GitLab recently announced version 16 which introduces several enhancements. These include value stream dashboards, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered generated code suggestions, and workflow capabilities with remote development workspaces (beta).
Kai Armstrong, senior product manager at GitLab, summarized the updates in a blog post. GitLab 16 introduces the Value Stream Dashboard. This enables continuous improvement of software delivery workflows by measuring value stream lifecycle and vulnerability metrics. Value Stream Lifecycle Metrics utilizes Value Stream Analysis and as part of the package he incorporates four DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics. The Value Stream Dashboard is a highly customizable interface that increases visibility by displaying trends, patterns, and opportunities for digital transformation improvement.
Value streams are also gaining traction within organizations, as they coincide with a shift in thinking from project management and waterfall approaches to product management.
GitLab Duo, an AI feature suite that harnesses the power of generative AI, has been updated to improve efficiency and productivity across GitLab’s various features. GitLab Duo, part of GitLab Ultimate, provides merge request summaries, reviewer suggestions, descriptions of this vulnerability, and more to aid your software development lifecycle. Improved code suggestions and support for 13 programming languages. Code suggestions are now available in VS Code via the GitLab Workflow extension.
AI and ML systems help organizations discover new opportunities and products. According to Zorina Alliata, senior software managers should have a basic understanding of AI and ML. Roles such as data scientist, data engineer, and ML engineer may not exist in software engineering teams today, but leaders should be prepared to hire and train these roles.
In addition to various other enhancements, GitLab 16 introduced the beta release of remote development workspaces, temporary development environments in the cloud. Based on the AMD64 architecture, each workspace comes with its own set of dependencies, libraries, and tools.
Omnibus GitLab, the way we package the services and tools needed to run GitLab, has received an update to simplify the installation process for most users and eliminate the need for complex configuration. As highlighted in his Reddit post by the original poster, omenosdev, this update is getting a lot of attention. He said in a comment: . ”
Armstrong thanked the broader GitLab community for the 304 contributions to GitLab 16 and invited readers to keep an eye on future releases via the product kickoff review page. The page will be updated on the 22nd of every month. At the time of this writing, GitLab 16.1 has been released.
