Sneak Peek on 2022: GitLab Pipelines comes to Spira

December 13th, 2021 by inflectra

gitlab devops continuous delivery pipelines continuous integration

As we start preparing for 2022, we will be providing some information on our plans for 2022, including some previews of planned functionality in our Spira and Rapise platforms. One of the key plans for 2022 is a closer integration of our Spira platform with GitLab. We already have source code repository and issue tracking integration, but the planned enhancements for 2022 include support for GitLab CI Pipelines.

Overview of GitLab Integration

SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan provide multiple levels of integration with GitLab, including the following three use cases:

  • Integrating GitLab CI Pipelines with Releases and Builds in Spira to trigger automation events [planned for early 2022]
  • Integrating GitLab source code repositories so that you can view changes and have traceability to requirements, tasks, and incidents [available now]
  • Integrating GitLab issues to that defects raised in Spira will be automatically synchronized with issues in GitLab [available now]

GitLab Pipelines Integration

The new integration with GitLab CI pipelines will allow you to execute a GitLab CI pipeline directly from the Spira user interface. In addition, the GitLab pipelines may be automatically triggered by source code commits or other events from within GitLab itself.

Release page in SpiraPlan with GitLab Pipeline Plugin

Whenever a GitLab pipeline executes (either from Spira or via normal source code commit events), the new GitLab pipeline event will be recorded in Spira as a new build:

GitLab CI Pipelines List

These GitLab pipeline events will show up in Spira as a new Build under the Release artifact:

CI Builds from GitLab as shown in Spira

When you click on the Build in Spira you can see the build details (including the console log) as well as the associated source code commits, incidents and other associated artifacts.

Build Details page in Spira showing sample GitLab CI Pipeline Event

This functionality is similar to what is already available for tools like Jenkins and TeamCity as well as Azure DevOps Pipelines.

GitLab Source Code Integration

Spira includes powerful integration with Git code repositories, including the code repositories hosted in GitLab. From within Spira, you can view the list of folders and files in a branch as well as view the commits in specific branches.

Browsing GitLab source code in Spira

This is the same code repository that is available also inside GitLab:

Code repository view in GitLab

Spira includes the ability to quickly and easily drill down onto a specific commit and see the files that have changed, with inline code difference viewing. The Associations tab lets you have traceability from every code change made in the application to the relevant requirement, incident, or task that necessitated the change.

GitLab code difference viewing in Spira

GitLab Issue Integration

The third aspect of the GitLab integration is the ability to synchronize the Spira incident tracker with the issue tracking module of GitLab projects:

Data Synchronization showing GitLab Project

You can log new incidents, bugs, and defects in Spira, either during testing or just ad-hoc, and have them synchronize seamlessly over to GitLab (and vice-versa):

List of GitLab synchronized issues in Spira

Within GitLab you can see the incidents and make changes, including assigning developers, adding comments, and making changes to the issue priority, status or description. Those changes are then automatically reflected back in Spira.

List of issues in GitLab synchronized with Spira

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