[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":823},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective":3,"navigation-en-us":47,"banner-en-us":458,"footer-en-us":468,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Viktor Nagy":704,"blog-related-posts-en-us-the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective":718,"blog-promotions-en-us":761,"next-steps-en-us":813},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"authors":8,"body":10,"category":11,"categorySlug":11,"config":12,"content":16,"date":20,"description":17,"extension":28,"externalUrl":29,"featured":14,"heroImage":19,"isFeatured":14,"meta":30,"navigation":31,"path":32,"publishedDate":20,"rawbody":33,"seo":34,"slug":13,"stem":38,"tagSlugs":39,"tags":45,"template":15,"updatedDate":29,"__hash__":46},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective.yml","How what we learned at KubeCon EU 2022 will impact our product roadmaps",[7],"viktor-nagy",[9],"Viktor Nagy","\nAfter two years of only virtual KubeCon events, the GitLab product team was excited to participate in and meet colleagues, partners, and more from our industry at KubeCon EU 2022, held in Valencia, Spain. We were present with four product leaders, a software developer, and a UX researcher. This post summarizes our primary takeaways from the conference, an experience that will affect our roadmaps.\n\nWe will discuss the following topics:\n\n- Internal platforms and GitOps\n- Secrets management\n- Infrastructure integrations\n- WebAssembly a.k.a. WASM\n\nThere were 32 topic types and several 0-day events at KubeCon. Many talks focused on a few tools. Many Cloud Native Computing Foundation ([CNCF](https://www.cncf.io/)) projects had their community meetings during these days. Some talks were given IRL, and others were broadcast virtually with live Q&A. There were a variety of topics and approaches. There were many talks about the various aspects of cluster management, too. However, we left this topic out on purpose because at GitLab we want to focus on the software developers and provide one DevOps platform to support their work. Cluster management is one step away from this focus. Still, we noticed some remarkable patterns as highlighted by the four elements of our list.\n\n> You’re invited! Join us on June 23rd for the [GitLab 15 launch event](https://page.gitlab.com/fifteen) with DevOps guru Gene Kim and several GitLab leaders. They’ll show you what they see for the future of DevOps and The One DevOps Platform.\n\n## Internal platforms and GitOps\n\nCompanies want their developers to focus on their core business. They create internal platforms to hide the complexity of Day 0-2 operations from their software engineers and still allow the \"shift left\" movement of DevOps. These platforms often involve the welding of several tools.\n\nMany talks presented how the given team or company approached their platform problem and what tools they used, and one could often feel the 18-month sweat of a whole platform team trying to come up with a solution.\n\nThese platforms use either a push- or pull-based model for deployments. No single approach is emerging due to legacy applications and different requirements. While there is a definition of GitOps provided by the [OpenGitOps](https://opengitops.dev/) initiative, several presenters offered their own definitions, including of pull-based deployments.\n\nWe fielded a large-scale survey related to secrets at KubeCon, and learned that users would like help with the [Pipeline Authoring](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/components/) workflow.\n\nBesides the wiring of the tools, the industry is still looking for a unified approach to multi-tenancy (there might not be one), and sometimes integrating security processes seems overly challenging.\n\n### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\nThere is a lot of potential in building a platform used as the starting point for internal platforms. Imagine a \"tool\" that shortens the time required to create an internal platform to days or weeks instead of a whole year. This is the GitLab vision of The One DevOps platform.\n\nAs a result, we don't plan any changes in our direction. We will continue investing in the recently started [Deployment capabilities](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/environments/) to provide all the building blocks for a platform in a single tool and are already actively looking for integrated experiences across our offering.\n\nWe’re working on a CI/CD Component Catalog that includes CI templates. This will [support the Pipeline Authoring workflow](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/7462).\n\n## Secrets management\n\nOne of the things that often came up in our discussions is secrets management. We fielded a large-scale survey related to secrets at KubeCon, and attendees were glad that we’re thinking about this topic. Security is part of the DevOps discussion, and secrets management is a serious issue, especially in a cloud-native aspect.\n\n- Jenkins, GitHub and GitLab were all mentioned during the secret management discussions.\n- Users would like to offload the secrets management responsibility to another product. In many cases, their security requirements are strict, so they don't want/can't handle secrets by themselves.\n- Hashicorp Vault is a preferred tool (primarily in large enterprise companies working in finance or government) to manage and handle secrets. At the same time, most companies would like to avoid operating one more application in their stack.\n- Open ID Connect [OIDC](https://docs.gitlab.com/integration/openid_connect_provider/) with the JSON web token (JWT) is an essential direction for us.\n\n### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\nWe should invest more in secrets management since this is a pain our customers would like us to solve, and it's becoming a nonstarter feature for many organizations.