Confusing docs, tools and broken login

So, one step by the time.

I have first registered on the Gitlab.com instance years ago, while never done anything substantial.
Now I have found an issue on the homepage of a project that I like and login in via Github.

Now the horror started.

First: You lose the changes in the edit fields when the page gets closed.
Github stores that locally, so it survives even a reboot.

Second: Since the git tool considers pull requests a host-specific thing, there is no support for it in it implemented. Therefore, tons of third-party tools are there, who supposedly help to commit.

The mentioned change happened in dozens of files, I dont want to edit that in the web UI.
Funny enough, those tools require extensive configuration and/or dont work at all.

I recommend strongly to take up your attempt from 2014 and produce an official tool.
One that is preconfigred and nicely documented. Especially how to make pull requests.

Great.

Third: Your documentation is partly outdated. With old screenshots. On such rarely used features such as forking. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/gitlab-basics/fork-project.html
And of course duplicated: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/workflow/forking_workflow.html

If that is the quality on the surface, I am afraid to even glimpse into the source code.

Forth: Clicking on the nice button on the bottom of the documentation, in order to raise an issue, I get redirected onto the sign in page, while I am already signed in. I guess this is something security related.

So, I click on Github login again and it tells me that the login has failed since the Email is already taken.
And funnily enough, the screen offers me to login via username/password, despite the fact I was just trying to login via Github. I guess there are for sure people who actually make a Gitlab account who is then connected to Github, for which reason ever, while the majority of the people are simply confused.

Conclusio: The goal, to edit a couple of text documents ended in my impression, that this project has still a lot of harsh edges. Thanks a lot for reading this.

Hey @ShalokShalom thanks for reaching out. I’ll try to answer to your painpoints.

Which edit page are you referring to? GitLab supports local storage in the comments area, not sure about when editing a page. This might be a good feature request.

You can use the web IDE which gives you much more options, like editing many files at once Web IDE | GitLab.

Using a 3rd party tool to essentially create the merge request is supported by those clients if you want to take a look Cloud, Platform and Technology Alliance Partners | GitLab.

As far as the docs are concerned, we are aware of it, and have an epic that we’re working on the GitLab basics docs Documentation Review/Overhaul: GitLab Basics (&1179) · Epics · GitLab.org · GitLab.

So, bottom line, there’s some sort of GitHub oauth login bug. Once logged in, you should be redirected to the issue page.

We’re internally using the “Edit this page” button a lot, but it’s true that most of the times it’s for a one-off thing. I’d suggest to use the web IDE whenever you want to edit multiple files in one merge request.

The edit page to edit code. Like a README. As I tried.

You can use the web IDE which gives you much more options, like editing many files at once Web IDE | GitLab.

Oh, nice. Interesting

Using a 3rd party tool to essentially create the merge request is supported by those clients if you want to take a look Cloud, Platform and Technology Alliance Partners | GitLab.

Yes, I actually tried lab and the ruby wrapper. Ad I am still in conversation with the developer of the first one. Lack of documentation there too.

You can never control how these develop and you could also provide one, which helps avoiding to decide between a staggered six different ones, from which the half won`t work.

EDIT: So, the third one is actually unmaintained since 3 years. Its actually not fun anymore.

As far as the docs are concerned, we are aware of it, and have an epic that we’re working on the GitLab basics docs

Sounds nice. To me, documentation comes first. Simply implement documentation into your CI.
TDD is one thing, documentation driven development is very similar:

So you can never miss documentation again

Yep.