On Thu, 2026-05-14 at 12:38 +0200, Seth via Boost wrote:
It seems you are referring to optional features.
GitLab can even be self-hosted from official packages, or you can compile the community edition from source yourself
# Clone GitLab repository sudo -u git -H git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss.git -b <X-Y-stable> gitlab
Full docs https://docs.gitlab.com/install/self_compiled/
I may not be fully aware of additional licensing constraints so I welcome anyone who has a comparison matrix of licensing/hosting/support options. I know several people who self-host GitLab for free.
If you'll accept using Docker or a Docker-compatible runtime, then it becomes trivial to host, backup, and update GitLab. https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce https://docs.gitlab.com/install/docker/installation/#install-gitlab-by-using... The setup to get a running instance is straightforward and can be done is under 5 minutes. Slightly more involved is setting up email, any firewalls, configuring the application, and "tuning" it for performance/resource usage. Out of the box, a busy instance might use 10-50GB of memory but this can be managed by configuring task/worker counts, etc. Some of the default settings are not ideal. It requires a full comb-through alongside the documentation on first setup, and then some effort to track "new" settings after each update. Depending on your bandwidth/storage needs, and whether any small amount of downtime is acceptible, will add some complexity to both the setup and backup/update/maintenance aspects. A complete backup might be trivial if massive files and other artifacts/images aren't stored in the instance. Without Docker or compatible tool, it's slightly less turnkey but still doable for a competent sysadmin. Less intuitive but important knowledge is most comprehensively documented. For example, it's critical to update to the latest minor release before updating to the next major release, and between each update it's critical to verify that all "background" tasks have completed. There are more such cases but it's quite manageable. Just follow the instructions exactly and don't make assumptions. While GitLab the company is causing a stir at the moment, and while GitLab the software has become "feature rich" it's still a decent platform for folks who are used to GitHub the platform. I've been self-hosting GitLab for myself and companies/projects for a long time. I don't like where the product is going but I'm still willing to recommend others at least give it a chance. Z