Towards AI-powered DevSecOps: GitLab 16 Releases and Updates

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).

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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;

1. Configure GitLab Agent for Kubernetes and install the dependencies in your self-hosted cluster or cloud platform.
2. Define your development environment in a .devfile.yaml file and store it in a public project.
3. 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