[sytse]

We hear your concern about GitLab getting bloated. We first made GitLab CI as a separate application. When Kamil (CI lead) proposed to Dmitriy (co-founder CTO) to add CI to GitLab itself he said that was a bad idea, we need sharp tools. After Dmitriy became convinced and when they proposed it to me (CEO) I had the same response: http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2017/06/21/how-gitlab-abandoned...

But when we integrated it the sum was more than the parts. The benefit of deep integration and not having to switch applications are becoming more apparent to us. It is hard to articulate why the same can't be done with plugins, the video in the article is maybe a good start.

Review Apps, changes metrics in the merge request, the container registry being aware of your permissions. All this can be done with plugins. But having it in one applications is so much easier to set up, upgrade, and use day to day.