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Best Practice Weimar Gitlab Engl

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6 views

Best Practice Weimar Gitlab Engl

Uploaded by

I-Chun Lai
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Best Practice:

Organization and versioning of source code

Software for version management is used to record the change history of files and directories
and, if necessary, to be able to reset them to a previous work status. Often, additional tools are
offered to split work steps on the same file and to bring different versions of this file together again.
This means that several people can collaborate on a project without accidentally deleting important data.
In the following, we will discuss what the advantages of the Git system are and why GitLab stands out in comparison to
other software solutions in order to organize and version source code.

Version management software using the example of Git


Git is a distributed version control system that records the change processes of files. It
impresses with its decentralized work on projects in which an official repository with the
shared version of the files exists on a server and a copy can be used on many other local
computers. No constant internet connection is required for this. With the local working
copies, branches can be created from a project and, if necessary, merged with the official repository again. This offers
many advantages in collaborative work in projects and is considered to be particularly quick and efficient when changing
only small text-based files.

As an alternative to Git, there are many other systems for versioning files
and directories. SVN (Apache Subversion) should be mentioned, which is also
widespread. It is considered an easier-to-use central system and is better able to handle large and complex files. In prac-
tice, source code and documents are therefore often managed using Git, while images, videos and other large binary for-
mats that cannot be read with a text editor are stored on an SVN system.

GitLab – A web application for managing software projects


GitLab is a web application for version control based on Git. The open-source soft-
ware has the advantage that it can be set up as a system free of charge on your ser-
ver. Projects can be organized by yourself and access to the system can be configu-
red. Many automated functions help in the software development process, from
planning, creation, and build, up to verify, security testing, deploying, and monitoring. Alternatively, there are also related
software solutions such as Gogs or Gitolite, which also allow you to set up locally hosted repositories, but which do not
offer the same functionality as GitLab.
There are also well-known public platforms such as GitHub and Bitbucket, which
also host software projects and use Git as a basis. Even if they make a large contri-
bution to the open-source movement, they have two major disadvantages: 1) The
software projects usually have to be made public if you do not pay a certain surch-
arge, and 2) the corresponding data is on external servers. Since sensitive data is
often dealt with during the project phase, such as copyrighted images or videos or personal results data from a survey,
these must not simply be made public or stored on external storage devices. GitLab allows local editing of files but also
prepares them so that the transfer to GitHub, for example, is not a problem at the end of the project. This is supported by
the fact that GitLab and GitHub have a comparable infrastructure. The lowest level to be managed is represented by the
repositories, i.e. the individual projects. These can be organized in an indefinite number of groups and sub-groups. This has
the advantage that not only a small workgroup can use GitLab to structure their projects in a few sub-areas but also a
large institution can separate projects at multiple organizational levels.
Best Practice:
Organisation und Versionierung von Quellcode

The shift from CVS to Git - in conversation with the Webis organization

The Webis Group (short for web technologies and information systems;

Digital Bauhaus Lab, Photo: Tina Meinhardt


website: https://webis.de) is a research group based at the Bauhaus University
Weimar. Their research contributes to web mining and retrieval, machine lear-
ning, computational linguistics, and symbolic AI. The software CVS
(Concurrent Versions System) was used here for several years to organize the
own software projects and files with version control. In 2015 it was decided to
transfer the software projects to Git and make them more accessible with the
GitLab web interface.

One of the reasons for the change was the fact that CVS is currently no longer being developed and certain mechanisms
for software development are unfavorable here. For example, there may be inconsistencies when updating a project be-
cause CVS only records changes at the file level, while Git updates the entire project at the commit level. The procedure is
thus closer to the actual software development procedure, in which a commit can correspond to a release status of the
software. Another problem is, for example, the lack of tracking of name changes, which can lead to a split in the history of
a project. Git uses heuristic rules to compare content and detect file name changes.

The actual GitLab web application has other diverse advantages. It gives you an easy overview of the software projects
and the access can be determined depending on the user group. Features such as the rendering of the README files and
the creation of wiki pages allow the projects to be well documented and problems can be reported, tracked and dealt with
using an issue tracker.

Webis also builds on the configurability of the interfaces from Gitlab by using the local authentication interface LDAP
(Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) for the login. This allows both employees and students to log into the system
with their known university login details without having to come up with and remember new login details.

Open-source and community


GitLab is open-source software that was developed with the programming languages Ruby and Go. It is therefore freely
available and can be configured completely according to your own needs, but if necessary, also expanded or changed if you
have the appropriate programming skills. If you notice a bug in the software, you can report it via a forum or a bug tracker.
Thanks to the developer GitLab Inc. and a large community, you can usually rely on a quick solution.
There are several ways to use GitLab. The primary and previously presented variant is to set up the software on its own
server. Since this is associated with an increased technical effort and the software must first be set up and configured
securely, it is advisable to ask the data center or the nearest IT support for this matter. Instances of GitLab often already
exist at central facilities, so creating a new instance is not a major problem. Furthermore, GitLab Inc. has also been offering
SAAS (Software as a Service) since 2012 to host private and public repositories. Support can be booked for this purpose.

If you have any questions about GitLab or other software repositories, please contact Mr. Kevin Lang, Research Data Manage-
ment Contact Point at the Bauhaus University Weimar ([email protected]).

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