\n\nWe want to advance in three main vectors:\n\n- Improve our existing secrets management solution - although we don't have a clear solution, we should improve our current variables capabilities to include additional features that could help users leverage variables for secrets. So it would be a \"good enough\" feature they can use. We are actively working toward this direction by removing some of the limitations we have around [variables and masking](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1994).\n- Improve our existing [Hashicorp Vault integration](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/examples/authenticating-with-hashicorp-vault/) using the JWT token, allowing us to integrate with additional vendors (AWS, AZURE, GCP). Like the previous point, we are moving toward this direction by supporting OIDC and [adding audience claims to our JWT token](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/7335).\n- We need to develop a clear strategy for a built-in [secrets management solution](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/secrets/). In order to provide our users/customers with choice, GitLab wants to use Hashicorp Vault for secrets management handling. We believe that our approach should be not to build the logic ourselves but to leverage an open source, [cloud native](/topics/cloud-native/) project that we could build into GitLab.\n\n## Infrastructure integrations\n\nInfrastructure integrations came in several flavors during the talks. Some are about cluster management, that is not our focus in this blog. Several presentations show that internal platforms need a strong infrastructure aspect, too. When a new project/microservice is started, it might require a new namespace in the cluster with associated RBAC and policies, optionally storage, a source code management repo with automation, and the appropriate permissions. Deployments might create ephemeral environments or could modify the underlying environment within predefined constraints.\n\nThe top tools mentioned in this area are:\n\n- Terraform\n- Crossplane\n- Pulumi\n\n### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\nGitLab already has [great integrations for Terraform](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/infrastructure/iac/), and the other tools are on our radar, too.\n\nWe are open to integrations but cannot currently prioritize the other integrations on our own. We hope that the community will be interested in contributing to benefit everyone.\n\nBuilding Docker containers might not be necessary to get easy-to-manage container binaries. WASM runtimes become available for Kubernetes, and many programming languages can natively compile to WASM. WASM can provide a secure runtime environment without Docker and might be able to simplify the toolchain developers need to learn.\n\nWe don't plan to add direct WASM support to GitLab yet. The generic package registry can hold WASM modules while their deployment is up to the user.\n\nAt the same time, we see a lot of potential in simple runtime environments built around WASM. While GitLab is not in the business of offering runtime services, we will be actively monitoring the market. We might look into more WASM integrations as we see more demand and tools and services maturing in this space.\n\n## GitLab feedback\n\nIt's great to work on a product where the overall sentiment is positive, both from customers that intensely rely on it and from attendees that have to use other tools but would love to use GitLab or just started to play with it recently.\n\nWe received the following notable mentions as feedback:\n\n- Stability and reliability improved over the last several months.\n- Users love our documentation (primarily around CI) - they mentioned it's easy to use and get started with.\n- Given the size of GitLab and the number of our users, we received feedback about long-outstanding issues. We were happy to respond that we are addressing at least some of them shortly.\n- Several customers had asked if we got some resources for migrating from Jenkins to GitLab.\n- A few customers mentioned that they had to move away from GitLab mainly because of an upper-level decision despite favouring GitLab.\n\n## Conclusions\n\n![The GitLab team](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/kubecon-gitlab-team.jpg)\n\nWe enjoyed all the talks and were delighted to meet and speak with our users and customers. Thanks to all of you, we could \"feel the pulse\" on how we are doing and validate our direction.\n\nWe hope that this blog will guide those who could not [attend KubeCon](https://about.gitlab.com/events/) and serve as a summary for those who did attend. All the recordings will likely be available on YouTube from Jun 6, 2022.\n\nLet us know in the comments if you think we missed some important direction.\n\n_This blog post and linked pages contain information related to upcoming products, features, and functionality.\nIt is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only. Please do not rely on this information for purchasing or planning purposes. As with all projects, the items mentioned in this blog and linked pages are subject to change or delay. The development, release, and timing of any products, features, or functionality remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc._\n","devsecops",{"slug":13,"featured":14,"template":15},"the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective",false,"BlogPost",{"title":5,"description":17,"authors":18,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":10,"category":11,"tags":21},"Platform integrations and secrets management are among our product team's primary takeaways. Find out why.",[9],"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750097776/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/2_2.png_1750097776369.png","2022-05-31",[22,23,24,25,26,27],"kubernetes","CI","CD","GitOps","cloud native","DevOps","yml",null,{},true,"/en-us/blog/the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective","seo:\n  title: How what we learned at KubeCon EU 2022 will impact our product roadmaps\n  description: >-\n    Platform integrations and secrets management are among our product team's\n    primary takeaways. Find out why.