GitLab Pages Live Preview
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Proposal
We could implement a real-time preview capability for GitLab Pages that would significantly improve the development experience.
Here's how we could create the concept:
- Run your site's development server in the cloud instead of just building static files
- Update content in real-time as changes are made
- Allow teams to collaborate on preview versions without local environment setup
The implementation could work by:
- Creating a special branch-based preview environment that runs in development mode
- Setting up webhooks to detect content changes from CMSes or Git
- Providing instant feedback when code or content changes
- Using the existing GitLab CI/CD infrastructure but with a development-mode option
This would be particularly valuable for:
- Content teams updating Pages sites through headless CMSes
- Designers making UI changes and wanting immediate feedback
- Developers iterating on complex interactive components
- AI-assisted development workflows needing visual feedback
By leveraging GitLab's existing parallel deployments feature and enhancing it with a live server mode, we could create real-time collaboration capabilities while maintaining our existing deployment security model.
The key difference from our current approach is that instead of just building static files repeatedly, we'd maintain a running server that can instantly reflect changes without full rebuilds.