[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":795},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/code-counting-in-gitlab":3,"navigation-en-us":40,"banner-en-us":440,"footer-en-us":450,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Darwin Sanoy":690,"blog-related-posts-en-us-code-counting-in-gitlab":706,"assessment-promotions-en-us":746,"next-steps-en-us":785},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":26,"isFeatured":12,"meta":27,"navigation":28,"path":29,"publishedDate":20,"seo":30,"stem":34,"tagSlugs":35,"__hash__":39},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/code-counting-in-gitlab.yml","Code Counting In Gitlab",[7],"darwin-sanoy",null,"engineering",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"code-counting-in-gitlab",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"Lightning fast code counting for better code management intelligence","Knowledge of your code composition can come through simple counting of lines of code per language.",[18],"Darwin Sanoy","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749682614/Blog/Hero%20Images/noaa-PkHsrwNOfBE-unsplash.jpg","2023-02-15","\n\nOne of the earliest forms of intelligence was to simply answer the question “How many?”. Counting is one of the first things that we learn as a child. As we grow older, we come to see this deceptively simple concept as somewhat childish. Yet, upon the concept of counting, the entire discipline of statistics is founded. In turn, every discipline that benefits from statistics owes a debt of gratitude to the very humble concept of counting.\n\nMany of the massive data lakes we keep are essentially vast amounts of counting. Using artificial intelligence to analyze this data, we frequently find insights we were not expecting. So it would seem that counting is somewhat of a fractal concept – it’s deceptively simple, but, when compounded, generates delightful things.\n\nSo if we have a thing we are trying to be more intelligent about, our first endeavor might be to count it. Let’s see how to apply that to our code stored in GitLab.\n\n### Why developers count code\n\nThe following list is from real-world scenarios. Many of them are also asserted in Ben Boyter’s blog post [Why count lines of code?](https://boyter.org/posts/why-count-lines-of-code/). Their enumeration here is not an endorsement of the validity or accuracy of code counting for the claimed benefit and the fundamental assumptions of such models are not stated. Because code counting is essentially a form of modeling, it is also subject to George Box’s axiom: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”\n\n- Showing the languages in a repository using an absolute metric like source lines of code helps to quickly assess if one can contribute to the project, given their own talents.\n- Cost assessment for anything which charges by “lines of code” (some code scanning and development tools may charge this way).\n- Although [research](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/371038) shows that lines of code are not a good metric for measuring contribution, some developers have gotten used to seeing lines of code per contributor.\n- Code base shrinkage as a measure of good architecture (simplification).\n- Anything where the complexity of code affects project agility and costs. For instance, assessing and reporting status on migrating a code base to a new language.\n- Staffing a development team – understanding what language competencies are needed across the team and in what relative proportion to each other or understanding that for the entire organization’s codebase.\n- IT tooling decisions to support the needs of an organization given the most used coding languages across all repositories in the org.\n- Assessment of tech debt.\n\nWhile it is easy to create bad models with any of the above counts, the focus of this post is to get some good counts from which you can carefully build a model.\n\n### Toolsmithing GitLab CI: A working example as a shared CI library\n\nThe easiest way to differentiate between a “toolized” and “templated” solution is that you can simply and easily reuse this exact code without needing to change it. Many formal coding languages have the concept of shared libraries or dependencies that are essentially toolized. A templated solution consists of a starting point that you customize and then have to manage the code yourself. These can function as scaffolding for a starting point for an entire project or snippets of code that do a specific function. The fundamental difference is that when you use a template, you end up owning and managing the resultant code going forward.\n\nIn [GitLab CI](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/introduction/index.html), we can create our own tooling or dependencies with a few tricks stolen from [Auto DevOps](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/). These tricks are:\n\n1. Use includes to reference the shared managed library code (this creates a “dependency” on code that is being managed outside of your own).