\n  ogTitle: How what we learned at KubeCon EU 2022 will impact our product roadmaps\n  ogDescription: >-\n    Platform integrations and secrets management are among our product team's\n    primary takeaways. Find out why.\n  noIndex: false\n  ogImage: >-\n    https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750097776/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/2_2.png_1750097776369.png\n  ogUrl: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective\n  ogSiteName: https://about.gitlab.com\n  ogType: article\n  canonicalUrls: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/the-kubecon-summary-from-a-product-perspective\n\ncontent:\n  title: How what we learned at KubeCon EU 2022 will impact our product roadmaps\n  description: >-\n    Platform integrations and secrets management are among our product team's\n    primary takeaways. Find out why.\n  authors:\n    - Viktor Nagy\n  heroImage: >-\n    https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750097776/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/2_2.png_1750097776369.png\n  date: '2022-05-31'\n  body: >\n\n    After two years of only virtual KubeCon events, the GitLab product team was\n    excited to participate in and meet colleagues, partners, and more from our\n    industry at KubeCon EU 2022, held in Valencia, Spain. We were present with\n    four product leaders, a software developer, and a UX researcher. This post\n    summarizes our primary takeaways from the conference, an experience that\n    will affect our roadmaps.\n\n\n    We will discuss the following topics:\n\n\n    - Internal platforms and GitOps\n\n    - Secrets management\n\n    - Infrastructure integrations\n\n    - WebAssembly a.k.a. WASM\n\n\n    There were 32 topic types and several 0-day events at KubeCon. Many talks\n    focused on a few tools. Many Cloud Native Computing Foundation\n    ([CNCF](https://www.cncf.io/)) projects had their community meetings during\n    these days. Some talks were given IRL, and others were broadcast virtually\n    with live Q&A. There were a variety of topics and approaches. There were\n    many talks about the various aspects of cluster management, too. However, we\n    left this topic out on purpose because at GitLab we want to focus on the\n    software developers and provide one DevOps platform to support their work.\n    Cluster management is one step away from this focus. Still, we noticed some\n    remarkable patterns as highlighted by the four elements of our list.\n\n\n    > You’re invited! Join us on June 23rd for the [GitLab 15 launch\n    event](https://page.gitlab.com/fifteen) with DevOps guru Gene Kim and\n    several GitLab leaders. They’ll show you what they see for the future of\n    DevOps and The One DevOps Platform.\n\n\n    ## Internal platforms and GitOps\n\n\n    Companies want their developers to focus on their core business. They create\n    internal platforms to hide the complexity of Day 0-2 operations from their\n    software engineers and still allow the \"shift left\" movement of DevOps.\n    These platforms often involve the welding of several tools.\n\n\n    Many talks presented how the given team or company approached their platform\n    problem and what tools they used, and one could often feel the 18-month\n    sweat of a whole platform team trying to come up with a solution.\n\n\n    These platforms use either a push- or pull-based model for deployments. No\n    single approach is emerging due to legacy applications and different\n    requirements. While there is a definition of GitOps provided by the\n    [OpenGitOps](https://opengitops.dev/) initiative, several presenters offered\n    their own definitions, including of pull-based deployments.\n\n\n    We fielded a large-scale survey related to secrets at KubeCon, and learned\n    that users would like help with the [Pipeline Authoring](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/components/) workflow.\n\n\n    Besides the wiring of the tools, the industry is still looking for a unified\n    approach to multi-tenancy (there might not be one), and sometimes\n    integrating security processes seems overly challenging.\n\n\n    ### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\n\n    There is a lot of potential in building a platform used as the starting\n    point for internal platforms. Imagine a \"tool\" that shortens the time\n    required to create an internal platform to days or weeks instead of a whole\n    year. This is the GitLab vision of The One DevOps platform.\n\n\n    As a result, we don't plan any changes in our direction. We will continue\n    investing in the recently started [Deployment capabilities](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/environments/) to provide all the building blocks for a\n    platform in a single tool and are already actively looking for integrated\n    experiences across our offering.\n\n\n    We’re working on a CI/CD Component Catalog that includes CI templates. This\n    will [support the Pipeline Authoring\n    workflow](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/7462).\n\n\n    ## Secrets management\n\n\n    One of the things that often came up in our discussions is secrets\n    management. We fielded a large-scale survey related to secrets at KubeCon,\n    and attendees were glad that we’re thinking about this topic. Security is\n    part of the DevOps discussion, and secrets management is a serious issue,\n    especially in a cloud-native aspect.