Our local instance is only a version back but we find gitlab to be terrifically slow, and regularly have to kick the server as we find it stops tracking updates, then simply stops responding at all. Also, the diffing on merge requests is simply awful. It regularly shits itself on spacing changes and the like making most merge requests almost useless from a code review perspective. Searching just doesn't work. At all. Navigation is weird and cumbersome, with many normal features hidden away in different sections of the UI. This causes weird situations where, since search doesn't work, I have to just browse around for commits to a branch I want view at a certain state, and click that commit to get to a "brows code" view. Why the fuck isn't there simply a repo->branch->commit history->browse code path?
I personally wouldn't recommend gitlab and hope someone else is out there working on something better.
I have to agree regarding the slowness, and although we do have many repositories (~100) and the machine only has 2GiB of RAM, it does feel slow for a service that sits idle 90% of the time, and almost never gets concurrent user access. We're on 8.0.0, so maybe it has gotten better.
That said, are you sure you don't have a very old version? There is a simple path for accessing code in a branch, you can just click the repo, then on the button that shows the number of branches ("N branches"), then click on the branch you want. If you want to see the files in an older commit of that branch, just click on "History" and then "browse files" on the commit line.
2GB of RAM for 100 repo's and a few users should be fine. But a lot of bugs and speed improvements were made since 8.0.0, please consider upgrading, it should be a smooth experience. Also, if you have not switched to the Omnibus packages already consider doing it now to reduce memory usage and improve speed.
Thanks. We do use the Omnibus package, but I'll trying upgrading when I get a chance. I'm preparing to "sell" Gitlab to my coworkers, and the slowness won't help :|
We have a lot of branches on our remote, so navigating that page is pretty much pointless. This may be more of an issue with our repo being dirty with undeleted branches, but where is a typeahead find feature on that branches page? It just seems dirt cheap to implement, yet it's nowhere to be found.
I don't think we have typeahead for branches, it would be awesome if someone can contribute it. BTW we greatly improved the speed of the branches page for GitLab 8.5 (out Feb 22) if you have many branches.
Is your server on GitLab 8.3 or 7.x? If you're on 7.x please consider upgrading, it should make a world of difference. If the server stops responding please consider switching to the Omnibus packages if you have not done so already. For the code path issue please see the other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093988
I personally wouldn't recommend gitlab and hope someone else is out there working on something better.