\n2. The includable code must be written like a function where all needed inputs are either passed in, or can be collected from the environment. No hard coding is allowed because that means you’ve created a template which can’t be depended upon directly.\n3. Use GitLab CI ‘functions’. I am coining this term to indicate that in GitLab you can precede a job name with a “.” (dot) and it will not be executed when it is read. Then you can create a new job using all the code in the “dot named” job and add variables by using the `extends:` command keyword. By using dot named jobs in your includable code, the developer consuming the “managed shared CI dependency” can decide when, where, and how to call the toolized code.\n\n### The result: A code-counting GitLab CI extension\n\nHere are some of the final design attributes of this code counting solution:\n\n- Is extremely fast for the given task.\n- Leverages the Git clone opitimizations lessons contained in this article: [How much code do I have? A DevSecOps story](https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/how-much-code-do-i-have-a-devsecops-story).\n- Uses the [lightning fast, open source code counting tool SCC](https://github.com/boyter/scc) by Ben Boyter.\n- Is implemented as a reusable GitLab CI shared library extension.\n- Allows configuration of the file extensions that should not be checked out because they do not include source code to be counted.\n- Leverages the GitLab Run Pipeline forms capability.\n- Can enumerate and count an entire group hierarchy in GitLab, or be given a stipulated list.\n- Uses the runner token to access and read repositories by default, but can be given a specific token.\n- Uploads HTML and text artifacts that contain the code counting report.\n- Purposely emits the code counting results into CI logs for easy reference.\n\n### The output\n\nResults are shown below in the CI log but they are also captured as an HTML artifact.\n\nThe clone time is also in the log for each project so that it can be verified that the cloning optimizations are making a substantial difference.\n\nThese particular results are counting all the code in [https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations](https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations).\n\n![codecountingcilog](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/code-counting-in-gitlab/codecountingcilog.png)\n\n### The code\n\nThe code is available in this project: [https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/ci-cd-extension-scc](https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/ci-cd-extension-scc). You can view the scanning results in the job logs of past runs here: [https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/ci-cd-extension-scc/-/pipelines](https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/ci-cd-extension-scc/-/pipelines).\n\nRather than fail the entire job when a project fails to clone, the job simply logs the error from an attempted clone. This allows review of valid use cases for not being able to clone and obtains as complete of a picture as possible. The cloning error log is uploaded as a job artifact and emitted to the log.\n\n### Innovation: MR complexity metrics extension\n\nDuring a customer engagement I was asked whether there was a way to assess how much change a Merge Request contained and mark it. This was because an operations team was missing their SLAs for deployments due to the amount of change, and, therefore, risk and review could be highly variable. However, since there was no way to estimate this without human eyes on it, MRs with a high degree of change would overrun their SLA when they couldn’t be pre-triaged.\n\nI wondered if I could use the previously built code counting solution to count diffs and get a rough idea of how much change had occurred in the commits of an MR branch and then apply labels to MRs to give at rough idea of their degree of change as a sort of proxy for how much review time might be required.\n\nIt turned out to be plausible and you can review the [Shared Library in Git Diff Revision Activity Metrics CI EXTENSION](https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/git-diff-revision-activity-metrics) and see the results in the MRs list of this working example project that uses that code: [MR list for Diff Revision Activity Analytics DEMO](https://gitlab.com/guided-explorations/code-metrics/diff-revision-activity-analytics-demo/-/merge_requests).\n\n### The value of remote work water cooler conversations\n\nI have to let you know why this blog was written now when this solution has been around for quite a while. You often hear about how working remotely does not allow for water cooler conversations, which in the story you’re told are where real innovation happens.\n\nWithin GitLab’s [Remote First culture](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/guide/) it is expected that anyone in the company can schedule a “coffee chat” with anyone else. The cultural expectation is that this is normal and, unless you are getting an overwhelming number of these requests, that when asked, you will find time to socially connect.