\n\n\n    - Jenkins, GitHub and GitLab were all mentioned during the secret management\n    discussions.\n\n    - Users would like to offload the secrets management responsibility to\n    another product. In many cases, their security requirements are strict, so\n    they don't want/can't handle secrets by themselves.\n\n    - Hashicorp Vault is a preferred tool (primarily in large enterprise\n    companies working in finance or government) to manage and handle secrets. At\n    the same time, most companies would like to avoid operating one more\n    application in their stack.\n\n    - Open ID Connect\n    [OIDC](https://docs.gitlab.com/integration/openid_connect_provider/)\n    with the JSON web token (JWT) is an essential direction for us.\n\n\n    ### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\n\n    We should invest more in secrets management since this is a pain our\n    customers would like us to solve, and it's becoming a nonstarter feature for\n    many organizations.\n\n\n    We want to advance in three main vectors:\n\n\n    - Improve our existing secrets management solution - although we don't have\n    a clear solution, we should improve our current variables capabilities to\n    include additional features that could help users leverage variables for\n    secrets. So it would be a \"good enough\" feature they can use. We are\n    actively working toward this direction by removing some of the limitations\n    we have around [variables and\n    masking](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/1994).\n\n    - Improve our existing [Hashicorp Vault\n    integration](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/examples/authenticating-with-hashicorp-vault/)\n    using the JWT token, allowing us to integrate with additional vendors (AWS,\n    AZURE, GCP). Like the previous point, we are moving toward this direction by\n    supporting OIDC and [adding audience claims to our JWT\n    token](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/7335).\n\n    - We need to develop a clear strategy for a built-in [secrets management solution](https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/secrets/).\n    In order to provide our users/customers with choice, GitLab wants to use\n    Hashicorp Vault for secrets management handling. We believe that our\n    approach should be not to build the logic ourselves but to leverage an open\n    source, [cloud native](/topics/cloud-native/) project that we could build\n    into GitLab.\n\n\n    ## Infrastructure integrations\n\n\n    Infrastructure integrations came in several flavors during the talks. Some\n    are about cluster management, that is not our focus in this blog. Several\n    presentations show that internal platforms need a strong infrastructure\n    aspect, too. When a new project/microservice is started, it might require a\n    new namespace in the cluster with associated RBAC and policies, optionally\n    storage, a source code management repo with automation, and the appropriate\n    permissions. Deployments might create ephemeral environments or could modify\n    the underlying environment within predefined constraints.\n\n\n    The top tools mentioned in this area are:\n\n\n    - Terraform\n\n    - Crossplane\n\n    - Pulumi\n\n\n    ### How does this affect our roadmap?\n\n\n    GitLab already has [great integrations for\n    Terraform](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/infrastructure/iac/), and the\n    other tools are on our radar, too.\n\n\n    We are open to integrations but cannot currently prioritize the other\n    integrations on our own. We hope that the community will be interested in\n    contributing to benefit everyone.\n\n\n    Building Docker containers might not be necessary to get easy-to-manage\n    container binaries. WASM runtimes become available for Kubernetes, and many\n    programming languages can natively compile to WASM. WASM can provide a\n    secure runtime environment without Docker and might be able to simplify the\n    toolchain developers need to learn.\n\n\n    We don't plan to add direct WASM support to GitLab yet. The generic package\n    registry can hold WASM modules while their deployment is up to the user.\n\n\n    At the same time, we see a lot of potential in simple runtime environments\n    built around WASM. While GitLab is not in the business of offering runtime\n    services, we will be actively monitoring the market. We might look into more\n    WASM integrations as we see more demand and tools and services maturing in\n    this space.\n\n\n    ## GitLab feedback\n\n\n    It's great to work on a product where the overall sentiment is positive,\n    both from customers that intensely rely on it and from attendees that have\n    to use other tools but would love to use GitLab or just started to play with\n    it recently.\n\n\n    We received the following notable mentions as feedback:\n\n\n    - Stability and reliability improved over the last several months.\n\n    - Users love our documentation (primarily around CI) - they mentioned it's\n    easy to use and get started with.\n\n    - Given the size of GitLab and the number of our users, we received feedback\n    about long-outstanding issues. We were happy to respond that we are\n    addressing at least some of them shortly.\n\n    - Several customers had asked if we got some resources for migrating from\n    Jenkins to GitLab.\n\n    - A few customers mentioned that they had to move away from GitLab mainly\n    because of an upper-level decision despite favouring GitLab.\n\n\n    ## Conclusions\n\n\n    ![The GitLab\n    team](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/kubecon-gitlab-team.jpg)\n\n\n    We enjoyed all the talks and were delighted to meet and speak with our users\n    and customers. Thanks to all of you, we could \"feel the pulse\" on how we are\n    doing and validate our direction.