I've actually been using it for the past month or two and it's been pretty solid. My particular use case is that I'm using GitLab pages and can use the Web IDE as a poor man's CMS tool. Edit/preview the markdown and upload images, then commit and have the CI pipeline pick it up and deploy. I can see myself editing config files, READMEs or possibly markup. Real coding would likely end up frustrating as hell.

Ironically, GitLab pages ended up not working very well for me. It was nigh impossible to add a cert to a custom domain. I ended rewriting the CI pipeline to push to Firebase.

Can you test everything before you commit? Like you would do if you did it locally.

No. If you're editing markdown, there's a preview tab but it doesn't account for anything that's part of your jekyll template. Your app isn't running at all.

We plan to add automatic https ssl certs for custom domains in the months ahead.

I don't know if it's the use-case they had in mind, but where I work we allow trusted clients to edit their custom CSS file for our CRM.

In the past, people would request ftp/ssh. Setting up git and auto-deploy with custom scripts didn't scale well. Our clients seem very content with WebIDE. They can do quick edits and barely know they are using git.

Hey there. I'm the developer who made the POC. My original idea came after watching non-technical people try to make changes to the readme. They would have to ask for a lot of help to get the terminal open or use a GUI. When really all they wanted to do was make a quick change.

The idea is that there's a lot of different users using git and I want to make it accessible for everyone.

Does anyone test the GitLab Web IDE on an iPad?

I was able to use Web IDE to edit a couple files including a `.gitlab-ci.yml` and kick off a continuous integration job from my iPad 6th Gen. I hit a snag with the Merge Request, but the commit worked okay. For now it would be a little cumbersome to rely on as a primary development workflow, but it's fun as a proof of concept.

If you can pull that off sainthood might be in your future :) looking forward to seeing this happen.

Why do you want non-technical people to be able to edit the readme? That's for programmers to communicate to programmers. A little knowledge is dangerous. Keep non-technicals away from git.

My businesses function regularly edits md files.

That’s a strange thing to say given what you’ve made is significantly more full featured than necessary for that use case.

I've made a lot of small changes to projects using the Github editor. If you've come across a project with a small change that you need it's great and easy to just press edit, change a few lines and commit. Then you let the CI server run the tests. Pretty frictionless.

Editing multiple files is a pain though, you'd need one per commit, so this seems to solve that for me.

I stopped making changes through GitHub's editor after it started marking those commits as modified using the editor. I felt like a n00b and everybody could see it.

It's not... n00bish(?) to do a change in 5 seconds rather than clone the repo, open your IDE, run the tests, commit and push.

I was being tongue in cheek. Probably not clear enough. :)

I have several repos of text-file based validators that members of the public contribute to. They don't understand git, so it's handy to be able to edit on the website.

Git has a super high learning curve for simple edits...

It's one of the problems we are trying to solve. Git is hard, so a guided experience can prove valuable.

See for more information https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/47307 and https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/46122 for example in how we are improving this starting with 11.1

The irony that Git was instrumental in the evolution to GUI-based computing, but didn't also make that same jump to lightspeed has always dumbfounded me.

Git, like God, is good :) But even, over time, God has evolved and gotten more accessible.

GitLab always had a simple editor that you can use to make commits from the web interface.

The Web IDE thing is something more sophisticated.

We are in the process of using GitLab for managing our design history files (DFHs) for our medical devices.

This will make it easier for non-techies to edit product requirements, without deep knowledge of git.

Great to hear this! Please leave any feedback in our issue tracker mentioned in the article!

...but, there is one issue preventing my company from fully adopting it.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/5981

Once this is completed/implemented, our entire company will be migrating our old school document system to GitLab, using static pages, merge request approvals and this Web IDE.

If push comes to shove, I'll have to fork and do it myself ;)

This a 1000 times! It's been the nail in the coffin everytime I try to replace our outdated document management system.

Please continue it. My cofounder and our CTO Dmitriy left an implementation suggestion in the issue.

I meant to say: please contribute it, instead of continue it.

"The original idea came from staff developer Jacob Schatz, who observed how non-developers were having a hard time editing multiple files and getting those changes committed."

Exactly. You don't want documentation editors having to learn git and all cumbersome processes first. They may not even want to learn that. They want to edit and get their changes in.

I'm asking the same question. We use GitLab at work, and the amount of bloat being added to this piece of software is becoming ridiculous. While I'm sure 'Auto-Devops' and other tools have their place at larger organizations, I'm struggling to find any real use case for a WebIDE that wouldn't be satisfied (and to a much better extent) by any of the other cloud IDE providers (see: Cloud9, etc.).

Companies want to force us back to the days of time-sharing taking the power out of our computers, placing the gems of our work gated into their systems.

Why? It’s still on top of Git so it is fully decentralised. Having options isn’t evil in itself.

No. They don't want to take power away from you. They want more people to use their platforms. That could mean selling enterprise cloud access, selling chromebooks, selling on-prem solutions, or selling more copies of sublime text.

How is using their platform instead of my own computer not taking power away from me?

If I don't want to keep using Sublime Text, I just do Windows key + R something else.

Moving away from time-sharing platforms is a complete different story.

> how many people actually use such tools for actual day to day dev

According to an Xoogler acquaintance, he used a web IDE for all his development; I'm not sure how widespread this is in Google, but the answer to your question could be "lots".

(Any Googlers want to chime in with estimates on % of devs using web IDEs?)

Hard to say the exact %, but the web ide is more than capable for simple changes. If you're the kind of programmer that doesn't use auto complete or you don't need to do extensive refactoring that requires understanding the source, it's good for nearly everything.

It helps that there's a single source repo to work from, a remote filesystem for all source code whether working remotely or local that syncs immediately, and a single build system.

For me, I do all work from my laptop in the web IDE and save harder or larger things for when I'm at my desk. It's pretty great that I can start a change in one, then switch to the other seamlessly e.g. write the bulk in an IDE, then make changes in response to comments via the web IDE.

Heh, personally I could use this for discreetly working on projects via mobile phone. Maybe in meetings that I'm not interested in, or hanging out in an obligatory social setting. But for everyday use, I also don't see how it's practical.

Have you ever need do a merge from master on your PR in GitHub? Well that workflow is crap because the UI and editor is atrocious. So I welcome any competition to move GitHub to improve that experience.

Making a great IDE is also hard. It's unlikely that you can get a professional level if it's not a main focus.

it doesn't really need a full featured editor, but being able to at least do quick edits on the web is nice