The release of the new version of the collaborative development platform GitLab 15.0 was recently announced, and one of the most notable changes in this version is the intention in future releases to replace the built-in Web IDE code editor with the Visual Studio Code (VS Code) editor developed by Microsoft with community input.
Using the VS Code editor will simplify project development in the GitLab interface and allow developers to use a full-featured and familiar code editing tool.
A survey of GitLab users showed that the web IDE is excellent for making small changes, but few people use it for full coding projects. GitLab developers tried to understand what hinders comprehensive work in the web IDE and concluded that the issue isn't a lack of specific features, but rather a combination of minor flaws in the interface and workflow. According to a survey conducted by Stack Overflow, more than 70% of developers use the VS Code editor, which is licensed under the MIT license, when writing code.
Way back in April 2018, GitLab 10.7 introduced the web IDE to the world and brought a lovely multi-file editor to the heart of the GitLab experience. Our goal was to make it easy for anyone to contribute, regardless of their development experience. Since its introduction, tens of millions of commits have been made from the web IDE, and we've added features like Live Preview and Interactive Web Terminals to enhance the experience. Now, we're excited to share some of the big changes we have in store for the Web IDE in upcoming milestones.
One of GitLab's engineers prepared a working prototype of the VS Code integration with the GitLab interface, which can be used to work through the browser.
GitLab leadership considered the development promising and decided to replace the web IDE with VS Code , which would also avoid wasting resources by not adding features to the web IDE that are already in VS Code. The plan is to incorporate only the client-side portion of the editor, integrating it with GitLab's server-side components.
In addition to significant improvements in functionality and usability, the transition will provide access to a wide range of plugins for VS Code , as well as give users the ability to customize skins and control syntax highlighting. Since the introduction of VS Code will inevitably lead to a more complex editor, for those who need the simplest editor for individual edits, the necessary editing capabilities are planned to be added to core components such as the Web Editor, Snippets, and Pipe Editor.
As of the GitLab 15.0 release, the innovations added include:
- Added visual Markdown (WYSIWYG) editing mode to Wiki.
- The free community version integrates the functions of scanning container images for known vulnerabilities in the dependencies used.
- Added support for adding internal notes to discussions that are available only to the author and group members (for example, to attach sensitive data to an issue that cannot be publicly disclosed).
- Ability to link an issue to an external organization or external contacts.
- Support for nested environment variables in CI/CD (variables can be nested within other variables, eg "MAIN_DOMAIN: ${STACK_NAME}.example.com").
- The possibility of subscribing and unsubscribing from the user in his profile.
- The access token revocation process has been simplified.
- The ability to rearrange the list with problem descriptions in drag and drop mode has been provided.
- The GitLab Workflow plugin for VS Code adds the ability to work with multiple accounts associated with different GitLab users.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about this new version, you can find the details at the following link.