GitLab Inc. today launched a new round-number release of its popular code hosting platform that brings more cybersecurity features, a productivity analytics tool and better support for Kubernetes environments.

GitLab, valued at $2.75 billion after its most recent funding round, is one of the main competitors to Microsoft Corp.’s GitHub. Its namesake platform provides an environment where software developers can host code files and share them with colleagues.

Over the last few years, GitLab’s feature set has expanded into numerous adjacent areas ranging from code security analysis to application deployment automation. GitLab 13, the release that launched today, continues that expansion.

The new version brings security scanners that can automatically detect common vulnerabilities in services’ application programming interfaces as well as in software written with .NET, Microsoft’s popular development framework. In the same spirit of reducing the threat from hackers, GitLab has added support for third-party container  security tools so companies using its platform in Kubernetes environments can spot malicious activity more easily.

Another risk besides hacking that can disrupt development operations is infrastructure downtime. To reduce the risk of outages, GitLab 13 brings the previously announced Gitaly Clusters failure recovery tool into general availability. The tool allows companies to create multiple standby copies of their code hosting repositories that can be quickly brought online if the main environment becomes unavailable. 

On top of the new features for administrators and cybersecurity professionals, GitLab 13 adds  an analytics dashboard to ease the work of software project managers. The Value Stream Management dashboard visualizes developers’ work in high-level graphs to help companies identify productivity bottlenecks.

GitLab is rolling out these changes alongside a long list of other, more specialized features spanning areas such as alerting and regulatory compliance enforcement. The release marks another milestone in GitLab’s effort to turn its platform into an end-to-end toolkit for automating the tasks involved in building, deploying and managing applications.  

Rival GitHub has similarly expanded beyond its original focus on hosting code. GitHub’s expansion strategy was on full display at its recent virtual summit event, where the Microsoft subsidiary unveiled a raft of security features as well as a cloud-based code editor directly integrated into its platform. The latter offering, dubbed Codespaces, is an Azure-integrated implementation of Microsoft’s popular Visual Studio Code editor. 

Photo: GitLab