Expanded Information on Drupal's Shift to GitLab
Background and Timeline
Drupal's migration to GitLab was officially announced on August 16, 2018(1). The move was a multi-phase process, with the first phase going live on March 29, 2019(2). The initial phase involved replacing Drupal's existing Git backend and code viewing tools with GitLab's offerings.
Reasons for the Move
Before GitLab, Drupal was using its own contribution practices and developer tools, some of which had become outdated. The project initially used CVS as its version control system before migrating to Git in 2012. The move to GitLab aimed to modernize Drupal's developer tooling and adopt a workflow familiar to a broader developer community. GitLab was chosen for its commitment to collaboration and its rapidly evolving feature set(1).
Benefits and Goals
The migration aimed to accelerate developer velocity and attract new talent to Drupal. GitLab's features like merge request workflows, inline editing tools, and code reviews were expected to reduce administrative overhead and allow developers to focus more on building Drupal.
Community Response
The migration was well-received, and the community appreciated GitLab's clean UI and robust features. The Drupal Association and its engineering team spent about 18 months preparing for this migration, overcoming challenges like project syncing, disaster recovery, and high availability(2).
Current State
As of the last update, the migration has been successfully deployed, and Drupal's Git services are now powered by GitLab(2).
(1): GitLab Blog Post on Drupal Migration (2): Drupal.org Migration Update
