The China edition of GitLab, operated by JiHu Information Technology (Hubei) Co. and branded “JiHu”, focuses on enterprise DevOps. I was lucky enough to join the SaaS beta — here’s my look at the domestic version of JiHu.
How JiHu Differs from GitLab
JiHu isn’t the same thing as GitLab CE or GitLab EE. CE (Community Edition) has the fewest features since it’s free; EE adds more professional project management on top of CE; JiHu takes GitLab EE and modifies it further, adding features built specifically for Chinese users.
In other words JiHu is a standalone distribution, and it’s the most feature-complete of the three, precisely because it’s built on EE. That makes it something to look forward to — and it’s operated independently from GitLab.
The Beta
From August 18 to September 17, 2021, JiHu (gitlab.cn) opened its SaaS beta along with a contest:
Categories and rules:
Merge Hero: during the beta, the user who completes the most merge requests in their own projects wins.
Note: meaningless or duplicate merge requests to pad the numbers are prohibited; final results are judged by the JiHu GitLab technical team.
Bug Hunter (individual): an individual user who finds a software bug or suggests an improvement while using JiHu GitLab SaaS, and files an Issue under the JiHu GitLab project, gets 1 point once confirmed by the JiHu GitLab technical team. For duplicates, only the first reporter scores. The highest cumulative score wins; ties share the title.
Bug Hunter (team): same rules for teams — file Issues under the JiHu GitLab project, 1 point per confirmed report, first reporter wins on duplicates. Different individuals from the same team count as one team, and points go to the team. The highest-scoring team wins; ties share the title.
Rewards: every participating team receives a JiHu GitLab SaaS limited-edition gift pack. Category winners earn the “JiHu Hero” honor, and the individual with the best feedback also gets a mystery prize!
I happened to open the site one evening and spotted the beta — it was already the last day, after work hours, so I missed the application window. Fortunately someone official in the group chat pushed an application through for me, and I got in.
Trying the Features
The beta grants one month of Ultimate-tier access, so almost everything is available. Beyond basic Git repos, both JiHu and GitLab push CI/CD DevOps, so they also threw in unlimited runner minutes. I’d only just started, so I hadn’t wired up CI/CD yet and just poked at the everyday features.
- Language: the marketing site is Chinese, but a lot of docs and pages are still English. The localization isn’t great — most translated pages read like machine output.
- Links: plenty of
gitlab.comlinks still linger inside the site instead of pointing at domesticgitlab.cn(JiHu) URLs. I filed a few Issues about that. - Small details: for instance I found it calling some Google services, which don’t load in mainland China at all.
Some Bugs I Filed
Since scoring is based on filed Issues and there’s a mystery prize involved, I submitted everything I found.
