Release post - GitLab 11.4

Review Apps: https://release-11-4.about.gitlab.com/2018/10/22/gitlab-11-4-released/

Release post:

• Intro: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-11-4/source/posts/2018-10-22-gitlab-11-4-released.html.md
• Items: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-11-4/data/release_posts/2018_10_22_gitlab_11_4_released.yml
• Images: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/tree/release-11-4/source/images/11_4

Related files:

• Features YAML link: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-11-4/data/features.yml
• Home page banner: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-11-4/source/includes/hello-bar.html.haml
• MVPs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/blob/release-11-4/data/mvps.yml

Handbook references:

• Blog handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/
• Release post handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/release-posts/
• Markdown guide: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/technical-writing/markdown-guide/

People:

• Release Post Managers: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/blog/release-posts/managers/
• Release Managers: https://about.gitlab.com/release-managers/

Release post manager	Tech writer	Copyedit	Messaging Lead	Social
@jramsay	@eread	xx	@johnjeremiah	xx

General contributions

Due date: 2018-10-12 (6th working day before the 22nd)

All contributions added by team members, collaborators, and Product Managers (PMs).

Author's checklist

Due date: 2018-10-12 (6th working day before the 22nd) - @jramsay

The PM leading the post is responsible for adding and checking the following items:

• Label MR: ~"blog post" release release post ~P1
• Assign the MR to yourself
• Add milestone
• Update the links and due dates in this MR description
• Make sure the blog post initial files, as well as this MR template contain the latest templates
• Add authorship (author's data)
• Ask the Marketing reviewer to add the introduction
• Add MVP (feature block)
• Add MVP to data/mvps.yml
• Add cover image (image_title) (scaled and compressed)
• Add social sharing image (twitter_image) (scaled and compressed)
• Make sure all feature descriptions are positive and cheerful
• Make sure all features listed in the direction page are included in the post
• Mention the release managers to remind them to add the upgrade barometer section
• Mention the team leads to remind them to add the performance improvements: Yorick, Douwe, Sean, Remy, Stan, Kamil, Tim Z., Clement, Andre
• Ping @atflowers and @aoetama to add the Release Radar webcast link
• Make sure Upgrade barometer is in
• Check which one is the top feature (with Job and William)
• Check if deprecations are included
• Alert people one working day before each due date (post a comment to #release-post Slack channel)
• Remove remaining template sections
• Make sure all images (png, jpg, and gifs) are smaller than 300 KB each
• Run the release post through an automated spell and grammar check
• Perform the content review

Recurring blocks

Due date: 2018-10-12 (6th working day before the 22nd)

The following sections are always present, and managed by the PM or Eng lead owning the related area:

• Add GitLab Runner improvements: Fabio
• Add Omnibus improvements: Joshua
• Add Mattermost update to the Omnibus improvements section: Victor
• Add Performance improvements: Douwe, Sean, Kamil, Yorick, Tim

Feature blocks

Due date: 2018-10-12 (6th working day before the 22nd)

The Product Managers are responsible for adding their feature blocks to the release post by the due date for general contributions. PMs are also responsible for adding any notable Community Contributions.

PMs: please check your box only when all your features and deprecations were added with completion (documentation links, images, etc). Pls don't check if there are still things missing.

• Andreas (@akaemmerle)
• Daniel (@danielgruesso)
• Fabio (@bikebilly)
• James (@jramsay)
• Jason (@jlenny)
• Jeremy (@jeremy_)
• Joshua (@joshlambert)
• Victor (@victorwu)

Tip: make your own checklist:

• Primary features
• Improvements (secondary features)
• Deprecations
• Documentation updated
• Documentation links added to the post
• Community contributions
• Illustrations added to the post (compressed)
• Update features.yml (with accompanying screenshots)

Review

Ideally, complete the review until the 4th working day before the 22nd, so that the 3rd and the 2nd working day before the release could be left for fixes and small improvements.