\n\nI received a coffee chat request from [Torsten Linz](https://gitlab.com/tlinz), the Senior Product Manager for the Source Code Management group, to chat about my comments and linking of a working example to an issue about code counting that he had become aware of. He also wanted to see if I could help get a copy of it working in his GitLab group.\n\nDuring that collaborative time, I discovered that my example was not working because of some major code changes in SCC and because it presumed the GitLab group to be enumerated did not need the counting job to authenticate to prove that it should have access to the projects. While we were collaborating, we fixed these problems and improved the solution to use the SCC binary, rather than depend on working Golang runtimes. After our collaborative session, as I tweaked some more, I did parameter documentation in README.md and debugged the ability to run it either with a group enumeration or a provided list of specific git repos.\n\nSo I owe big thanks to Torsten and to GitLab’s cultural support for remote first water cooler conversations for improving this working example to the point that it is worth sharing with a broader audience. If you’d like to know more, check out the GitLab handbook page: [Informal communication in an all-remote environment](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/informal-communication/).\n\n_Cover image by [NOAA](https://unsplash.com/@noaa?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/lightning-fast?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)_\n",[23,24,25],"DevOps","solutions 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statement",{"items":680},[681,684,687],{"text":682,"config":683},"Terms",{"href":510,"dataGaName":511,"dataGaLocation":458},{"text":685,"config":686},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":520,"dataGaLocation":458,"id":521,"isOneTrustButton":28},{"text":688,"config":689},"Privacy",{"href":515,"dataGaName":516,"dataGaLocation":458},[691],{"id":692,"title":18,"body":8,"config":693,"content":695,"description":8,"extension":26,"meta":701,"navigation":28,"path":702,"seo":703,"stem":704,"__hash__":705},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/darwin-sanoy.yml",{"template":694},"BlogAuthor",{"role":696,"name":18,"config":697},"Field Chief Cloud Architect",{"headshot":698,"linkedin":699,"ctfId":700},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659751/Blog/Author%20Headshots/Darwin-Sanoy-headshot-395-square-gitlab-teampage-avatar.png","https://linkedin.com/in/darwinsanoy","DarwinJS",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/darwin-sanoy",{},"en-us/blog/authors/darwin-sanoy","UkMMwmU5o2e6Y-wBltA9E_z96LvHuB-bG6VW9DsLzIY",[707,722,735],{"content":708,"config":720},{"title":709,"description":710,"authors":711,"heroImage":713,"date":714,"body":715,"category":9,"tags":716},"How to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[712],"Tim Rizzi","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772111172/mwhgbjawn62kymfwrhle.png","2026-03-12","If you're a platform engineer, you've probably had this conversation:\n  \n*\"Security says we need to use hardened base images.\"*\n\n*\"Great, where do I configure credentials for yet another registry?\"*\n\n*\"Also, how do we make sure everyone actually uses them?\"*\n\nOr this one:\n\n*\"Why are our builds so slow?\"*\n\n*\"We're pulling the same 500MB image from Docker Hub in every single job.\"*\n\n*\"Can't we just cache these somewhere?\"*\n\nI've been working on [Container Virtual Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/) at GitLab specifically to solve these problems. It's a pull-through cache that sits in front of your upstream registries — Docker Hub, dhi.io (Docker Hardened Images), MCR, and Quay — and gives your teams a single endpoint to pull from. Images get cached on the first pull. Subsequent pulls come from the cache. Your developers don't need to know or care which upstream a particular image came from.\n\nThis article shows you how to set up Container Virtual Registry, specifically with Docker Hardened Images in mind, since that's a combination that makes a lot of sense for teams concerned about security and not making their developers' lives harder.\n\n## What problem are we actually solving?\n\nThe Platform teams I usually talk to manage container images across three to five registries:\n\n* **Docker Hub** for most base images\n* **dhi.io** for Docker Hardened Images (security-conscious workloads)\n* **MCR** for .NET and Azure tooling\n* **Quay.io** for Red Hat ecosystem stuff\n* **Internal registries** for proprietary images\n\nEach one has its own:\n\n* Authentication mechanism\n* Network latency characteristics\n* Way of organizing image paths\n\nYour CI/CD configs end up littered with registry-specific logic. Credential management becomes a project unto itself. And every pipeline job pulls the same base images over the network, even though they haven't changed in weeks.\n\nContainer Virtual Registry consolidates this. One registry URL. One authentication flow (GitLab's). Cached images are served from GitLab's infrastructure rather than traversing the internet each time.