The main difference between GitHub and GitLab is that GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using Git while GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git repository manager.
Overall, Git is a popular open source distributed version control system. Both GitHub and GitLab provide web-based hosting services for Git repositories. However, GitLab has additional features and have more control over the repositories than GitHub.
Key Areas Covered
1. What is GitHub
-Definition, Functionality
2. What is GitLab
– Definition, Functionality
3. Difference Between GitHub and GitLab
-Comparison of key differences
Key Terms
Git, GitHub, GitLab
What is GitHub
GitHub is a web-based hosting service. It allows version control using Git. GitHub has Git based functionalities such as source code management and distributed version control and its own features too. It also provides access control; bug tracking, task management and handles feature requests.
The GitHub Enterprise is suitable for large-scale enterprise software development teams. Moreover, there is the GitHub Student Developer Pack to provide free access to various development tools and services for the students. It also has some “software as a service” integrations for adding extra features to projects.
GitHub allows a team to share code and to improve the software build. It allows managing the project and tracking the issues. Furthermore, the GitHub marketplace enables the developer to browse and buy the required apps.
What is GitLab
GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool. It provides Git repository manager for issue tracking, etc. It also provides continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD) support. Therefore, users do not have to install them separately. At the initial stage, GitLab allowed the team members to collaborate and manage the source code, but later it was improved further. Now it is capable of covering the software development life cycle and also the whole DevOps life cycle.
Moreover, this software is used by several technology companies such as Sony, IBM, NASA, Oracle, Alibaba, O’Reilly Media etc. It follows an open core development model. The core functionality of GitLab is released under the open source (MIT) license. The extra functionality is under a proprietary license.
Difference Between GitHub and GitLab
Definition
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using Git. In contrast, GitLab is a web-based Devops lifecycle tool that provides a Git repository manager. Thus, this is the main difference between GitHub and GitLab.
Written in
GitHub is written in Ruby while GitLab is written in Ruby, Go and Vue.js.
Launched year
GitHub was launched in the year 2008 whereas GitLab was launched in the year 2011.
User Interface
Moreover, GitHub provides an easy to use intuitive UI, whereas GitLab provides more convenient UI than GitHub. Hence, this an important difference between GitHub and GitLab.
Popularity
GitHub is more popular than GitLab.
Continuous Integration and delivery
Besides, another important difference between GitHub and GitLab is that the GitHub provides various third-party integrations for continuous integration and delivery work. But, GitLab offers its own pre-built continuous integration and delivery support.
Conclusion
The main difference between GitHub and GitLab is that GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using Git while GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git repository manager. In brief, GitHub is more popular than GitLab, but GitLab has more features than GitHub.
References:
1.“GitHub.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Apr. 2019, Available here.
2.“GitLab.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Apr. 2019, Available here.
3.“Build Software Better, Together.” GitHub, Available here.
Image Courtesy:
1.”394322″ via Pixabay
2.”GitLab logo” By Ty Wilkins – https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/03/our-new-logo/ (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia
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