[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":788},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci":3,"navigation-en-us":33,"banner-en-us":433,"footer-en-us":443,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Samuel Alfageme":685,"blog-related-posts-en-us-fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci":699,"assessment-promotions-en-us":739,"next-steps-en-us":778},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":22,"isFeatured":12,"meta":23,"navigation":24,"path":25,"publishedDate":20,"seo":26,"stem":30,"tagSlugs":31,"__hash__":32},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci.yml","Fast And Natural Continuous Integration With Gitlab Ci",[7],"samuel-alfageme",null,"engineering",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9},"Fast and natural continuous integration with GitLab CI","An overview of GitLab Continuous Integration and Delivery, and the main features of the tool.",[18],"Samuel Alfageme","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749684106/Blog/Hero%20Images/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci.jpg","2017-05-22","\nDo you use GitLab to store your repos? Have you ever stopped to check what some of those tabs on top of your repositories do? Well, you can either disable those in your project settings, or you can keep reading to discover some ways in which they can help you power up your development speed.\n\n\u003C!-- more -->\n\n![what do these tabs do?](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/your-awesome-project.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\nThis post aims to offer a high-level overview of how GitLab has interpreted the main concepts of Continuous Integration/Delivery and introduce the main features of the tool as well as their naming conventions, as it can sound more overwhelming than it actually is.\n\nThe product’s growth has made it present on many companies’ tech stacks. Part of this popularity comes from being indeed a great open-source project to follow, its release cycle is blazing fast and it’s delivering new features every month on the 22nd. One of the most important factors of this equation is the fact that it’s not only a self-managed solution that enables you to have all your projects under control, but also a pretty solid one. Just ask your reference ops for his opinion on how even the community (non-commercial) edition brings many stuff to the table, that were incredibly expensive or even lacking on many other SaaS products before.\n\n![integrated development tools](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/idea-to-production-graphics.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\nIt sometimes happens that we simply stick to well-known tools for us and won’t notice or research alternatives that may improve our everyday work. I believe this to be the case with some of the GitLab’s lesser-known features. The software is much more than a traditional VCS server. In fact, last year they came up with the idea of their so-called “masterplan” to extend the product to be more like a “suite” and cover every step of the development cycle, or in their words: go from [idea to production](/blog/continuous-integration-delivery-and-deployment-with-gitlab/#from-idea-to-production-with-gitlab). And in both previous and [future](/direction/) releases, they are bundling some really cool additional integrations worth checking (e.g. Mattermost ChatOps or Prometheus monitoring).\n\n### Differences with other continuous integration tools\n\nLet’s start getting the full picture of the features that make it so powerful. First of all, its model is based on a lightweight YAML configuration file stored in each repository’s root. This has some pros worth to mention along with the rest:\n\n1. Tightly coupled systems (both Continuous Integration and VCS are a single product).\n2. The Continuous Integration configuration becomes versioned:\n   * Enforcing different branches with different configurations.\n   * Allowing contributors to also collaborate in the integration setup.\n3. Docker integration out of the box, including private docker registry per project.\n4. Artifacts browser that allows to access the stages output the same way you’d do locally.\n5. No nightmare maintenance time of the CI server.\n\nOf course, from the user’s point of view, it also comes with some drawbacks compared to other Continuous Integration systems, since it embraces a “convention over configuration” model, which means you get a pretty powerful tool without having to spend your time configuring it while you stick to its way of doing things. The lack of plug-ins and integrations we are used to seeing in other tools to fine-grain configure some aspects of the project is one of them (e.g. creating jobs that require multiple repositories becomes non-trivial). On the other hand, most use-cases are covered enough and features like configurable email alerts, history browser or programmable builds, you have them all.\n\nBut let’s be clear, they neither have invented the wheel nor are the only ones using it. Many other Continuous Integration software solutions also lay in similar paradigms (.travis.yml, Jenkinsfiles…). This is all a matter of taste. The strongest feeling you get after using different solutions is that GitLab’s is easier to configure plus it allows having most details under control in the same browser tab. They took some of the best features of every tool and bundled them into this solution. It makes complete sense.\n\n### Main features\n\nLet’s try to briefly illustrate the main features of this tool and demonstrate how easy it is just to get started with it even without any sysadmin experience or without bothering your DevOps. As said, everything spins around the .gitlab_ci.yml file containing the definition of the different stages (steps) that have to be completed in whole, in order to get the project successfully delivered. The [file structure](/direction/) is natural to be read and once you have seen a couple of examples, you’ll start writing your own without much effort.