¶ GitLab
¶ Tools
GitLab is one of those platforms that you don’t fully understand the power of until you’ve lived with it for a while. On the surface, it presents itself as a place to host your code—a Git repository with a clean interface and reliable performance. But the longer you spend working inside GitLab, the more you start to realize what it actually is: a complete ecosystem for building, shipping, and maintaining software. It’s collaboration, automation, security, visibility, documentation, project management, and development discipline woven into a single environment. It’s a tool that grows with you. A tool that reveals new layers just when you think you’ve learned everything it offers.
This course—one hundred articles focused entirely on GitLab—exists because mastering GitLab doesn’t just make you a more efficient developer. It makes you a more thoughtful one. It nudges you toward practices that lead to cleaner code, clearer collaboration, and predictable delivery. It helps you see the software lifecycle as a cohesive whole rather than a scattered collection of tools. And perhaps most importantly, it gives you confidence: confidence that your work is traceable, that your pipelines are reliable, that your team is aligned, and that your product moves forward at a steady, healthy pace.
Before we dive into the depth of GitLab, it helps to step back and appreciate the landscape from which it emerged. For years, software teams built their workflows piecemeal. You had a version-control host, a CI tool, a deployment tool, a ticketing system, a security scanner, maybe a container registry, and a wiki or documentation platform. Each tool required its own setup, its own configuration, its own authentication, and its own maintenance. Integrations often broke or behaved inconsistently. And every update risked disrupting half the pipeline. It was workable, but far from ideal.
GitLab approached this mess with a simple vision: bring everything under one roof. Don’t scatter the development lifecycle—unify it. Don’t force teams to glue tools together—give them a platform that understands itself. GitLab doesn’t just integrate features; it aligns them. Source code, issues, pipelines, runners, registries, merge requests, monitoring, security reports—they all connect with one another like pieces of a larger story. And that interconnectedness is what makes GitLab such a compelling subject for a deep, thoughtful course.
We begin with the heart of everything: Git itself. GitLab’s foundation is version control—the ability to track changes, collaborate without conflict, and maintain a clear history of how software evolves. But GitLab’s value multiplies when you realize how cleanly it builds on Git's principles: merge requests that become living documents, branch protection that enforces quality, reviewers who guide work toward clarity, pipelines triggered by events within Git’s lifecycle. Early articles in the course will explore these building blocks. Not just how to use them, but how to use them well—how to work in a way that keeps your history meaningful and your collaboration smooth.
From there, we dive into merge requests. A merge request in GitLab is far more than a simple proposal to merge code. It’s a conversation thread, a code review platform, a checklist, a documentation tool, a quality gate, and a decision record. It’s where ideas mature and where teams align. We’ll explore how to use merge requests not merely as a step in the process, but as a place where engineering discipline thrives—where reviewers bring clarity, where authors sharpen their thinking, and where the team’s collective standards are preserved.
Then comes GitLab CI/CD—arguably one of its most transformative features. If you’ve ever set up CI manually, you know how fragile and frustrating the experience can be. GitLab CI changes that. Pipelines live alongside the code. Configuration becomes versioned, reviewable, and reproducible. With a single YAML file, you can orchestrate testing, building, packaging, scanning, deployment, and monitoring. Throughout the course, we’ll break down pipeline design, explore efficient job structures, discuss caching and artifacts, and walk through patterns that keep your pipelines fast, stable, and cost-effective.
A large part of the course will center on automation—not automation for the sake of novelty, but automation that frees your mind for real work. GitLab’s runners, triggers, schedules, environment variables, and rules are tools for building systems that behave predictably every time code changes. And when software becomes predictable, teams become confident.
But GitLab isn’t just about automation and repositories. It’s also about planning. Issues, epics, milestones, boards, roadmaps, labels—these aren’t add-ons. They’re the bones of a transparent development culture. GitLab turns project management into something developers can actually enjoy because planning and implementation flow naturally together. You’ll learn how to use these tools to foster clarity, reduce meetings, and build a rhythm that keeps your team aligned without micromanagement.
Another deep thread running through this course is security. GitLab brings security scanning directly into your pipelines: SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, license compliance, container scanning, secret detection. These are not afterthoughts—they’re integrated quality safeguards. And because they live next to your code, you don’t need separate tools or security teams to wire them up; every developer becomes part of your security posture. This course will show how to use GitLab’s security features thoughtfully, how to interpret reports, and how to incorporate security into everyday development rather than treating it as a last-minute checklist.
