Who this book is for

This book is intended for anyone involved in the software development life cycle with software projects of any size. If that sounds broad, that’s because it is! GitLab has something to offer people in a huge variety of roles. Traditional GitLab users include developers, QA, security testers, performance testers, product owners, project managers, UX designers, technical writers, release engineers, and the broad range of roles that fall under the amorphous terms of “DevOps” and “DevSecOps.” So if you find yourself involved with planning, writing, testing, securing, building, packaging, or deploying software, or managing any of those tasks, and you’re wondering how to automate any of the slow, error-prone tasks that you currently perform manually, this book will almost certainly give you ideas about how to improve your life using GitLab and its automated CI/CD pipelines.

This book assumes no prior knowledge other than some familiarity with one or more of the major stages of the software development life cycle. We expect every reader will be involved with different parts of the life cycle, so will focus on the parts of the book that are most relevant to them. That’s a perfectly good way to approach this book, although we recommend everyone read the four chapters that make up the first section since they explain background concepts and terminology that are required knowledge for all GitLab users.