Integrating Runway features into the GitLab product
Runway is GitLab's internal Platform as a Service implementation, which aims to enable teams to deploy and run their services quickly and safely.
During a recent Runway demo, a discussion topic was started asking if any Runway features could be generalized enough to put in to the GitLab product.
A summary of the discussion:
- Runway is currently dogfooding several features (building blocks) of the GitLab product
- Runway manages workflows by coordinating these various building blocks
- For example, using CI Pipelines to deploy through to GCP Cloudrun
- Although some parts of the workflow are specific to GitLab's infrastructure processes, the core premise is not: e.g. automating deployments of a (container) service to environments; routing metrics/logs; secrets management.
The GitLab product is constantly evolving and will therefore continue to introduce features that better represent a 'Platform'. An example is #414920 that proposes introducing a Service
as a first-class object within the product. However, to operate a complex platform (e.g. GitLab.com), it's reasonable to assume there will always be gaps in the GitLab product.
The purpose of this issue is to discuss areas of Runway that solve a general enough problem to consider building in to the GitLab product.