\n\n## How it works\n\nThe model is straightforward:\n\n```text\nYour pipeline pulls:\n  gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/1000016/python:3.13\n\nVirtual registry checks:\n  1. Do I have this cached? → Return it\n  2. No? → Fetch from upstream, cache it, return it\n\n```\n\nYou configure upstreams in priority order. When a pull request comes in, the virtual registry checks each upstream until it finds the image. The result gets cached for a configurable period (default 24 hours).\n\n```text\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│                    CI/CD Pipeline                       │\n│                          │                              │\n│                          ▼                              │\n│   gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/\u003Cid>/image   │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n                           │\n                           ▼\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│            Container Virtual Registry                   │\n│                                                         │\n│  Upstream 1: Docker Hub ────────────────┐               │\n│  Upstream 2: dhi.io (Hardened) ────────┐│               │\n│  Upstream 3: MCR ─────────────────────┐││               │\n│  Upstream 4: Quay.io ────────────────┐│││               │\n│                                      ││││               │\n│                    ┌─────────────────┴┴┴┴──┐            │\n│                    │        Cache          │            │\n│                    │  (manifests + layers) │            │\n│                    └───────────────────────┘            │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n```\n\n## Why this matters for Docker Hardened Images\n\n[Docker Hardened Images](https://docs.docker.com/dhi/) are great because of the minimal attack surface, near-zero CVEs, proper software bills of materials (SBOMs), and SLSA provenance. If you're evaluating base images for security-sensitive workloads, they should be on your list.\n\nBut adopting them creates the same operational friction as any new registry:\n\n* **Credential distribution**: You need to get Docker credentials to every system that pulls images from dhi.io.\n* **CI/CD changes**: Every pipeline needs to be updated to authenticate with dhi.io.\n* **Developer friction**: People need to remember to use the hardened variants.\n* **Visibility gap**: It's difficulat to tell if teams are actually using hardened images vs. regular ones.\n\nVirtual registry addresses each of these:\n\n**Single credential**: Teams authenticate to GitLab. The virtual registry handles upstream authentication. You configure Docker credentials once, at the registry level, and they apply to all pulls.\n\n**No CI/CD changes per-team**: Point pipelines at your virtual registry. Done. The upstream configuration is centralized.\n\n**Gradual adoption**: Since images get cached with their full path, you can see in the cache what's being pulled. If someone's pulling `library/python:3.11` instead of the hardened variant, you'll know.\n\n**Audit trail**: The cache shows you exactly which images are in active use. Useful for compliance, useful for understanding what your fleet actually depends on.\n\n## Setting it up\n\nHere's a real setup using the Python client from this demo project.\n\n### Create the virtual registry\n\n```python\nfrom virtual_registry_client import VirtualRegistryClient\n\nclient = VirtualRegistryClient()\n\nregistry = client.create_virtual_registry(\n    group_id=\"785414\",  # Your top-level group ID\n    name=\"platform-images\",\n    description=\"Cached container images for platform teams\"\n)\n\nprint(f\"Registry ID: {registry['id']}\")\n# You'll need this ID for the pull URL\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hub as an upstream\n\nFor official images like Alpine, Python, etc.:\n\n```python\ndocker_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://registry-1.docker.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hub\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io)\n\nDocker Hardened Images are hosted on `dhi.io`, a separate registry that requires authentication:\n\n```python\ndhi_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-docker-username\",\n    password=\"your-docker-access-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add other upstreams\n\n```python\n# MCR for .NET teams\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://mcr.microsoft.com\",\n    name=\"Microsoft Container Registry\",\n    cache_validity_hours=48\n)\n\n# Quay for Red Hat stuff\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://quay.io\",\n    name=\"Quay.io\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Update your CI/CD\n\nHere's a `.gitlab-ci.yml` that pulls through the virtual registry:\n\n```yaml\nvariables:\n  VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID: \u003Cyour_virtual_registry_ID>\n\n  \nbuild:\n  image: docker:24\n  services:\n    - docker:24-dind\n  before_script:\n    # Authenticate to GitLab (which handles upstream auth for you)\n    - echo \"${CI_JOB_TOKEN}\" | docker login -u gitlab-ci-token --password-stdin gitlab.com\n  script:\n    # All of these go through your single virtual registry\n    \n    # Official Docker Hub images (use library/ prefix)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/library/alpine:latest\n    \n    # Docker Hardened Images from dhi.io (no prefix needed)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/python:3.13\n    \n    # .NET from MCR\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/dotnet/sdk:8.0\n```\n\n### Image path formats\n\nDifferent registries use different path conventions:\n\n| Registry | Pull URL Example |\n|----------|------------------|\n| Docker Hub (official) | `.../library/python:3.11-slim` |\n| Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io) | `.../python:3.13` |\n| MCR | `.../dotnet/sdk:8.0` |\n| Quay.io | `.../prometheus/prometheus:latest` |\n\n### Verify it's working\n\nAfter some pulls, check your cache:\n\n```python\nupstreams = client.list_registry_upstreams(registry['id'])\nfor upstream in upstreams:\n    entries = client.list_cache_entries(upstream['id'])\n    print(f\"{upstream['name']}: {len(entries)} cached entries\")\n\n```\n\n## What the numbers look like\n\nI ran tests pulling images through the virtual registry:\n\n| Metric | Without Cache | With Warm Cache |\n|--------|---------------|-----------------|\n| Pull time (Alpine) | 10.3s | 4.2s |\n| Pull time (Python 3.13 DHI) | 11.6s | ~4s |\n| Network roundtrips to upstream | Every pull | Cache misses only |\n\n\n\n\nThe first pull is the same speed (it has to fetch from upstream). Every pull after that, for the cache validity period, comes straight from GitLab's storage. No network hop to Docker Hub, dhi.io, MCR, or wherever the image lives.\n\nFor a team running hundreds of pipeline jobs per day, that's hours of cumulative build time saved.\n\n## Practical considerations\nHere are some considerations to keep in mind:\n\n### Cache validity\n\n24 hours is the default. For security-sensitive images where you want patches quickly, consider 12 hours or less:\n\n```python\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-username\",\n    password=\"your-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=12\n)\n```\n\nFor stable, infrequently-updated images (like specific version tags), longer validity is fine.\n\n### Upstream priority\n\nUpstreams are checked in order. If you have images with the same name on different registries, the first matching upstream wins.\n\n### Limits\n\n* Maximum of 20 virtual registries per group\n* Maximum of 20 upstreams per virtual registry\n\n## Configuration via UI\n\nYou can also configure virtual registries and upstreams directly from the GitLab UI—no API calls required. Navigate to your group's **Settings > Packages and registries > Virtual Registry** to:\n\n* Create and manage virtual registries\n* Add, edit, and reorder upstream registries\n* View and manage the cache\n* Monitor which images are being pulled\n\n## What's next\n\nWe're actively developing:\n\n* **Allow/deny lists**: Use regex to control which images can be pulled from specific upstreams.\n\nThis is beta software. It works, people are using it in production, but we're still iterating based on feedback.\n\n## Share your feedback\n\nIf you're a platform engineer dealing with container registry sprawl, I'd like to understand your setup:\n\n* How many upstream registries are you managing?\n* What's your biggest pain point with the current state?\n* Would something like this help, and if not, what's missing?\n\nPlease share your experiences in the [Container Virtual Registry feedback issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/589630).\n## Related resources\n- [New GitLab metrics and registry features help reduce CI/CD bottlenecks](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/new-gitlab-metrics-and-registry-features-help-reduce-ci-cd-bottlenecks/#container-virtual-registry)\n- [Container Virtual Registry documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/)\n- [Container Virtual Registry API](https://docs.gitlab.com/api/container_virtual_registries/)",[717,718,719],"tutorial","product","features",{"featured":12,"template":13,"slug":721},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":723,"config":733},{"title":724,"description":725,"authors":726,"heroImage":728,"date":729,"category":9,"tags":730,"body":732},"How IIT Bombay students are coding the future with GitLab","At GitLab, we often talk about how software accelerates innovation. But sometimes, you have to step away from the Zoom calls and stand in a crowded university hall to remember why we do this.",[727],"Nick Veenhof","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099013/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2814%29_6VTUA8mUhOZNDaRVNPeKwl_1750099012960.png","2026-01-08",[262,612,731],"open source","The GitLab team recently had the privilege of judging the **iHack Hackathon** at **IIT Bombay's E-Summit**. The energy was electric, the coffee was flowing, and the talent was undeniable. But what struck us most wasn't just the code — it was the sheer determination of students to solve real-world problems, often overcoming significant logistical and financial hurdles to simply be in the room.