\n\n\n    We hope that this blog will guide those who could not [attend\n    KubeCon](https://about.gitlab.com/events/) and serve as a summary for those\n    who did attend. All the recordings will likely be available on YouTube from\n    Jun 6, 2022.\n\n\n    Let us know in the comments if you think we missed some important direction.\n\n\n    _This blog post and linked pages contain information related to upcoming\n    products, features, and functionality.\n\n    It is important to note that the information presented is for informational\n    purposes only. Please do not rely on this information for purchasing or\n    planning purposes. As with all projects, the items mentioned in this blog\n    and linked pages are subject to change or delay. 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software development the easy way using GitLab","Learn how University of Washington lecturer Stephen G. Dame uses GitLab for Education to manage student assignments, distribute course materials, and provide inline code feedback at scale.\n",[724],"Rod Burns","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659537/Blog/Hero%20Images/display-article-image-0679-1800x945-fy26.png","2026-04-29","For instructors teaching software development, one of the biggest logistical challenges is assignment distribution and feedback at scale. How do you give large groups of students access to course materials, keep solution code private, and still deliver meaningful, contextual feedback without lots of administrative overhead?\n\nThe **[GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/)** provides qualifying institutions with free access to **GitLab Ultimate**, enabling instructors to build professional-grade workflows that mirror real-world software development environments. In this article, you'll learn how Stephen G. Dame, a lecturer in the Computing and Software Systems department at the University of Washington, Bothell, uses simple workflows in GitLab to manage everything from course materials to student feedback across multiple classes.\n\n## From aerospace to academia: Bringing GitLab to the classroom\n\nDame came to academia with years of experience as a chief software engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, where GitLab was used for aerospace projects. As an adjunct professor, he became an early advocate for GitLab within the university, joining the GitLab for Education program to access the full feature set needed to run structured, scalable course workflows.\n\n> **\"GitLab provides the greatest way to organize multiple classes, student assignments, lectures, and code samples through the use of Groups and Subgroups, which I found to be unique to GitLab compared to other repository platforms.\"**\n>\n> - Stephen G. Dame, University of Washington, Bothell\n\n## Set up groups: Build the right structure before writing a line of code\n\nThe foundation of an effective GitLab-based course is a well-planned group hierarchy. GitLab's **[Groups and Subgroups](https://docs.gitlab.com/tutorials/manage_user/#create-the-organization-parent-group-and-subgroups)** allow instructors to model the natural structure of a university department institution, course, and role with precise, inheritable permissions at every level.\n\nDame's structure places the university at the root (`UWTeaching`), with each course occupying its own subgroup (e.g. `css430`). Within each course sit repositories for `lecture-materials` and `code`, alongside dedicated Subgroups for `students` and `graders`. Instructor materials remain private, while student and grader subgroups are configured with controlled permissions so that assignment briefs and solutions are visible only to the right people.\n\n![Screenshot of GitLab group hierarchy — institution, course subgroup, and per-student subgroups](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1777463673/dpxfnitv76pdmvcqtgag.png)\n\nPermissions cascade downward through the hierarchy via **Manage > Members**, allowing Dame to add students to a course's `students` subgroup with `Reporter` access and an expiration date tied to the end of the academic quarter. Students can clone and pull from assignment repositories but cannot push — keeping solution code firmly under instructor control.\n\nStudents are guided to set up SSH keys across all their working environments (local machines, cloud shells, virtual machines) so they can clone repositories and receive weekly updates via `git pull`. They copy relevant code into their own private repositories to manage their own version history.\n\n**Tip for large classes:** For larger cohorts, adding students by hand is impractical. GitLab's REST API lets you automate subgroup creation and membership from a list of usernames. Below is a sample Python script that handles this:\n\n```python\n    import gitlab\n    from datetime import datetime\n\n    # Connect to your GitLab instance\n    gl = gitlab.Gitlab('https://gitlab.com', private_token='YOUR_PRIVATE_TOKEN')\n\n    # Target parent group ID (e.g., the ID for \"css430 > students\")\n    parent_group_id = 12345678\n\n    # Set expiration: typically the beginning of the next month after quarter end\n    expiry_date = '2025-01-01'\n\n    # List of collected student usernames\n    student_list = ['alice_css430', 'bob_css430', 'carol_css430', 'dave_css430', 'eve_css430']\n\n    for username in student_list:\n        try:\n            # 1. Create a personal subgroup for the student\n            subgroup = gl.groups.create({\n                'name': username,\n                'path': username,\n                'parent_id': parent_group_id,\n                'visibility': 'private'\n            })\n\n            # 2. Add student to the new subgroup with Expiration\n            user = gl.users.list(username=username)[0]\n            subgroup.members.create({\n                'user_id': user.id,\n                'access_level': gitlab.const.REPORTER_ACCESS,\n                'expires_at': expiry_date\n            })\n            print(f\"Success: Subgroup created and student added for {username}\")\n        except Exception as e:\n            print(f\"Error processing {username}: {e}\")\n```\nThere is also an [open source project that automates class management](https://gitlab.com/edu-docs/class-management-automation) published by GitLab that provides additional tooling for this workflow.