GitLab 15.7 Release Kickoff, 8 Nov 2022

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From YouTube: GitLab 15.7 Kickoff - Verify:Pipeline Execution

Description

Kickoff Page: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/kickoff/#verify
Ops Direction: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ops/#verify

Issues Discussed:
UI for Inbound CI_JOB_TOKEN - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/375782
Pipeline Data Partitioning docs - https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/architecture/blueprints/ci_data_decay/pipeline_partitioning.html
Job Filter Solution validation - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ux-research/-/issues/1815
Implement empty state when no schedules found - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/376187
Add icon for pipelines - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-services/design.gitlab.com/-/issues/1416

We love feedback and you can reach me at jheimbuck@gitlab.com or mention me on GitLab.com using @jheimbuck_gl

A

Welcome to the verify pipeline execution, 15.7 kickoff, my name is James heimbuck product manager for the pipeline execution group here at gitlab. As a reminder, this group is responsible for the gitlab CI pipelines pipeline processing, as well as the category of merge trains I'm joined today by the python execution product designer vitica you'll find a link to the 15 7 kickoff page for gitlab, with links to these items and the verify stage, Direction page with discussion of our future work and other groups within verify.

A

In the comments below the video, you can always reach me at jheimbuck, gitlab.com or by tagging me in a comment on any of the gitlab pipeline execution issues in the game lab project, uh so I'm going to start I'm already sharing our pipeline um or our planning issue, as I always do, um and our theme for the um theme for the Milestone is the securing the CI job token by default. uh So I'm going to talk through the goals, real, quick um as always meeting our reliability issue slos, those are all verified.

A

P1S, a bunch of those are confidential. We do have a number of those again this Milestone, that the team is working through as we're down that backlog, so that is definitely taking some time we're also taking into account.

A

uh There is a hackathon happening uh right at the beginning of this Milestone, and so to account for time the team is spending reviewing Mrs from the broader Community or The Wider Community we're taking a little bit of less capacity and as we're rolling into the holiday season in North, America and Europe, and around the world really uh trying to account for that, making sure that our teammates can have time to recharge and spend time with their friends, families loved ones throughout the next couple of Milestones, you're gonna see a little bit reduce capacity just talking through that, so our goals within the 15 7 Milestone, the first, is to meet our service level objectives.

A

I already talked about that. One second goal is to ship the next iteration to the CI job token. uh We talked about this a little bit in the last Milestone. We did not get the interface for the inbound CI job token, wrapped up, so we're targeting that to ship in 15 7..

A

That will enable us to make this the default setting so secure chop token or limited cijob token, by default for all new projects in anticipation of making that the only option in 160 we're going to be deprecating, the UN, secure or unlimited version of the CI job token. In the 16 note, release we'll have a deprecation that is up for that shortly um and then the last goal I want to talk about is a project that we've been working on for a few Milestones now and that's the CI uh partitioning.

A

So we have a small group of Engineers who are working to break down the largest tables in the CI database for greater resiliency and performance, as the platform continues to scale, with more and more users running more and more pipelines, so I'm showing here the documentation that talks about our design, the problem we're trying to solve and our approach to it, and we are currently in Phase One of breaking down those largest tables.

A

And so we have a goal to break down the biggest table as part of the next Milestone, to start to create new partitions of that and I'll link to this docs page. So you can follow along with our progress here, as we continue forward over the next five to six Milestones. It's a big project for sure, and then lastly, I want to talk about another project that our front-end engineering team is working on and that's refactoring, our scheduled pipelines page to use view in graphql instead of we use before Hamilton rails.

A

um So the team is creating some new endpoints for that and refactoring the various parts of the page that it's going to make it faster in the future for us to develop new features, new functionality that really enhance the view of the scheduled pipelines and be able to administer them a lot easier.

A

We definitely have a good backlog of problems to solve when it comes to scheduled pipelines, and this grad work is going to enable us to do those faster and easier, and so, with that we'll hand it over to vitica, it's talked about some of the upcoming usability improvements that the team is exploring exploring for later this year.

B

Thanks, James and I'm really excited that. We would finally have the ca job token inbound workflow in place and also like the problems that we are making with uh CI partitioning, because that would be I mean so impactful for our performance. Yeah uh coming to the ux strategies for this Milestone I would be like I would have really limited uh capacity, so the list is also smaller. So there's just a few number of height fewer number of items and the first one is um conducting a validation research for job filters. So a few Milestones back.

B

uh We had shipped this uh new filter for the jobs list, view page, and we want to speak with some uh users now and understand how they have been using it so far, and what is it that they wanted to like what workflows they wanted to make this a part of and how that's working out and how that is not working out. What we can do to improve this, uh like what we can do to improve the filters.

B

If there's any canned uh queries that we can add to the list or any other way, we can make it more efficient, so stay tuned. For that you, some of you, might be uh like hearing from our recruitment team.

B

For this uh like set of interviews moving on to the next one, which is Implement empty State have no schedules are found so, as James had mentioned, that there's a lot of refactoring work, that's going on and just to align with that and ensure that while we are working on uh refactoring, we are also making some uh like quick polish to our interface.

B

We would be putting in place a more uh explanatory and uh like easy to work with or empty State for the scheduled pipeline, so that, if you have never used the feature, you would know exactly what step or what that's going to help you with and how you can get started and also answering a quick question you might have uh as the first letter of inhibition uh while adopting this feature.

B

Lastly, um so what how we are thinking about, referring to objects from within the pages in the gitlab platform, that it should be easier to refer to different objects by objects? I mean pipelines, jobs, merge, requests, artifacts and so on, and the first step that I want to take towards that direction in pipeline execution team is to make sure that we have a good icon for a pipeline.

B

So if uh pipelines have to be referred from the runners page from the artifacts page or from any other location on gitlab, it should be like we should have this one identifying icon for pipelines and that's what we are working at. We already have a good design in place. It's just a matter of adding that to our SVG Library. It's really tiny and I'm. Very sorry for that, it's not like very visible, and that is all those are the three things on my list.

B

A

You yeah I'm, excited about I mean all the things right. uh The CI job token work, especially getting that more secure method for users and the partitioning work is super important as we continue to scale the platform but excited about the the job filters. It's having that status. I. Think it's filter by status of a job has been useful for me, especially trying to figure out which jobs are stuck in my various pipelines, especially come release post time. So I'm really excited about the work that we're doing we're so excited about uh the 15-7 Milestone.

A

That's coming up. If you have any questions about these issues or want to leave a comment, you can always tag me at jheimbuck underscore GL in the issues or you can email me jheimbuck gitlab.com thanks.