[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":856},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/outreachy-sponsorship-winter-2020":3,"navigation-en-us":43,"banner-en-us":453,"footer-en-us":463,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Joey Salazar|Charvi Mendiratta|Nuritzi Sanchez|Christian Couder":705,"blog-related-posts-en-us-outreachy-sponsorship-winter-2020":754,"blog-promotions-en-us":792,"next-steps-en-us":846},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":11,"categorySlug":12,"config":13,"content":17,"description":11,"extension":32,"isFeatured":15,"meta":33,"navigation":34,"path":35,"publishedDate":26,"seo":36,"stem":40,"tagSlugs":41,"__hash__":42},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/outreachy-sponsorship-winter-2020.yml","Outreachy Sponsorship Winter 2020",[7,8,9,10],"joey-salazar","charvi-mendiratta","nuritzi-sanchez","christian-couder",null,"open-source",{"slug":14,"featured":15,"template":16},"outreachy-sponsorship-winter-2020",false,"BlogPost",{"title":18,"description":19,"authors":20,"heroImage":25,"date":26,"body":27,"category":12,"tags":28},"Technology internships meet open source in Outreachy","Inside Outreachy technology internships, where participants work on Git.",[21,22,23,24],"Joey Salazar","Charvi Mendiratta","Nuritzi Sanchez","Christian Couder","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749664041/Blog/Hero%20Images/open-devops.png","2021-04-15","\n\nAs an enthusiastic participant in the [open source](/blog/innersourcing-using-the-open-source-workflow-to-improve-collaboration-within-an-organization/) community, we were excited to participate in the [Outreachy technology internships program](https://www.outreachy.org/) again this year, which focuses on women and underrepresented groups. It's a way GitLab can give back, and as a bonus, Outreachy's principles intersect with [our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging value](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#diversity-inclusion).\n\n## About the Outreachy program\n\nInitially, Outreachy began as the Open Source Program for Women (OPW) at [GNOME](https://www.gnome.org/about-us/). The program was successful and grew quickly. Today, Outreachy has grown into the largest global technology internships program that provides opportunities for women and underrepresented groups to work on open source projects.\n\nCurrently, Outreachy is independently organized with the help of many volunteers, or sponsored help. For example, [Cindy Pallares](/company/team/#cindy) is a GitLab employee and helps with organizing Outreachy as a site reliability engineer.\n\nOutreachy is a paid technology internship program that runs twice a year for three months. During that time, interns can work in areas like programming, user experience, documentation, illustration and graphic design, or data science. In this technology internship program, participants work remotely with experienced mentors from prominent FOSS communities like Git, Mozilla, Linux kernel, GNOME, Wikimedia, and many others.\n\nOne of the benefits of the Outreachy technology internship is that the interns do not need to be students. It's a great opportunity for people who are coming back into the workforce after a hiatus, or who are navigating a career change into tech. This technology internship program is unique because it incorporates skill sets beyond engineering – which creates a broader range of skill sets represented in the open source world. The Outreachy internship is remote, making it more relevant than ever during the pandemic by helping interns gain experience working on an all-remote team.\n\nGitLab is one of the organizations that sponsors the Outreachy technology internship program, and we hope that by sharing our experience we can encourage more tech organizations to join us in participating in Outreachy as [corporate sponsors](https://www.outreachy.org/sponsor/).\n\n## Outreachy interns work on Git\n\nMore than 90% of the professional applications created today are built using open source components, according to a [2020 Tidelift survey](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4008838/Resources/The-Tidelift-guide-to-managed-open-source.pdf?utm_source=hs_automation&utm_medium=email&utm_content=66640714). One of the fundamental open source technologies we leverage at GitLab is the [Git project](https://git-scm.com/), so we chose to sponsor an Outreachy intern to work there.\n\n> GitLab sponsors an Outreachy intern to work on one of the most critical open source technologies that it relies on: The Git project.\n\n[Christian Couder](/company/team/#chriscool), senior backend software engineer at GitLab, who works on Git full-time, introduced the [GitLab Developer Relations team](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/developer-relations/) to the Outreachy opportunity during the winter of 2017-2018 round. An experienced mentor for other programs like Google Summer of Code, Christian thought that it would be great to mentor an intern through the Outreachy program as well. Since the number of mentored interns and the need to sponsor them increased over the years, GitLab has sponsored an Outreachy intern for the Git project since winter 2019-2020.