Heptapod 0.19 and what's next

Published:
By Georges Racinet

Heptapod 0.19.0rc2 was released today, featuring GitLab 13.7. The final version will be released on January 20th. Many thanks to all our contributors, of any kind.

The release candidate was installed immediately on foss.heptapod.net.

Heptapod 0.19.0rc2 can be installed as a Docker image and from source.

The full changelog is available as usual alongside the sources.

Short term schedule for release and installations

The RC phase will end on January 20th, with the final release of Heptapod 0.19.0 and immediate installation on the flagship platforms: foss.heptapod.net and heptapod.host.

GitLab 13.5 and thus Heptapod 0.18 will reach end of life on January 22nd.

Major changes

Heptapod 0.19 is at the foremost a consolidation version. Its main focus was the upstream upgrade, which this time got us jumping directly from 13.5 to 13.7. This move buys us back some flexibility in development scheduling, as GitLab 13.7 should reach its end of life on March 22nd.

Under the hood, significant improvements occurred in our development and release process, with our continous integration now running a much larger part of the upstream tests. We're leveraging for this the resources provided by the OVHcloud Startup Program, which we joined in December.

Thanks to this, we are close to claiming full support for Git projects, in other words, to stop calling it a "technology preview".

Mercurial native projects support is also improving: we are close to reaching the HGitaly1 milestone. Whilst Mercurial native projects are still themselves experimental, it can be considered safe to have some of them on production servers.

Next development highlights

Here are the area in which we'll be working in the next month or so:

Heptapod Runner

A significant effort will be made for Heptapod Runner.

We'd like to

  • Extend the list of supported platforms, adding notably Windows. We currently have Linux for amd64 and arm64.
  • Boost the upstream version.
  • Explore auto-scaling runners options for foss.heptapod.net and heptapod.host.

Mercurial native mode

We will be starting exploration of the HGitaly2 milestone right after the final Heptapod 0.19.0 release:

  • Experiments for the fully native mode.
  • First migration tasks and other transition helpers.

In conclusion

This has been a busy start of year, and we now have exciting perspective ahead.

Thanks for reading so far, we wish you a safe and productive new year.