\n## Give feedback where the work actually lives\n\nOnce the structure is in place, the feedback workflow is where GitLab's value becomes most apparent to students. Dame asks students to submit assignments by opening a **[merge request](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/merge_requests/)** in their repository. This gives instructors an immediate, clean diff of everything the student has written.\n![A GitLab merge request showing inline code comment function for an instructor](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1777467468/icclzyglbkwlvfysggbi.png)\nInstructors can click any line of code and leave an **inline comment** — not just flagging what is wrong, but explaining why, and pointing to what to look at next. Students receive this feedback in direct context with their code, which is far more actionable than a comment at the bottom of a submitted document.\n\n## Join GitLab for Education\n\nSetting up your first GitLab assignment takes some initial effort, but once the structure is in place it largely runs itself. The real payoff goes beyond organization: Students graduate having worked daily in an environment that mirrors professional software development, building habits around [version control](https://about.gitlab.com/topics/version-control/) and [code review](https://docs.gitlab.com/development/code_review/) rather than learning them as abstract concepts.\n\nIf you are just getting started, keep it simple. Begin with a single course group, one assignment template, and a basic pipeline. The structure will grow naturally alongside your confidence with the platform.\n\nMake sure to **[sign up for GitLab for Education](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/)** so that you and your students can access all top-tier features, including unlimited reviewers on merge requests, additional compute minutes, and expanded storage.\n\n> [Apply to the GitLab for Education program today](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/).",[626,729],"open source",{"featured":14,"template":15,"slug":731},"teaching-software-development-the-easy-way-using-gitlab",{"content":733,"config":745},{"description":734,"authors":735,"heroImage":737,"date":738,"title":739,"body":740,"category":11,"tags":741},"AI-generated code is 34% of development work. Discover how to balance productivity gains with quality, reliability, and security.",[736],"Manav Khurana","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767982271/e9ogyosmuummq7j65zqg.png","2026-01-08","AI is reshaping DevSecOps: Attend GitLab Transcend to see what’s next","AI promises a step change in innovation velocity, but most software teams are hitting a wall. According to our latest [Global DevSecOps Report](https://about.gitlab.com/developer-survey/), AI-generated code now accounts for 34% of all development work. Yet 70% of DevSecOps professionals report that AI is making compliance management more difficult, and 76% say agentic AI will create unprecedented security challenges.\n\nThis is the AI paradox: AI accelerates coding, but software delivery slows down as teams struggle to test, secure, and deploy all that code.\n\n## Productivity gains meet workflow bottlenecks\nThe problem isn't AI itself. It's how software gets built today. The traditional DevSecOps lifecycle contains hundreds of small tasks that developers must navigate manually: updating tickets, running tests, requesting reviews, waiting for approvals, fixing merge conflicts, addressing security findings. These tasks drain an average of seven hours per week from every team member, according to our research.\n\nDevelopment teams are producing code faster than ever, but that code still crawls through fragmented toolchains, manual handoffs, and disconnected processes. In fact, 60% of DevSecOps teams use more than five tools for software development overall, and 49% use more than five AI tools. This fragmentation creates collaboration barriers, with 94% of DevSecOps professionals experiencing factors that limit collaboration in the software development lifecycle.\n\nThe answer isn't more tools. It's intelligent orchestration that brings software teams and their AI agents together across projects and release cycles, with enterprise-grade security, governance, and compliance built in.\n\n## Seeking deeper human-AI partnerships\nDevSecOps professionals don't want AI to take over — they want reliable partnerships. The vast majority (82%) say using agentic AI would increase their job satisfaction, and 43% envision an ideal future with a 50/50 split between human and AI contributions. They're ready to trust AI with 37% of their daily tasks without human review, particularly for documentation, test writing, and code reviews.\n\nWhat we heard resoundingly from DevSecOps professionals is that AI won't replace them; rather, it will fundamentally reshape their roles. 83% of DevSecOps professionals believe AI will significantly change their work within five years, and notably, 76% think this will create more engineering jobs, not fewer. As coding becomes easier with AI, engineers who can architect systems, ensure quality, and apply business context will be in high demand.