GitLab announced the latest version of its platform designed to help developers get started and iterate faster. The 11.2 release features new improvements to its Web IDE, support for Android project import, and custom project templates.
The Web IDE has been updated to enable developers to see changes happening within their JavaScript web apps in real-time. Other improvements include the ability to delete and rename files and switch branches right inside the Web IDE.
“Working on web applications is faster and easier when it is possible to see your changes. Modern JavaScript frameworks now support live preview, eliminating the need to restart development servers and refresh the browser, but when editing these web applications using the Web IDE, it wasn’t possible to see your changes before committing them,” the company wrote in a post.
Support for Android project import enables developers to import larger project structures from multiple repositories. This is because of the company’s added support for XML manifest files. Developers can also import from Android OS code from the Android Open-Source Project, GitLab explained.
Custom project templates have been added on the instance level, allowing organizations to easily manage project templates. “As a GitLab admin, you can now define a group within your installation that serves as source for custom templates. All direct child projects of this group are available as templates when creating a new project,” GitLab wrote.
Other key improvements include:
- Personal status messages in order for teams to communicate what they are up to.
- Improved top-navigation search
- Issue board milestone lists
- To-dos for epics
- Summed weights in issue board list
- Group milestones on dashboard milestones list page
- Search labels in project labels lists
- Generally availability of cloud-native GitLab Helm chart
