As GitLab’s dedicated partner, E-SPIN proudly present this GitLab 16 releases and updates page as a one-stop resource page to provide information on improvement in GitLab 16.
GitLab introduces their improvements on the platform every month. In regards to this monthly release practice, E-SPIN will continuously reach the end users through this post for each GitLab 16 releases and updates. The details of the latest release and updates are presented in the manner where the latest release is shown at the top of the post and then followed with the previous releases. Feel free to visit this post for the updates and please do not hesitate to contact E-SPIN regarding product and related matter (if any).
GitLab 16.0 Release (2023-May-22)
GitLab is now moving towards comprehensive DevSevOps platform. With this vision, GitLab’sjourney in building and integrating Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial intelligence (AI) into DevSecOps continues to happen to enable you to securely develop software, faster. The year 2023 celebrates the release of GitLab 16. GitLab 16 release brings in more than 55 improvements including new Value Streams Dashboards, improvements to AI-powered Code Suggestions, remote development workspaces, more powerful GitLab SaaS runner and multiple other enhancements.
Key improvements:
1. New Value Streams Dashboard
Availability – in SaaS and self-managed GitLab Ultimate
Capabilities – The new Value Streams Dashboard offer strategic insights into metric for decision makers to identify trends and optimize software delivery. This feature gives comprehensive views to stakeholders (from executives to contributor) making them have full visibility into the software development life cycle, all from a single application.
2. Upsizing GitLab SaaS runners on Linux
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab 16 release involves doubling on vCPU & RAM for all GitLab SaaS runners on Linux making pipelines to run faster thus increase productivity.
3. Apple silicon (M1) GitLab SaaS runners on macOS – Beta
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – With GitLab 16, the mobile DevOps teams are now able to run GitLab SaaS runners on macOS to create, test, and deploy applications for the Apple ecosystem.
GitLab 16 with three times the performance of hosted x86-64 macOS Runners speeds up building and deploying applications of your development team.
4. Comment templates
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – Comment templates in GitLab 16 makes your workflow faster by letting you to create saved responses that you can apply in comment boxes around GitLab.
Create a comment template is done by going to User settings > Comment templates and then fill out your template. Saved. Select the Insert comment template icon on any text area, and your saved response will be applied.
5. Update your fork from the GitLab UI
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities –GitLab 16 makes it easier to manage fork from the GitLab UI. This feature allows you to update fork;
- When fork is behind, solve it by clicking update fork in the GitLab UI to align with the latest upstream changes.
- When fork is ahead, solve it by selecting create merge request to contribute your changes back to the upstream project.
6. Mirror Specific Branch only
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – Now, with GitLab 16, you no longer need to mirror the entire repository as you can select specific branches by creating a regular expression that matches only the branches you need.
7. New Web IDE experience now generally available
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab 16 introduces Web IDE Beta and will become the default multi-file code editor across GitLab.
8. Remote development workspaces available in Beta for public projects
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – This feature allows you to define a consistent, stable, and secure development environment in code then utilise it to create on-demand, remote development workspaces.
These workspaces function as personal, ephemeral development environments in the cloud. As local development environment is no longer needed, you can now better focus on your code instead of dependencies.
Setting up workspaces include;
- Configure GitLab Agent for Kubernetes and install the dependencies in your self-hosted cluster or cloud platform.
- Define your development environment in a
.devfile.yaml
file and store it in a public project. - Create a workspace based on the
.devfile.yaml
file and edit directly in the embedded Web IDE.
9. Security training with SecureFlag
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab 16 adds in integration with SecureFlag based upon the CWE of the vulnerability to the previously introduced Contextual training in GitLab 14.9. SecureFlag’s provides remediation advice with example codes and recommendation hands-on labs to help you remediate vulnerabilities.
10. Token rotation API
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab 16 enables token owners to use a :rotate
API endpoint to programatically rotate personal, group, and project access tokens.
11. AI-powered workflow features
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab is moving towards AI-powered DevSecOps platform to improve efficiency and productivity. Till date, GitLab had introduced 10 new experiments across various GitLab features. These AI-powered workflows helps boost efficiency, thus reduces cycle times in each SDLC phase.
12. Code Suggestions improvements
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – Users can now get code suggestions on GitLab.com for free while the feature is in Beta. GitLab 16 applies generative AI to suggest code while developing.
The language support has now expanded. From 6 languages to 13 languages which are C/C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Kotlin, and TypeScript.
13. Error Tracking is now generally available
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – GitLab error tracking functions to enhance efficiency and awareness by revealing error information directly in the same interface as the code is developed, built, deployed, and released. GitLab 16 release include support for both the GitLab integrated error tracking and Sentry-based backends.
14. Custom value streams for project-level value stream analytics
Availability – in SaaS GitLab Premium and Ultimate and self-managed GitLab Premium and Ultimate
Capabilities – In order to improve the visibility into the complete workstream, GitLab 16 release is added with option to create custom value stream to the the project-level Value Stream Analytics (VSA). This feature is only available in group-level VSA only.
Other improvements:
- Authenticate with Jira personal access tokens
- Filter GitHub repositories to import
- Import collaborators as an additional item to import (+ GitHub repository collaborators)
- Limit session duration for users
- New navigation experience with new navigation toggle
- Add emoji reactions on tasks, objectives and key results
- Use quick action to change work item type
- Ability to toggle a to-do item (available on tasks, objectives, and key results)
- New stage events for custom Value Stream Analytics
- GitLab Pages unique subdomains
- Choose custom colors for labels
- Reorder child records for tasks, objectives and key results
- Real-time merge request updates
- CI/CD components
- Create a group runner as a user
- Configurable maximum number of included CI/CD configuration files
- Create project runners as a user
- Create an instance runner in the Admin Area as a user
- GitLab Runner 16.0
- Per-cache fallback cache keys in CI/CD pipelines
- REST API endpoint to create a runner
- Rate Limit for the
projects/:id/jobs
API endpoint reduced - Download packages from the Maven Registry with Scala
- Trigger job mirror status of downstream pipeline when cancelled
- Display message when deploy freeze is active
- Import Maven/Gradle packages by using CI/CD pipelines
- Browser-based DAST performance improvements
- Import Maven/Gradle packages by using CI/CD pipelines
- Placeholder for issue description in Service Desk automated replies
- Introducing Out-of-band Application Security Testing through browser-based DAST
- Faster, easier Scala scanning in SAST
- Secret Detection updates
- SAST analyzer updates
- Filter compliance violations by target branch name
- Support role-based approval action for scan result policies
- Add and remove compliance frameworks without using bulk actions
- GitLab chart improvements
- Provide a reason when dismissing vulnerabilities in bulk
- Omnibus improvements
- Delayed group and project deletion set as default
- Mark to-do items completed by other group or project owners Done
- Option to disable followers
- Rate limit for unauthenticated users of the Projects List API
- Self-managed GitLab uses two database connections
- Additional Registration Features available to Free users
- Bug Fixes
Other notable changes
- “CI/CD minutes” and related terms renaming to “units of compute”
- Introduction of macOS runners and GPU Runners
E-SPIN is actively promoting GitLab full range of products and technologies as part of the company DevSecOps/Value Stream Management solutions. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist with your organization’s needs and requirements. For more information about GitLab features; feel free to browse on the following;