GitLab announced its latest 12.2 release, adding directed acyclic graphs (DAG) for pipelines and design management. 

According to the company, DAG is a method to create and manage detailed job dependencies, rather than relying on sequential stages, making CI pipelines faster and more efficient. Design management makes it easy to share, version and collaborate on design artifacts.

In addition, the new version introduced cross project merge request dependencies, which makes it possible to define dependency relationships and prevent mistakes due to changes being merged in the wrong order. 

The detailed list of new features is available here.

Syncsort acquires Pitney Bowes’ Software Solutions for data management platform
Syncsort acquired Pitney Bowes’ Software Solutions business for $700 million to expand its data management platform. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. 

The acquisition will build on Syncsort’s offerings in data quality software and complements existing Syncsort Trillium products. 

“With the company’s unique scale, there is an exceptional opportunity to apply the strength of the combined product portfolios and differentiated expertise of the talented teams to tackle the most complex data management challenges that large and small enterprises face, and support their most strategic initiatives through continued innovation and development,” said Jared Hendricks, senior managing director at Centerbridge and a lead director on the Syncsort Board. 

Google Play store gets a visual refresh
Google announced that the Google Play store received a visual refresh and user-facing updates to deliver a cleaner, more premium store that improves app discovery and accessibility. 

The updates include a new navigation bar at the bottom of the Play Store on mobile devices and new left navigation on tablets and Chrome OS. In addition, the Play Store has two distinct destinations for games and apps, as well as richer app information at the top of each page and a more prominent call-to-action button.

For details on how to make a compelling store listing page, Google listed several resources here.

Effective Kotlin guide now available
Effective Kotlin, a comprehensive guide of best practices for Kotlin code quality, was released as a beta version. 

“This book is meant to change how we use Kotlin for better, how to use it more responsibly. My goal was to distill the most important rules and knowledge that can be applied for Kotlin development.,” said Marcin Moskala, Kt. Academy creator and co-author of Android Development with Kotlin, adding that the beta will give him more time to freeze item titles and number, according to a blog post.

The version of this book is now only available as an ebook, but will be available in print in November.