\n\n\nThrough our [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we aim to empower the next generation of developers with tools and opportunity. Here is a look at what the students built, and how they used GitLab to bridge the gap between idea and reality.\n\n## The challenge: Build faster, build securely\n\nThe premise for the GitLab track of the hackathon was simple: Don't just show us a product; show us how you built it. We wanted to see how students utilized GitLab's platform — from Issue Boards to CI/CD pipelines — to accelerate the development lifecycle.\n\nThe results were inspiring.\n\n## The winners\n\n### 1st place: Team Decode — Democratizing Scientific Research\n\n**Project:** FIRE (Fast Integrated Research Environment)\n\nTeam Decode took home the top prize with a solution that warms a developer's heart: a local-first, blazing-fast data processing tool built with [Rust](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/secure-rust-development-with-gitlab/) and Tauri. They identified a massive pain point for data science students: existing tools are fragmented, slow, and expensive.\n\nTheir solution, FIRE, allows researchers to visualize complex formats (like NetCDF) instantly. What impressed the judges most was their \"hacker\" ethos. They didn't just build a tool; they built it to be open and accessible.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** Since the team lived far apart, asynchronous communication was key. They utilized **GitLab Issue Boards** and **Milestones** to track progress and integrated their repo with Telegram to get real-time push notifications. As one team member noted, \"Coordinating all these technologies was really difficult, and what helped us was GitLab... the Issue Board really helped us track who was doing what.\"\n\n![Team Decode](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/epqazj1jc5c7zkgqun9h.jpg)\n\n### 2nd place: Team BichdeHueDost — Reuniting to Solve Payments\n\n**Project:** SemiPay (RFID Cashless Payment for Schools)\n\nThe team name, BichdeHueDost, translates to \"Friends who have been set apart.\" It's a fitting name for a group of friends who went to different colleges but reunited to build this project. They tackled a unique problem: handling cash in schools for young children. Their solution used RFID cards backed by a blockchain ledger to ensure secure, cashless transactions for students.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** They utilized [GitLab CI/CD](https://about.gitlab.com/topics/ci-cd/) to automate the build process for their Flutter application (APK), ensuring that every commit resulted in a testable artifact. This allowed them to iterate quickly despite the \"flaky\" nature of cross-platform mobile development.\n\n![Team BichdeHueDost](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/pkukrjgx2miukb6nrj5g.jpg)\n\n### 3rd place: Team ZenYukti — Agentic Repository Intelligence\n\n**Project:** RepoInsight AI (AI-powered, GitLab-native intelligence platform)\n\nTeam ZenYukti impressed us with a solution that tackles a universal developer pain point: understanding unfamiliar codebases. What stood out to the judges was the tool's practical approach to onboarding and code comprehension: RepoInsight-AI automatically generates documentation, visualizes repository structure, and even helps identify bugs, all while maintaining context about the entire codebase.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** The team built a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline that showcased GitLab's security and DevOps capabilities. They integrated [GitLab's Security Templates](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/tree/master/lib/gitlab/ci/templates/Security) (SAST, Dependency Scanning, and Secret Detection), and utilized [GitLab Container Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/container_registry/) to manage their Docker images for backend and frontend components. They created an AI auto-review bot that runs on merge requests, demonstrating an \"agentic workflow\" where AI assists in the development process itself.\n\n![Team ZenYukti](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/ymlzqoruv5al1secatba.jpg)\n\n## Beyond the code: A lesson in inclusion\n\nWhile the code was impressive, the most powerful moment of the event happened away from the keyboard.\n\nDuring the feedback session, we learned about the journey Team ZenYukti took to get to Mumbai. They traveled over 24 hours, covering nearly 1,800 kilometers. Because flights were too expensive and trains were booked, they traveled in the \"General Coach,\" a non-reserved, severely overcrowded carriage.\n\nAs one student described it:\n\n*\"You cannot even imagine something like this... there are no seats... people sit on the top of the train. This is what we have endured.\"*\n\nThis hit home. [Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/) are core values at GitLab. We realized that for these students, the barrier to entry wasn't intellect or skill, it was access.\n\nIn that moment, we decided to break that barrier. We committed to reimbursing the travel expenses for the participants who struggled to get there. It's a small step, but it underlines a massive truth: **talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not.