We’ll also explore GitLab’s registry and deployment features. GitLab hosts your container images, packages, Helm charts, and other artifacts directly in the environment where your pipelines run. And with deployment targets—Kubernetes clusters, VMs, cloud platforms—you get a straight path from code to running software. Whether you deploy once a month or a hundred times a day, GitLab gives you tools that make the process visible and controlled. We’ll explore deployment strategies, environment variables, progressive rollouts, auto DevOps, review apps, and the subtle art of keeping deployment boring—which is exactly what deployment should be.
Documentation is another area where GitLab shines quietly. Wikis, README-driven development, snippets, and repository-based documentation allow knowledge to live where work happens. As your project grows, documentation becomes a safety net for the team and a map for newcomers. This course will examine how to build a documentation culture inside GitLab, where information flows naturally rather than becoming a neglected afterthought.
As we progress into the deeper layers, we’ll explore GitLab’s self-managed and SaaS ecosystems—how hosting choices affect workflows, how to tune performance for large teams, how to scale runners, how to manage permissions intelligently, and how to use GitLab as the backbone of an organization’s entire development process. GitLab can serve small teams, but it’s designed for large ones. Understanding that scale helps everyone—because even small projects deserve big-thinking architecture.
Later articles will explore advanced practices: monorepos versus multi-repos, trunk-based development, feature-branch workflows, GitLab flow, compliance management, audit logs, secrets management, and long-term maintainability. GitLab offers tools for organizations working in regulated environments or industries with high accountability. These aren’t simply enterprise features—they represent best practices that strengthen any project.
But perhaps the most important part of this course isn’t the features or the technical steps. It’s the shift in mindset. GitLab encourages a style of thinking that values clarity, collaboration, and iteration. It nudges developers to work transparently. It helps teams reduce friction. It reinforces the idea that software improves through small, frequent progress rather than large, risky leaps. It teaches you that everything—from code reviews to documentation to security—can be part of a clean, unified flow when tools are designed thoughtfully.
By the time you reach the final article, GitLab will no longer feel like a platform full of features to memorize. It will feel like a place where software naturally comes to life. You’ll understand how to use its tools with confidence, how to design workflows that fit your team, and how to build software that moves forward with speed and stability. You’ll see how GitLab transforms the work of development from a scattered set of responsibilities into a coherent, integrated craft.
Most importantly, you’ll feel grounded. GitLab has a way of giving you peace of mind—because you know your processes are solid, your history is clean, your automation is reliable, and your team is aligned. That kind of confidence is rare in the world of software development, and it’s one of the best gifts GitLab offers.
So take a deep breath. Get comfortable. We’re about to embark on a journey through one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive tools in modern software engineering.
Let’s begin.
