CI Platform Milestone 18.8 Planning Discussion

This issue to capture priorities, review, and coordinate planning activities for the CI Platform group in milestone %18.8.

To kick off discussions and provide input, please use the individual comments on focus areas and other topics. Issues haven't been weighed yet, so this is a suggested list that needs to be finalised after the weighing process.

Key Dates:

Code merging period: Dec 13th - Jan 9th

Release date: 2026-01-15

Objectives

In addition to any issues that carry over to %18.8 from previous milestone, here are our objectives for this milestone:

CI Storage Optimisation

Verify Q1 KR: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/core-devops/planning/-/work_items/22+

• Strategy to remove p_ci_builds_metadata partitions (gitlab-org/gitlab#581538) Deliverable
  • All child issues
• Enable pipeline archival on Gitlab.com (gitlab-org#19547)
  • https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/568862+ Deliverable
  • https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/547524+ Stretch
• Implementation of offloading pipeline_variables... (gitlab-org#19989)
  • Store pipeline variables as encrypted pipeline_... (gitlab-org/gitlab#580107) Deliverable (carry over)
  • Implement dual reads for pipeline variables fro... (gitlab-org/gitlab#580435) Deliverable
  • [FF] : enable `pipeline_variables_artifact_write` (gitlab-org/gitlab#580472) Deliverable

Protocells Dependency Work

Verify Q1 KR: TBC

• Repopulate `tags` table from `ci_runner_tagging... (gitlab-org/gitlab#583610) Deliverable
• Remove `NOT NULL` constraint from `ci_runner_ta... (gitlab-org/gitlab#583746) Deliverable

Fleet Visibility

Verify Q1 KR: TBC

• Add CI/CD job metrics to the CI/CD Analytics Vi... (gitlab-org#18548) - Deliverable (carry over)
  • All open issues

Bug Burndown

Verify Q1 KR: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/core-devops/planning/-/work_items/77+

• Check the list here #8 (comment 2930716802)

Others:

Verify Q1 KR: TBC

• Vue 3 migration
  • We are proposal is ongoing to identify the scope of the work, but it might take more thn a milestone to define the scope! Stretch
• Pipeline efficiency/stability: Research and problem identification

---
title: All "opened" CI Platform issues in 18.8
display: table
fields: title, weight, state, labels("type::*") AS "Type", labels("workflow::*") AS "Workflow", labels("Protocells::*") AS "Protocells?", labels("Category:*") AS "Category", assignee
---

group = "gitlab-org" AND label = ("group::ci platform") AND milestone = "18.8"

---
title: S2/S3 Bug Burndown in 18.8
display: table
fields: title, weight, state, labels("severity::*") AS "Severity", labels("workflow::*") AS "Workflow", assignee
---

group = "gitlab-org" AND label = ("group::ci platform") AND milestone = "18.8" AND label in ("type::bug") AND state = opened

---

Capacity

TBC

Planning Topics

• Review 18.7 outcomes: any blocker or carry-over items
• Identify 18.8 priorities for CI Platform
• Identify 18.8 priorities for Fleet Visibility work
• Review typebug backlog and identify candidate issues
• Availability and capacity planning
• Dependencies and cross-team coordination
• Add weight to all issues in workflowready for development
• Identify stretch goals if capacity allows