**\n\n![hackathon class together](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380252/o5aqmboquz8ehusxvgom.jpg)\n\n### The future is bright (and automated)\n\nWe also saw incredible potential in teams like Prometheus, who attempted to build an autonomous patch remediation tool (DevGuardian), and Team Arrakis, who built a voice-first job portal for blue-collar workers using [GitLab Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo/) to troubleshoot their pipelines.\n\nTo all the students who participated: You are the future. Through [GitLab for Education](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we are committed to providing you with the top-tier tools (like GitLab Ultimate) you need to learn, collaborate, and change the world — whether you are coding from a dorm room, a lab, or a train carriage. **Keep shipping.**\n\n> :bulb: Learn more about the [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/).\n",{"slug":734,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":736,"config":744},{"title":737,"description":738,"authors":739,"heroImage":740,"date":741,"category":9,"tags":742,"body":743},"Artois University elevates research and curriculum with GitLab Ultimate for Education","Artois University's CRIL leveraged the GitLab for Education program to gain free access to Ultimate, transforming advanced research and computer science curricula.",[727],"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099203/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2820%29_2bJGC5ZP3WheoqzlLT05C5_1750099203484.png","2025-12-10",[612,262,718],"Leading academic institutions face a critical challenge: how to provide thousands of students and researchers with industry-standard, **full-featured DevSecOps tools** without compromising institutional control. Many start with basic version control, but the modern curriculum demands integrated capabilities for planning, security, and advanced CI/CD.\n\nThe **GitLab for Education program** is designed to solve this by providing access to **GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying institutions, allowing them to scale their operations and elevate their academic offerings. \n\nThis article showcases a powerful success story from the **Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Lens (CRIL)**, a joint laboratory of **Artois University** and CNRS in France. After years of relying solely on GitLab Community Edition (CE), the university's move to GitLab Ultimate through the GitLab for Education program immediately unlocked advanced capabilities, transforming their teaching, research, and contribution workflows virtually overnight. This story demonstrates why GitLab Ultimate is essential for institutions seeking to deliver advanced computer science and research curricula.\n\n## GitLab Ultimate unlocked: Managing scale and driving academic value\n\n**Artois University's** self-managed GitLab instance is a large-scale operation, supporting nearly **3,000 users** across approximately **19,000 projects**, primarily serving computer science students and researchers. While GitLab Community Edition was robust, the upgrade to GitLab Ultimate provided the sophisticated tooling necessary for managing this scale and facilitating advanced university-level work.\n\n***\"We can see the difference,\" says Daniel Le Berre, head of research at CRIL and the instance maintainer. \"It's a completely different product. Each week reveals new features that directly enhance our productivity and teaching.\"***\n\nThe institution joined the GitLab for Education program specifically because it covers both **instructional and non-commercial research use cases** and offers full access to Ultimate's features, removing significant cost barriers.\n\n### Key GitLab Ultimate benefits for students and researchers\n\n* **Advanced project management at scale:** Master's students now benefit from **GitLab Ultimate's project planning features**. This enables them to structure, track, and manage complex, long-term research projects using professional methodologies like portfolio management and advanced issue tracking that seamlessly roll up across their thousands of projects.\n\n* **Enhanced visibility:** Features like improved dashboards and code previews directly in Markdown files dramatically streamline tracking and documentation review, reducing administrative friction for both instructors and students managing large project loads.\n\n## Comprehensive curriculum: From concepts to continuous delivery\n\nGitLab Ultimate is deeply integrated into the computer science curriculum, moving students beyond simple `git` commands to practical **DevSecOps implementation**.\n\n* **Git fundamentals:** Students begin by visualizing concepts using open-source tools to master Git concepts.\n\n* **Full CI/CD implementation:** Students use GitLab CI for rigorous **Test-Driven Development (TDD)** in their software projects. They learn to build, test, and perform quality assurance using unit and integration testing pipelines—core competency made seamless by the integrated platform.