Drupal made a big announcement last month…they’re moving to GitLab! Drupal migrated to Git back in 2012 and has since grown in the open source community. As a result, the need to improve developer tooling arose. Although Drupal tools and practices are top-notch in the open source community, there is always room for improvement.
Why GitLab?
The Drupal project started their search for a new partner that could aid them in standardizing and modernizing developer tools. Drupal laid out a plan to integrate Drupal.org with a third party tooling provider. This plan became known as “Drupal Flow”. The model was flexible for the partner as long as certain requirements were met:
- They must adopt a workflow that’s familiar to developers outside of the Drupal community
- Preserve the collaborative aspects of the Drupal project including the ability for multiple developers to work on a single solution picking up on issues where a developer left off
- And, if possible, enlist an expert partner to keep tooling up to date
The options were narrowed down to GitLab, GitHub, and BitBucket. GitLab became a viable choice thanks to their commitment to open source and the community’s positive support and feedback.
What Does the Migration to GitLab Mean for Developers?
Integrating Drupal tools to GitLab will increase developers’ efficiency to make changes to projects. Drupal contributors will now have the ability to use GitLab’s features including a merge request workflow, inline editing tools, and code review.
There are three phases in the migration process:
- Replace Drupal.org’s Git backend
- Enable merge requests, inline code editing, and code review
- Evaluate additional features
The migration means changes to Git remotes. Check out drupal.org to see those changes and determine how you need to adapt.
What Developers are Saying
Most developers are thrilled about the migration, calling it “fantastic news” and giving “two thumbs up.” However, it seems that some developers have concerns about the issue queue and the process of fixing bugs. With the new merge request workflow, making changes to core should go a lot quicker.
Sevaa Group works with Drupal on a daily basis! Our Acquia-certified developers are excited about the new changes. Sevaa Group’s lead developer, Dan, loves both Drupal and GitLab:
Both have big, invested communities of users which means there will be a lot of fresh faces and ideas going around. Drupal is going to get a ton of benefits, the biggest of which will be a standardization and modernization of their source control from the ol’ patch workflow. GitLab is chock full of features, and if Drupal.org can integrate even a quarter of them we’ll see huge improvements in Drupal development workflows.
With a streamlined workflow, making updates and changes to projects can happen in a timely manner. We’re all about increased efficiency without cutting corners. Talk to us about building your next Drupal project!
