Thanks for educating me!
1. Cool that there are different plugins that let you check the configuration in a dotfile.
2. I was not aware they used extension points instead of something more intrusive.
3. Obviously I like GitLab and try to promote it. But I post this too to see what others think and to learn. Turns out I had a lot to learn in this case. I still think that some items in Jenkins should be part of the core, such as the pipeline. But I agree that plugins are needed for some cases. For deploys we're thinking about plugins for GitLab CI too in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3286#note_402...
>What is interesting is that Jenkins has a DSL but that this is not part of the repository.
Netflix job dsl plugin, Jenkinsfile pipleline, dotci all of these let you put a .travis.yml like file in your repo.
>But the plugins have access deep into the Jenkins internals, preventing a rewrite of core functionality.
Plugins don't have deep access to jenkins internals they use clearly defined "extension points" .
I know you are trying to plug gitlab but 'our stuff is better because we don't allow plugins' is not exactly a plus. Jenkins is so popular because it can customized via plugins to wide range of use cases.