Oct 29, 2020 13:06:00

Wikimedia Foundation officially decides to move repository to GitLab

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, has officially decided to move its code repository from the open source

Gerrit to GitLab in developing projects related to the content it runs.

GitLab consultation --MediaWiki
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/GitLab_consultation#Outcome

Wikimedia Is Moving To GitLab --Slashdot
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/10/28/2114259/wikimedia-is-moving-to-gitlab

The Wikimedia Foundation has found that the results of a developer satisfaction survey conducted over the past two years have raised complaints about the code review system Gerrit. In particular, Gerrit's interface has a reputation for being difficult to use, and the workflow is different from the industry's mainstream method, so many developers disliked it. The Wikimedia Foundation also said that it took time for new tech staff to get used to Gerrit, raising the bar for new entrants to the Wikimedia community.

In addition, Git such as GitHub instead of using Gerrit because 'new repositories can be created more smoothly', ' continuous integration configuration setup and self-service are available', and 'familiar with pull request workflow' The number of teams and individuals using hosting services is increasing.

However, if some teams or individuals use a non-Gerrit hosting service, they will not be able to share code with Gerrit and others, creating additional confusion among technical staff and making it difficult to maintain code standards between repositories. .. At the same time, all software deployed to Wikimedia's production environment is also required to be hosted and deployed from Gerrit.

Unless the usability issues that users have with Gerrit are resolved, each user will proceed with the project using the service of their choice. GitHub already has

152 Wikimedia Foundation-related projects, of which 127 are the official Wikimedia Foundation research and data analysis teams .

So the Wikimedia Foundation turned to GitLab's Community Edition. GitLab is a code review system written in Ruby , and the Wikimedia Foundation evaluates it as 'functional and extensible', and GitLab also points out that it can self-host on its own server. In addition, because GitLab offers the MIT Licensed Community Edition (CE), GitLab adheres to the Wikimedia Foundation's principles of freedom and open source, which is another reason for choosing GitLab.

And as of October 23, 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation has decided to move the repository from Gerrit to GitLab's Community Edition.

When asked, 'Why didn't you go to GitHub when many projects are hosted on GitHub?', The Wikimedia Foundation said, 'GitHub is the first tool needed to join the Wikimedia technical community and is free. It's neither software nor self-hosted. '' GitHub doesn't allow you to control metadata or control backup and data integrity checks, and it doesn't guarantee long-term access to the underlying repository settings and configurations. ' I'm answering.

In addition, the repository hosted on GitLab will be mirrored on GitHub for visualization.