Following GitHub Inc.’s high-profile acquisition by Microsoft Corp. earlier this month, the pressure is on for GitLab Inc., its biggest rival, to address the changed competitive landscape. The startup’s latest product update could be a step in the right direction.

GitLab today launched a new release of its namesake code management platform that brings a set of automation features called Auto DevOps. The toolkit continues the startup’s ongoing effort to move beyond its core focus of hosting software projects to making those projects go smoother.

Auto DevOps is designed to streamline the complex, multistep process of deploying code from a developer’s machine to production. It’s touted as a better alternative to traditional DevOps toolchains, which are often comprised of disparate technologies that must be manually integrated with one another.

Auto DevOps kicks into action as soon as a developer commits new code to their company’s repository. According to GitLab, the toolkit can automatically create a software build and run a series of tests to ensure that everything is up to standard. These assessments mostly focus on uncovering potential security vulnerabilities that may have gone under the radar during development.

After the code passes all the tests, Auto DevOps can deploy it to production. The toolkit also lets software teams monitor the performance and hardware utilization of applications once they’re live to look for potential problem areas. 

According to GitLab, the entire process is carried out using software containers. Software containers are an increasingly popular means of deploying applications that allow developers to bundle code into lightweight, portable packages. Auto DevOps also relies on the popular Kubernetes framework created by Google LLC to ease the management of large-scale container environments.

Auto DevOps is available immediately as part of GitLab 11.0, the official designation for today’s release. It marks the 84th consecutive monthly update for the platform. Now that Microsoft has acquired GitHub, it will become even more important for GitLab to keep adding new features with which to set its offering apart. 

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