\n\n* **DevSecOps for research and documentation:** The university teaches students that DevSecOps principles are vital for all collaborative work. Inspired by earlier work in Delft, students manage and produce critical research documentation (PDFs from Markdown files) using GitLab, incorporating quality checks like linters and spell checks directly in the CI pipeline. This ensures high-quality, reproducible research output.\n\n* **Future-proofing security skills:** The GitLab Ultimate platform immediately positions the institution to incorporate advanced DevSecOps features like SAST and DAST scanning as their research and development code projects grow, ensuring students are prepared for industry security standards.\n\n## Accelerating open source contributions with GitLab Duo\n\nAccess to the full GitLab platform, including our AI capabilities, has empowered students to make impactful contributions to the wider open source community faster than ever before.\n\nTwo Master's students recently completed direct contributions to the GitLab product, adding the **ORCID identifier** into user profiles. Working on GitLab.com, they leveraged **GitLab Duo's AI chat and code suggestions** to navigate the codebase efficiently.\n\n***\"This would not have been possible without GitLab Duo,\" Daniel Le Berre notes. \"The AI features helped students, who might have lacked deep codebase knowledge, deliver meaningful contributions in just two weeks.\"***\n\nThis demonstrates how providing students with cutting-edge tools **accelerates their learning and impact**, allowing them to translate classroom knowledge into real-world contributions immediately.\n\n## Empowering open research and institutional control\n\nThe stability of the self-managed instance at Artois University is key to its success. This model guarantees **institutional control and stability** — a critical factor for long-term research preservation.\n\nThe institution's expertise in this area was recently highlighted in a major 2024 study led by CRIL, titled: \"[Higher Education and Research Forges in France - Definition, uses, limitations encountered and needs analysis](https://hal.science/hal-04208924v4)\" ([Project on GitLab](https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/coso-college-codes-sources-et-logiciels/forges-esr-en)). The research found that the vast majority of public forges in French Higher Education and Research relied on **GitLab**. This finding underscores the consensus among academic leaders that self-hosted solutions are essential for **data control and longevity**, especially when compared to relying on external, commercial forges.\n\n## Unlock GitLab Ultimate for your institution today\n\nThe success story of **Artois University's CRIL** proves the transformative power of the GitLab for Education program. By providing **free access to GitLab Ultimate**, we enable large-scale institutions to:\n\n1.  **Deliver a modern, integrated DevSecOps curriculum.**\n\n2.  **Support advanced, collaborative research projects with Ultimate planning features.**\n\n3.  **Empower students to make AI-assisted open source contributions.**\n\n4.  **Maintain institutional control and data longevity.**\n\nIf your academic institution is ready to equip its students and researchers with the complete DevSecOps platform and its most advanced features, we invite you to join the program.\n\nThe program provides **free access to GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying instructional and non-commercial research use cases.\n\n**Apply now [online](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/).**\n",{"slug":745,"featured":28,"template":13},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":747},[748,762,773],{"id":749,"categories":750,"header":752,"text":753,"button":754,"image":759},"ai-modernization",[751],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":755,"config":756},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":757,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":244},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":760},{"src":761},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":763,"categories":764,"header":765,"text":753,"button":766,"image":770},"devops-modernization",[718,558],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":767,"config":768},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":769,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":244},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":771},{"src":772},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":774,"categories":775,"header":777,"text":753,"button":778,"image":782},"security-modernization",[776],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":779,"config":780},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":781,"dataGaName":758,"dataGaLocation":244},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":783},{"src":784},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":786,"blurb":787,"button":788,"secondaryButton":793},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":789,"config":790},"Get your free trial",{"href":791,"dataGaName":51,"dataGaLocation":792},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":496,"config":794},{"href":55,"dataGaName":56,"dataGaLocation":792},1773350807952]