates with multiple third-party services to allow external issue trackers and external authentication.
GitLab can integrate with many third-party apps to allow external issue tracking and authentication. It can also be integrated with several services, such as:

• Slack
• Campfire
• Flowdock
• Hipchat
• Gemnasium
• Pivotal Tracker

GitLab exposes a REST API that allows automation possible, like PR bots.

Very useful project management feature that allows you to know how long it takes to go from the idea to production.

Ansible does not use agents. Instead, all master-agent communications are handled via SSH commands or through the Paramiko module which provides a Python interface to SSH.

Ansible is agentless, making it quick and painless to setup. Ansible has clear and detailed documentation and provides plenty of built-in modules. Its DSL is obtained using YAML and a familiar template system.

Some simple tasks such as triggering updates or reboots, or even checking if the service is running can be done without configuration files. These commands can be run from the command line instead.

Ansible supports managing major cloud devices (AWS, RackSpace, Digital Ocean, OpenStack) through a collection of modules which are available.

Although you may need to preinstall favorite programming environment, Ansible modules are accessed via shell calls and therefore any executable on the remote system built for use with Ansible may be used as an Ansible module.

Ansible has a Web UI in the form of AnsibleWorks AWX which unfortunately does not tie directly into the CLI. So configuration elements present in the CLI can not appear in the UI unless a sync pass is run. Although the Web UI is helpful and functional, it's still not as complete feature-wise as the CLI.

Ansible is very easy to customize. It doesn't force you to use a language with which you are unfamiliar. Instead, all commands are packaged into YAML modules which are called playbooks. So as long as you use a programming language that can output JSON, you are able to customize it.

Modules that support rich diffs can expose nearly every detail of what will change. However not all core modules support diffs, so there may still be some opaque chances made.

Making roles modular and reusable is a fast process with Ansible.