\n\nOutreachy at Git works similarly to the [Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/). Git participates in GSoC in the summer and Outreachy in the winter. These programs consist of the Git project finding mentors and project ideas for individual participants to work on. Then there is a selection step, which includes working on a micro-project (a small code-related change), as part of the application process, and writing a proposal for a project to work on during the internship. After the interns are announced, they begin to work on their projects. Typically, Git tries to provide two mentors per intern to provide the best possible experience for the mentee.\n\n> The mentors used to be long-time Git developers, but more and more Outreachy and GSoC alumni have returned to the program as mentors, indicating the power of these programs.\n\nThe mentors volunteer some time each week to help their mentees by answering questions, providing suggestions, reviewing contributions, etc. Contributions still have to be sent by participants to the Git mailing list as patches. Then, other experienced Git contributors review the contributions before they are integrated into the Git code base by [Junio Hamano](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gitster), the Git maintainer.\n\n## Meet the Outreachy interns\n\nWe met with the Outreachy interns at Git to learn more about their experience participating in the winter 2020-2021 Outreachy technology internship program. In the next section, the Outreachy interns shared what the experience was like, in their own words.\n\n### Charvi Mendiratta: A self-taught programmer with an interest in robotics\n\n_This section was written by Charvi._\n\n> I am a recent graduate from the electronics field in India, a self-taught programmer with internship experiences working on mobile robotics projects, and I aim to pursue a career as a software developer. - [Charvi](https://charvi-077.github.io/about/)\n\nIt turned out to be difficult to find a job as a software developer because of my background in electronics and because I lacked professional programming skills. Also, there are very few job opportunities for recent graduates in software engineering roles, especially those related to robotics.\n\nDue to these challenges, I decided to try out open source in parallel with brushing up my skills. I supposed that open source contributions would be the best way to get hands-on experience with projects that required real-life problem solving skills, and I wanted to learn to convert my code into deployable software. That's why I decided to apply to the Outreachy program.\n\nBesides wanting to learn more about creating enterprise-grade code, I have always been interested in being part of the open source community. I first learned about open source work culture from my college programming community. I remember the old days when I attended an open source event called '[Software Freedom Day](http://www.softwarefreedomday.in/)' at my university. That's where I first learned about different open source programs like Outreachy.\n\n> Over the course of my three month internship, I worked on cleaning up and improving the Git interactive rebase, which is a useful git command to rewrite or modify the commit history. - Charvi\n\n#### About Charvi's Outreachy project\n\nMy work on Git's interactive rebase, which was mentored by Christian and [Phillip Wood](https://git.github.io/rev_news/2019/11/20/edition-57/), will help users who want to rework their commits and make it easier for users to improve the quality of their contributions. When teams practice code review, for example, it's very useful to rework commits to make them better or easier to understand before a reviewer steps in, and to fix them when reviews point to problems.\n\nFirst, I added the options '-c' and '-C' to the present `fixup` command in the interactive rebase. The `fixup` command adds the functionality to edit the commit message of the specific commit listed in the interactive rebase (see [merged patches](https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210129182050.26143-1-charvi077@gmail.com/)). This work is based on the [original patch series](https://github.com/phillipwood/git/commits/wip/rebase-amend), started by Phillip.\n\nThen, I worked on the [follow-up patches](https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210210113650.19715-1-charvi077@gmail.com/) and introduced some improvements after discussing the user interface of the added options with the Git community. Next, I worked on adding the new feature to `git commit --fixup` that allows to prepare the \"amend!\" and \"reword!\" commit, as an alternative to the present `fixup!` commit. It works with `git commit --autosquash` and will help to fix-up the content and commit message of the specific commit from the command line (see [merged patches](https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210315075435.18229-1-charvi077@gmail.com/)).