Content review

Due date: 2018-10-15 (5th working day before the 22nd)

Performed by the author of the post: @jramsay

• Label MR: ~"blog post" release review-in-progress
• Check all comments in the thread (make sure no contribution was left behind)
• Check Features' names
• Check Features' availability (Core, Starter, Premium, Ultimate badges)
• Check Documentation links (all feature blocks contain documentation_link)
• Make sure documentation_link links to feature webpages when available
• Update home page bannersource/includes/hello-bar.html.haml
• Features were added to data/features.yml (with accompanying screenshots)
• Check all images size < 300KB (compress them all with TinyPNG or similar tool)
• Pull master, resolve any conflicts
• Make sure all discussions in the thread are resolved
• Mention Mark Pundsack to remind him to review
• Assign the MR to the next reviewer (structural check)
• Lock features.yml with File Locking on the 21st

Structural check

Due date: 2018-10-17 (3rd working day before the 22nd)

Performed by technical writers: @eread

• 1. Structural check
• Add the label review-structure
• Check frontmatter (entries, syntax)
• Check image_title and twitter_image
• Check image shadow applied correctly: {image_noshadow: true} when an image already has shadow
• Videos/iframes wrapped in <figure> tags (responsiveness)
• Wrap text
• Check headers in sentence case
• Check feature and product names in capital case
• Check if images are harmonic/consistent
• Add/check cover img reference (at the end of the post)
• Columns (content balance between the columns)
• Meaningful links (SEO)
• Badges consistency (applied to all headings)
• Double check documentation updates
• Check documentation links (point to /ee/, not to /ce/)
• Check about.gitlab.com links: relative URLs
• Check the anchor links in the intro
• Remove any remaining instructions
• Remove HTML comments
• Run deadlink checker
• Pull master
• Update release template with any changes (if necessary)
• Post a comment in the #general channel linking to the review app + MR reminding the team to take a look at the RP and report any problems in the #release-post channel. (Do NOT ping @all or @channel)
• Remove the label review-structure
• Assign the MR to the next reviewer (copyedit)

Further reviews

Due date: 2018-10-18 (2nd working day before the 22nd)

• Copyedit (content team): @erica
  • Title
  • Description
  • Intro
  • Grammar, spelling, clearness (body)
  • Homepage Blurb
  • Tweet social sharing text (for Twitter, FB, and LinkedIn)
  • Assign the MR to the next reviewer (marketing)
• Marketing review (PMMs - messaging lead): @johnjeremiah
  • Write the introduction (by the 6th day before the 22nd)
  • Check/copyedit feature blocks
  • Check/copyedit features.yml
  • Check/copyedit homepage blurb
  • Check/copyedit social sharing text
  • Mention Job for final check
  • Remove the label review-in-progress
  • Assign the MR back to the author

Merge it 🚀

The author of the post is responsible for merging the MR and following up with possible adjustments/fixes.

Last check before merging

• Read the important notes below
• Mention @matteeyah to remind him to send the swag pack to the MVP
• Check if all the anchor links in the intro are working
• Check if there are no broken links
• Pull master and fix any conflicts
• Check if there isn't any alert on Slack's #release-post and #general channels
• Check if there isn't any alert on this MR thread
• Check if the tweet copy is ready and someone is ready to share on social media
• Ask the release managers to ping you when the packs are publicly available (and GitLab.com is up and running on the release version)
• Unlock features.yml just before merging
• Merge the MR
• Wait for the pipeline
• Check the look on social media with Twitter Card Validator and Facebook Debugger
• Share on social media