\n\nHead first for GitLab’s [CI docs](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/) for lots of info about how to translate the specific needs of your project into their conventions. But to summarize a review of the Continuous Integration capabilities every project has enabled by default:\n\n#### CI/CD settings\n\nThe settings page gives an overview on just how easy it is to configure everything related to what’s needed for the creation of the continuous integration magic, i.e.:\n\n#### Runners\n\nWhat if I tell you can finally forget about configuring and managing slave machines, the way they speak with the CI server through SSH, how to balance the workload between all the build machines, and many other stuff that is both tedious and often difficult? Meet the runners! [Setup](https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/) becomes just as easy as it is to follow the three steps described in the CI/CD settings (settings/ci_cd) on your project: install the right binary for your OS, set the URL endpoint and the registration token provided in the settings page and you are done. Also, you can tag the runners based on their capabilities (e.g. docker, databases, etc.) to select them for specific jobs when they are required.\n\nRunners can implement many executors, i.e. ways of running your build scripts/code in them; from the most basic ssh executor, through a container host and right to the biggest kubernetes cluster you can think of, supporting even Powershell/Batch in Windows systems.\n\nIn their self-managed solution, [gitlab.com](https://gitlab.com/), they also provide \"shared runners\": VMs free of charge, dynamically allocated to build your project, extremely useful for those open source projects with limited resources.\n\n#### Secrets management\n\nIn the microservices era, where your project might be integrated and talk with dozens of APIs that require tokens, secrets, passwords, and many other ways to authorize that dialog, a way to handle this complexity in an elegant manner becomes a priority. A really bad smell [seen in many projects](https://gitleaks.com/) is to store all these in config files on a remote machine or even hang around in some piece of code. To stress the importance of this, just consider how many [services](https://www.vaultproject.io/) and [projects](https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/secrets/) are popping up to handle this issue. GitLab projects provide a simple keystore in their Continuous Integration settings that can be accessed from the integration scripts, to help project members handle and configure all these secrets.\n\n#### Pipelines\n\nThis is the core feature of any Continuous Integration system and yet a really simple concept, that translates to all the steps you’ll follow from the moment you are facing your source code to the point in which you are about to deploy your application. In between, you can include everything you would consider to make sure your code looks right (linting), can be built, works right (testing), integrates with other systems and anything you can come up with to take the last steps and ship your code.\n\n\n![this is the core feature of any Continuous Integration system](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/pipelines-are-a-core-feature.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\n#### Container registry\n\nImagine having your own private Docker hub, where you can store your project’s images and update them whenever it’s needed without having to expose them to the public, and being able to pull them login from anywhere into the registry. You can have an image ready for every stage of the road and pulling them from your runners is blazing fast. This becomes super handy to avoid initializing the environment and therefore speeding up the total time the pipeline takes to run: faster builds = happier devs.\n\n#### Environments and Review Apps\n\nEveryone loves [gitflow](http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/), right? There are some good reasons for that. It’s built on the premise that if every branch is developed isolated, new features don’t interfere with each other or the stable version until they are merged back in the master branch. This helps with both developing new functionalities and testing them.\n\nWhen containers came into our lives it was obvious how the process of deploying different, independent environments with individual settings per feature could be eased and improved. It’s fair to say we now use containers as standard de facto for environment templates. Most mainstream Continuous Integration solutions were released way before the first container was even created, so they were not built with Docker in mind, but for GitLab CI it’s the other way around: they embrace containers as the way to go, based on the many benefits it brings to the workflow.\n\n![GitLab embraces containers as the way to go, based on the many benefits it brings to the workflow.](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/environments-and-review-apps.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\nImagine a very common scenario in the workflow: you are about to merge a feature branch that has to be tested out by the QA team, which introduces some new libraries and a new service (e.g. Redis, mongoDB…) to be deployed. Just update your Dockerfile to include the new layer(s) that manage those new dependencies and push the image to your local registry. Also, append the line to include the new service via docker hub to .gitlab_ci.yml. The feature branch, when pushed on the remote, will have everything in place to be deployed to the testing environment.\n\n![The feature branch, when pushed on the remote, will have everything in place to be deployed to the testing environment](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/production-and-staging.