\n\nCritically, 88% agree there are essential human qualities that AI will never fully replace, including creativity, innovation, collaboration, and strategic vision.\n\nSo how can organizations bridge the gap between AI’s promise and the reality of fragmented workflows?\n\n## Join us at GitLab Transcend: Explore how to drive real value with agentic AI\nOn February 10, 2026, GitLab will be hosting Transcend, where we'll reveal how intelligent orchestration transforms AI-powered software development. You'll get a first look at GitLab's upcoming product roadmap and learn how teams are solving real-world challenges by modernizing development workflows with AI.\n\nOrganizations winning in this new era balance AI adoption with security, compliance, and platform consolidation. AI offers genuine productivity gains when implemented thoughtfully — not by replacing human developers, but by freeing DevSecOps professionals to focus on strategic thinking and creative innovation.\n\n[Register for Transcend today](https://about.gitlab.com/events/transcend/virtual/) to secure your spot and discover how intelligent orchestration can help your software teams stay in flow.",[742,743,744],"AI/ML","DevOps platform","security",{"featured":31,"template":15,"slug":746},"ai-is-reshaping-devsecops-attend-gitlab-transcend-to-see-whats-next",{"content":748,"config":759},{"title":749,"description":750,"authors":751,"heroImage":753,"date":754,"body":755,"category":11,"tags":756},"Atlassian ending Data Center as GitLab maintains deployment choice","As Atlassian transitions Data Center customers to cloud-only, GitLab presents a menu of deployment choices that map to business needs.",[752],"Emilio Salvador","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750098354/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%281%29_5XrohmuWBNuqL89BxVUzWm_1750098354056.png","2025-10-07","Change is never easy, especially when it's not your choice. Atlassian's announcement that [all Data Center products will reach end-of-life by March 28, 2029](https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-ascend), means thousands of organizations must now reconsider their DevSecOps deployment and infrastructure. But you don't have to settle for deployment options that don't fit your needs. GitLab maintains your freedom to choose — whether you need self-managed for compliance, cloud for convenience, or hybrid for flexibility — all within a single AI-powered DevSecOps platform that respects your requirements.\n\nWhile other vendors force migrations to cloud-only architectures, GitLab remains committed to supporting the deployment choices that match your business needs. Whether you're managing sensitive government data, operating in air-gapped environments, or simply prefer the control of self-managed deployments, we understand that one size doesn't fit all.\n\n## The cloud isn't the answer for everyone\n\nFor the many companies that invested millions of dollars in Data Center deployments, including those that migrated to Data Center [after its Server products were discontinued](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/atlassian-server-ending-move-to-a-single-devsecops-platform/), this announcement represents more than a product sunset. It signals a fundamental shift away from customer-centric architecture choices, forcing enterprises into difficult positions: accept a deployment model that doesn't fit their needs, or find a vendor that respects their requirements.\n\nMany of the organizations requiring self-managed deployments represent some of the world's most important organizations: healthcare systems protecting patient data, financial institutions managing trillions in assets, government agencies safeguarding national security, and defense contractors operating in air-gapped environments.\n\nThese organizations don't choose self-managed deployments for convenience; they choose them for compliance, security, and sovereignty requirements that cloud-only architectures simply cannot meet. Organizations operating in closed environments with restricted or no internet access aren't exceptions — they represent a significant portion of enterprise customers across various industries.\n\n![GitLab vs. Atlassian comparison table](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1759928476/ynl7wwmkh5xyqhszv46m.jpg)\n\n## The real cost of forced cloud migration goes beyond dollars\n\nWhile cloud-only vendors frame mandatory migrations as \"upgrades,\" organizations face substantial challenges beyond simple financial costs:\n\n* **Lost integration capabilities:** Years of custom integrations with legacy systems, carefully crafted workflows, and enterprise-specific automations become obsolete. Organizations with deep integrations to legacy systems often find cloud migration technically infeasible.\n\n* **Regulatory constraints:** For organizations in regulated industries, cloud migration isn't just complex — it's often not permitted. Data residency requirements, air-gapped environments, and strict regulatory frameworks don't bend to vendor preferences. The absence of single-tenant solutions in many cloud-only approaches creates insurmountable compliance barriers.\n\n* **Productivity impacts:** Cloud-only architectures often require juggling multiple products: separate tools for planning, code management, CI/CD, and documentation. Each tool means another context switch, another integration to maintain, another potential point of failure. GitLab research shows [30% of developers spend at least 50% of their job maintaining and/or integrating their DevSecOps toolchain](https://about.gitlab.com/developer-survey/). Fragmented architectures exacerbate this challenge rather than solving it.