Important notes

• The post is to be merged on the 22nd at 15:00 UTC and as soon as GitLab.com is up and running on the new release version, and all packages are publicly available. Not before.
• The usual release time is 15:00 UTC but it varies according to the deployment. If something comes up and delays the release, the release post will be delayed with the release.
• Coordinate the timing with the release managers. Ask them to keep you in the loop.
• After merging, wait a few minutes to see if no one spot an error (usually posted in #general), then share on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or make sure someone (Emily vH, JJ, Marcia) does.
• Keep an eye on Slack and in the blog post comments for a few hours to make sure no one found anything that should be fixed

data/release_posts/2018_10_22_gitlab_11_4_released.yml

@@ -144,6 +144,82 @@ features:
         Git protocol v2 is supported from Git v2.18.0 and is opt-in. To enable
         globally run `git config --global protocol.version=2`.
+    - name: "Move ability to use includes in .gitlab-ci.yml from starter to core"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#include' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: verify # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/42861' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        We are very happy to announce in this release that the usage of
+        includes within the gitlab-ci.yml has become a free feature. This
+        will help ensure templates and other shared resources are always
+        compatible between free and non-free users, and also unlocks the
+        ability for everyone to do best-practice development using reusable
+        snippets in your CI/CD pipelines.
+
+    - name: "Run jobs only/except when there are modifications on a given path or file"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#changes' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: verify # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/19232' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        A very popularly requested feature, we're very proud now to be offering the
+        ability within the .gitlab-ci.yml to use only/except rules for jobs
+        based on when modifications occur to a specific file or path (glob).
+
+        This will allow more control for users whose repos contain different
+        kinds of assets or builds, ensuring only the appropriate steps are 
+        executed for the kinds of changes that were committed.
+        
+    - name: "Add feature flags for applications (ALPHA)"
+      available_in: [premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/operations/feature-flags' # required
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/feature-flags.png' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: release # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/6220' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        This feature gives you the ability to configure and manage feature flags for
+        your software directly in the product. Simply create a new feature
+        flag, validate it using the simple API instructions in your software,
+        and you have the ability to control the behavior of your software
+        in the field via the feature flag within GitLab itself.
+
+        Note that this is an alpha feature being introduced for the first time,
+        so while we encourage you to check out the feature and provide feedback
+        we want you to be aware that the implementation could change in subsequent
+        releases.
+
+    - name: "Add timed incremental rollouts to AutoDevOps"
+      available_in: [premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/#timed-incremental-rollout-to-production' # required
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/timed-incremental-rollouts.png' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: release # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7545' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        You've had the ability within AutoDevOps to setup incremental
+        rollouts for a while now, and with this release we are adding
+        an option to also set up _timed_ incremental rollouts where
+        the rollout will automatically continue on a timed cadence 
+        unless there is some error.
+
+    - name: "Make GitLab Pages support access control"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/#getting-started' # required
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/pages-access-control.png' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: release # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/33422' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        You've had the ability within AutoDevOps to setup incremental
+        rollouts for a while now, and with this release we are adding
+        an option to also set up _timed_ incremental rollouts where
+        the rollout will automatically continue on a timed cadence 
+        unless there is some error.
+
     - name: "Lorem ipsum"
       available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
       gitlab_com: false # required if the feature is NOT available in GitLab.com. Else, delete this line.
@@ -159,6 +235,88 @@ features:
 # SECONDARY FEATURES
   secondary:
+    - name: "Highlight @mentions for yourself distinctly"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate]
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issues/issues_functionalities.html#13-mentions'
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/highlight-yourself-distinct.png'
+      reporter: victorwu
+      team: plan
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/49036'
+      description: |
+        When collaborating in a long discussion in an issue or merge request, often
+        many users are involved, making it difficult to quickly at a glance, see 
+        comments that are directed at you.
+        
+        With this release, @mentions for yourself (i.e. the current user), are highlighted
+        in a different color, allowing you to easily see which comments involve you,