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\nThis is where [Review Apps](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/) come into action, it’s just a posh way to call dynamic, per-branch environments created to verify changes and see them live. Every branch gets instant deploy support when pushed to the repo. This process can speed up with tools such as [dpl](https://github.com/travis-ci/dpl), that abstract many of the details for major deploy services, or go freestyle and call your custom deployment script from there. It also integrates an interactive terminal in-browser to introspect on builds to debug and troubleshoot if needed. You no longer have to go over the Jenkins’ mantra to clone a configured job, rename it, adjust the branch in the configuration… and 10 or 15 tedious steps before deploying an ephemeral test environment.\n\nAnother major feature you are going to love is the [history browser](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/environments/index.html#viewing-the-deployment-history-of-an-environment). Imagine you deployed some changes to a demo environment and 10 minutes before going live, you detect it contains a major bug that would be nasty if displayed on camera. No worries; it’s super easy to access the history of what was deployed on every environment and perform rollbacks or redeploy on-demand to any previous reproducible state. Just awesome.\n\n![it’s super easy to access the history of what was deployed on every environment](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/fast-and-natural-continuous-integration-with-gitlab-ci/history-browser.png){: .shadow}\u003Cbr>\n\nI hope after this post, the central concepts of GitLab’s Continuous Integration make good sense to you and your projects.\n\n_This post was originally published on [solidgeargroup.com](https://solidgeargroup.com/gitlab_countinuous_integration_intro)._\n\n\u003Cp class=\"alert alert-orange\" style=\"background-color: rgba(252,163,38,.3); border-color: rgba(252,163,38,.3); color: rgb(226,67,41) !important; text-align: center;\">Sign up for a   \u003Ci class=\"fab fa-gitlab\" style=\"color:rgb(107,79,187); font-size:.85em\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\u003C/i>   \u003Cstrong>GitLab EE Trial\u003C/strong>   \u003Ci class=\"fab fa-gitlab\" style=\"color:rgb(107,79,187); font-size:.85em\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\u003C/i>   \u003Ca style=\"color: 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statement",{"items":675},[676,679,682],{"text":677,"config":678},"Terms",{"href":503,"dataGaName":504,"dataGaLocation":451},{"text":680,"config":681},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":451,"id":514,"isOneTrustButton":24},{"text":683,"config":684},"Privacy",{"href":508,"dataGaName":509,"dataGaLocation":451},[686],{"id":687,"title":18,"body":8,"config":688,"content":690,"description":8,"extension":22,"meta":694,"navigation":24,"path":695,"seo":696,"stem":697,"__hash__":698},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/samuel-alfageme.yml",{"template":689},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":691},{"headshot":692,"ctfId":693},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659488/Blog/Author%20Headshots/gitlab-logo-extra-whitespace.png","Samuel-Alfageme",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/samuel-alfageme",{},"en-us/blog/authors/samuel-alfageme","WQ3KtyBI2Ym-i3OPD5_erB5PNbJSCSgvzU7PxLZQ2xU",[700,715,728],{"content":701,"config":713},{"title":702,"description":703,"authors":704,"heroImage":706,"date":707,"body":708,"category":9,"tags":709},"How to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[705],"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/)",[710,711,712],"tutorial","product","features",{"featured":12,"template":13,"slug":714},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":716,"config":726},{"title":717,"description":718,"authors":719,"heroImage":721,"date":722,"category":9,"tags":723,"body":725},"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.",[720],"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",[255,607,724],"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":727,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":729,"config":737},{"title":730,"description":731,"authors":732,"heroImage":733,"date":734,"category":9,"tags":735,"body":736},"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.",[720],"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",[607,255,711],"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":738,"featured":24,"template":13},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":740},[741,755,766],{"id":742,"categories":743,"header":745,"text":746,"button":747,"image":752},"ai-modernization",[744],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":748,"config":749},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":750,"dataGaName":751,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":753},{"src":754},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":756,"categories":757,"header":758,"text":746,"button":759,"image":763},"devops-modernization",[711,553],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":760,"config":761},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":762,"dataGaName":751,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":764},{"src":765},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":767,"categories":768,"header":770,"text":746,"button":771,"image":775},"security-modernization",[769],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":772,"config":773},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":774,"dataGaName":751,"dataGaLocation":237},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":776},{"src":777},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":779,"blurb":780,"button":781,"secondaryButton":786},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":782,"config":783},"Get your free trial",{"href":784,"dataGaName":44,"dataGaLocation":785},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":489,"config":787},{"href":48,"dataGaName":49,"dataGaLocation":785},1773350833562]