\n\n## GitLab offers choice, commitment, and consolidation\n\nEnterprise customers deserve a trustworthy technology partner. That's why we've committed to supporting a range of deployment options — whether you need on-premises for compliance, hybrid for flexibility, or cloud for convenience, the choice remains yours. That commitment continues with [GitLab Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo-agent-platform/), our AI solution that supports developers at every stage of their workflow.\n\nBut we offer more than just deployment flexibility. While other vendors might force you to cobble together their products into a fragmented toolchain, GitLab provides everything in a **comprehensive AI-native DevSecOps platform**. Source code management, CI/CD, security scanning, Agile planning, and documentation are all managed within a single application and a single vendor relationship.\n\nThis isn't theoretical. When Airbus and [Iron Mountain](https://about.gitlab.com/customers/iron-mountain/) evaluated their existing fragmented toolchains, they consistently identified challenges: poor user experience, missing functionalities like built-in security scanning and review apps, and management complexity from plugin troubleshooting. **These aren't minor challenges; they're major blockers for modern software delivery.**\n\n## Your migration path: Simpler than you think\n\nWe've helped thousands of organizations migrate from other vendors, and we've built the tools and expertise to make your transition smooth:\n\n* **Automated migration tools:** Our [Bitbucket Server importer](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/import/bitbucket_server/) brings over repositories, pull requests, comments, and even Large File Storage (LFS) objects. For Jira, our [built-in importer](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/project/import/jira/) handles issues, descriptions, and labels, with professional services available for complex migrations.\n\n* **Proven at scale:** A 500 GiB repository with 13,000 pull requests, 10,000 branches, and 7,000 tags is likely to [take just 8 hours to migrate](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/import/bitbucket_server/) from Bitbucket to GitLab using parallel processing.\n\n* **Immediate ROI:** A [Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/resources/study-forrester-tei-gitlab-ultimate/) found that investing in GitLab Ultimate confirms these benefits translate to real bottom-line impact, with a three-year 483% ROI, 5x time saved in security related activities, and 25% savings in software toolchain costs.\n\n## Start your journey to a unified DevSecOps platform\n\nForward-thinking organizations aren't waiting for vendor-mandated deadlines. They're evaluating alternatives now, while they have time to migrate thoughtfully to platforms that protect their investments and deliver on promises.\n\nOrganizations invest in self-managed deployments because they need control, compliance, and customization. When vendors deprecate these capabilities, they remove not just features but the fundamental ability to choose environments matching business requirements.\n\nModern DevSecOps platforms should offer complete functionality that respects deployment needs, consolidates toolchains, and accelerates software delivery, without forcing compromises on security or data sovereignty.\n\n[Talk to our sales team](https://about.gitlab.com/sales/) today about your migration options, or explore our [comprehensive migration resources](https://about.gitlab.com/move-to-gitlab-from-atlassian/) to see how thousands of organizations have already made the switch.\n\nYou also can [try GitLab Ultimate with GitLab Duo Enterprise](https://about.gitlab.com/free-trial/devsecops/) for free for 30 days to see what a unified DevSecOps platform can do for your organization.",[26,571,757,758],"product","features",{"featured":31,"template":15,"slug":760},"atlassian-ending-data-center-as-gitlab-maintains-deployment-choice",{"promotions":762},[763,777,788,799],{"id":764,"categories":765,"header":767,"text":768,"button":769,"image":774},"ai-modernization",[766],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":770,"config":771},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":772,"dataGaName":773,"dataGaLocation":251},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":775},{"src":776},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":778,"categories":779,"header":780,"text":768,"button":781,"image":785},"devops-modernization",[757,11],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":782,"config":783},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":784,"dataGaName":773,"dataGaLocation":251},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":786},{"src":787},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":789,"categories":790,"header":791,"text":768,"button":792,"image":796},"security-modernization",[744],"Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":793,"config":794},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":795,"dataGaName":773,"dataGaLocation":251},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":797},{"src":798},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"id":800,"paths":801,"header":804,"text":805,"button":806,"image":811},"github-azure-migration",[802,803],"migration-from-azure-devops-to-gitlab","integrating-azure-devops-scm-and-gitlab","Is your team ready for GitHub's Azure move?","GitHub is already rebuilding around Azure. Find out what it means for you.",{"text":807,"config":808},"See how GitLab compares to GitHub",{"href":809,"dataGaName":810,"dataGaLocation":251},"/compare/gitlab-vs-github/github-azure-migration/","github azure migration",{"config":812},{"src":787},{"header":814,"blurb":815,"button":816,"secondaryButton":821},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":817,"config":818},"Get your free trial",{"href":819,"dataGaName":58,"dataGaLocation":820},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":514,"config":822},{"href":62,"dataGaName":63,"dataGaLocation":820},1777493649041]