+        helping you focus on them quickly.
+  
+    - name: "Include new issues created in burndown chart"
+      available_in: [starter, premium, ultimate]
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/milestones/burndown_charts.html'
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/burndown-chart.png'
+      reporter: victorwu
+      team: plan
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/6174'
+      description: |
+        Burndown charts help teams track work, as it progresses throughout a milestone.
+        Usually, the scope of work is decided and agreed on before the milestone 
+        begins. But occasionally, there will be important exceptions to the rule,
+        (such as an emergency bug or security fix) and new scope needs to be included,
+        in the form of new issues. 
+        
+        With this release, the burndown chart now accounts for these
+        new issues that are created in the middle of a milestone, resulting in an
+        uptick of the line in a burndown chart.
+  
+    - name: "Expanded weight values in issues API"
+      available_in: [starter, premium, ultimate]
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/issues.html'
+      reporter: victorwu
+      team: plan
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/6822'
+      description: |
+        In a previous release, we expanded the allowable values of issue weight
+        from a small number to effectively unlimited, any number greater than zero.
+        
+        With this release, we've brought this flexibility to the issues API as well, 
+        allowing users to set this field with the new expanded number range with
+        the API.
+
+    - name: "Lock discussion quick action"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate]
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/quick_actions.html'
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/lock-discussion-quick-action.png'
+      reporter: victorwu
+      team: plan
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/39173'
+      description: |
+        Locking discussions in issues and merge requests is helpful to direct conversations
+        to newer issues (or merge requests). It can also be used to control abusive
+        or otherwise unproductive behavior.
+        
+        With this release, we now have quick actions to lock and unlock discussions,
+        making it easier to type a comment and lock/unlock all one action.
+        
+        Thank you [Mehdi Lahmam](https://gitlab.com/mehlah) for the contribution!
+
+    - name: "Close epics"
+      available_in: [ultimate]
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/'
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/close-epics.png'
+      reporter: victorwu
+      team: plan
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/7013'
+      description: |
+        Similar to issues and merge requests, you can now close (and re-open) epics
+        in GitLab. The epics list now has the Open, Closed, and All tabs, just like
+        issues. So when you have completed all the work in an epic, or it is no
+        longer relevant, you can close it, and it won't appear anymore in the default
+        list view.
+        
+        You can close (and re-open) an epic via buttons on the epic, via quick actions 
+        in an epic comment, and also via the API, exactly like issues.
+
     - name: "Improve Admin Area settings UI"
       available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate]
       documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/#amazing' # webpage or documentation - required
@@ -256,6 +414,45 @@ features:
         Thank you for this contribution, [Johann Hubert Sonntagbauer](https://gitlab.com/johann.sonntagbauer)
+    - name: "Filter Admin Runners view by Runner Type and State"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/runners/' # required
+      image_url: '/images/11_4/runner-admin-filter.png' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: release # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/36781' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        The admin runner view now supports the ability to filter
+        by runner type and state, giving you more options to manage
+        especially large fleets of runners in your environment.
+
+    - name: "Add support for interactive web terminal to Docker executor"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/interactive_web_terminal/' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: verify # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/3467' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        The interactive web terminals feature has been expanded to be
+        compatible with Docker executors as well. For now, the Docker session
+        is closed as soon as the script exits, but we are aiming to further
+        improve this behavior by resolving [#3605](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/issues/3605) in
+        our next release.
+
+    - name: "Allow pipelines to schedule delayed job runs"
+      available_in: [core, starter, premium, ultimate] # required
+      documentation_link: 'https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines.html#delay-a-particular-job-in-the-pipeline-graph' # required
+      reporter: jlenny # required
+      team: verify # required
+      issue_url: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/51352' # required
+      description: | # supports markdown
+        It is now possible to set a job to start after a delay timer
+        via the .gitlab-ci.yml. The timer starts ticking when the job
+        would have otherwise started, giving you control to implement
+        tasks that need to wait for a period of time to occur - for
+        example, when implementing timed incremental rollouts, or any
+        other delays needed after performing some other action.
+
     - name: "Lorem ipsum"
       available_in: [premium, ultimate] # required
       gitlab_com: false # required if the feature is NOT available in GitLab.com. Else, delete this line.