¶ GitLab
¶ Beginner Level
1. Introduction to GitLab: What It Is and How It Works
2. Setting Up Your GitLab Account and Profile
3. Navigating the GitLab Interface: Understanding the Dashboard
4. Understanding Git Repositories and GitLab Projects
5. How to Create Your First GitLab Repository
6. Cloning Repositories to Your Local Machine
7. Understanding GitLab’s Version Control System
8. Creating, Modifying, and Committing Changes in GitLab
9. How to Use GitLab’s Git Interface for Basic Commands
10. Pushing Changes to GitLab: A Step-by-Step Guide
11. Collaborating with Others: Forking a Repository in GitLab
12. Working with Branches in GitLab: Creating and Switching Branches
13. Introduction to GitLab Merge Requests
14. How to Review and Merge Pull Requests in GitLab
15. Understanding GitLab Issues: Managing Tasks and Bugs
16. How to Use GitLab Milestones to Track Progress
17. How to Create and Manage Labels in GitLab
18. How to Set Up and Use GitLab CI/CD Pipelines
19. Basic Understanding of GitLab’s Continuous Integration and Deployment
20. How to Use GitLab for Code Reviews and Feedback
21. Understanding GitLab Permissions and Access Levels
22. How to Clone and Work with Existing GitLab Projects
23. Understanding GitLab’s Wiki for Documentation
24. Setting Up Notifications in GitLab for Project Updates
25. How to Use GitLab Snippets for Code Sharing
26. How to Work with GitLab Issues Boards for Agile Workflows
27. How to Set Up and Use GitLab’s Web IDE for Development
28. How to Integrate GitLab with External Tools (Slack, Jira, etc.)
29. Setting Up GitLab Runner for Continuous Integration
30. Introduction to GitLab’s Project Settings and Configuration
¶ Intermediate Level
31. Advanced GitLab Workflow: Branching, Merging, and Rebasing
32. How to Resolve Merge Conflicts in GitLab
33. How to Use GitLab’s CI/CD for Automated Testing
34. Setting Up and Managing GitLab Pipelines for Continuous Deployment
35. Automating Workflows with GitLab’s CI/CD YAML Configuration
36. Integrating Docker with GitLab CI/CD for Containerized Applications
37. Using GitLab for DevOps: Best Practices and Techniques
38. How to Implement GitLab’s Secret Management for Secure Deployments
39. How to Use GitLab’s Auto DevOps for Simplified CI/CD
40. Understanding and Configuring GitLab Runners
41. Managing Multiple Repositories in GitLab for Large Projects
42. How to Work with GitLab Environments for Deployment Stages
43. Using GitLab for Issue Tracking: Advanced Features and Customization
44. How to Implement GitLab’s Dependency Scanning for Security
45. How to Integrate GitLab with Kubernetes for Continuous Delivery
46. How to Use GitLab CI/CD for Multi-Environment Deployments
47. Managing Permissions and Access Controls in GitLab Projects
48. How to Create and Manage Multiple Branches in GitLab Repositories
49. GitLab Templates: Using Project and CI/CD Templates to Save Time
50. Using GitLab for Agile Project Management: Scrum and Kanban
51. How to Organize and Prioritize GitLab Issues with Boards
52. Customizing GitLab Issues and Merge Requests with Templates
53. How to Use GitLab’s Milestones to Track Long-Term Goals
54. Advanced GitLab CI/CD Configurations: Parallel Jobs and Caching
55. How to Set Up GitLab’s Code Quality and Static Analysis Tools
56. Using GitLab with External Version Control Systems (Subversion, etc.)
57. How to Monitor and Analyze GitLab Pipelines for Performance
58. Leveraging GitLab’s API for Automation and Integration
59. Advanced GitLab Permissions: Managing Roles and Access for Teams
60. Using GitLab for Documenting APIs and Services via Wikis
¶ Advanced Level
61. Setting Up and Managing GitLab Auto DevOps for Simplified Pipelines
62. Integrating GitLab with Advanced Cloud Services (AWS, Azure, etc.)
63. Scaling GitLab CI/CD Pipelines for Large Projects and Teams
64. How to Create Custom GitLab CI/CD Pipelines with YAML
65. Advanced GitLab Runners: Configuring for Custom Environments
66. Using GitLab for Microservices Architecture Deployment
67. Securing Your GitLab Project with Advanced User Access Controls
68. Building and Managing Large-Scale GitLab CI/CD Infrastructure
69. Creating Custom GitLab Dashboards for Project Metrics
70. How to Automate Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with GitLab and Terraform
71. How to Integrate GitLab with Advanced Monitoring Tools (Prometheus, Grafana)
72. Using GitLab for Continuous Security: Static and Dynamic Scanning
73. How to Use GitLab’s Review Apps for Dynamic Preview Environments
74. Implementing Continuous Compliance with GitLab and Audit Logs
75. Managing Large-Scale GitLab Projects with Multiple Repositories
76. Integrating GitLab with Third-Party Continuous Testing Tools
77. Managing Version Control Across Multiple GitLab Instances
78. How to Automate Database Migrations with GitLab CI/CD
79. GitLab’s Advanced Merge Strategies: Squash, Rebase, and Merge
80. Managing GitLab Large-Scale Teams and Collaboration
81. Automating Deployments with GitLab and Ansible for Configuration Management
82. Setting Up GitLab’s Monitoring and Analytics Tools for Pipeline Metrics
83. How to Leverage GitLab’s Kubernetes Integration for Complex Deployments
84. Building a GitLab CI/CD Pipeline for Complex Data Science Projects
85. Managing and Automating Docker Image Builds with GitLab CI/CD
86. Creating and Managing GitLab Groups for Cross-Project Collaboration
87. Advanced Troubleshooting for GitLab Pipelines and Runners
88. Leveraging GitLab CI/CD for Machine Learning and AI Projects
89. How to Implement Blue-Green Deployments with GitLab CI/CD
90. Using GitLab for Continuous Integration in Large-Scale Distributed Systems
91. Implementing GitLab’s Audit Logs and Security Features for Enterprise Use
92. Managing GitLab Subgroups and Permissions for Complex Projects
93. How to Use GitLab for Continuous Localization (Translating Software)
94. Best Practices for GitLab in Large Enterprises: Efficiency and Security
95. Advanced GitLab Security Features: Protecting Your Repositories and Pipelines
96. Scaling GitLab with Load Balancers for High Availability
97. How to Use GitLab’s Kubernetes CI/CD Integration for Continuous Delivery
98. Configuring GitLab for Multi-Cloud Continuous Integration and Deployment
99. Using GitLab for Building and Deploying Serverless Applications
100. Mastering GitLab Automation for Continuous Development and Operations