\n\n### Joey Salazar: An engineer with international experience\n\n_This section was written by Joey._\n\n> As a female engineer from Costa Rica, who graduated in China through a full scholarship, it has been a challenge to find opportunities with mentoring for my transition from IT into programming. - [Joey](https://about.me/gomezsalazar-jogebeth)\n\nEven though I worked five years in IT (OS, networking, and storage), and was certified in Linux+ and CCNA through self-learning before beginning my software engineering studies, most companies and organizations seem eager to hire mid-senior level developers. Very few seem willing to invest in helping people get to that level, or in finding ways to build on any preexisting IT experience. As an open source advocate, it was through my research of open source technologies and the open source space that I came across community groups such as [WomenWhoCode](https://www.womenwhocode.com/), which was where I learned about Outreachy.\n\n#### About Joey's Outreachy project\n\n> My favorite thing to work on, probably because of my [background in privacy advocacy](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200622/08142044757/long-past-time-to-encrypt-entire-dns.shtml), was adding the foundations of HTTPS connection support for the Git protocol by following up on [a patch](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/1946) started (and shared by) long-time Wireshark developer, [Richard Sharpe](https://sharkfestus.wireshark.org/bios/richard-sharpe). –  Joey\n\nMy work on Git protocol support in [Wireshark](https://www.wireshark.org/), which was mentored by Git developers employed by Google, [Emily Shaffer](https://nasamuffin.dev) and Jonathan Nieder, will help users debugging Git or any Git using software (like GitLab). This work helps production teams or developers understand what's going on between Git clients and servers, so they can better troubleshoot or optimize how Git works. This project will help demystify Git and its inner workings in the tech community.\n\nAs Wireshark is \"the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer\", improving the way it dissects and presents the Git protocol to the user is helpful and important. Traffic interception and analysis is part of many user's workflows – from students, to researchers and advocates. For a few years, Git's dissector in Wireshark was bare-bones, and supported only raw traffic transmitted over regular TCP transport – my work is helping to change that.\n\nBy starting with [base functionality](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/1922) and building on top of other member's work, Joey and her mentors added parsing of the multiplexing ([sideband](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/1313)) version in use (if any) to Wireshark's dissector for the Git protocol. Next, they [added parsing for the specific version](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/1714) of the Git protocol that is used, following up on [an MR to parse the Git protocol version](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/805), did some refactoring on [an MR to refactor Git packet line dissector](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/1942), and began the foundations for Git protocol's [testing suite](https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/merge_requests/2142).\n\nToday the Git dissector now includes more functionality and error handling, as well as HTTPS transport support – all of which was done through GitLab's platform.\n\n## Outreachy mentor shares experience\n\n_Christian, the Outreachy mentor and GitLab team member who worked with Joey and Charvi, shares what the experience was like in his own words._\n\nThere are many rewarding parts to being a mentor. I really enjoy seeing mentees gain confidence over the weeks in their abilities to contribute significantly by themselves.\n\n> Since Git is used by more than 80% of the developers in the world, I hope that the Outreachy interns get the feeling that they can improve things even in small ways for millions of people and that their work can have a global impact. - Christian\n\nI also really enjoy it when former mentees want to continue contributing to the Git community after their internship. Outreachy alumni contributions can take many forms. Sometimes they continue to contribute on the same topic as their project, sometimes they participate in related discussions, even 10 years later. One of our mentees was recently hired to work full-time on Git. And it is of course great when they want to become mentors, so they can give back to the program and increase the number of people who can get mentored.\n\nIt's great too that Outreachy, Google, and sometimes the Git project itself all provide funds for former mentees to come to in-person Git events or open source-related conferences. Meeting mentees in-person is very rewarding. At in-person events, the interns can also meet a number of Git-related companies and people, and of course, learn even more about Git and open source. For some of them, it was the first time they traveled outside of their country or could visit a different continent.\n\n#### Mentorship comes with challenges\n\nThe most challenging part of being a mentor is the fact that the Git codebase is getting bigger and more complex as Git evolves and gains features all the time.\n\nThis makes it hard for participants to stay on track when the internship starts. They sometimes have to trust that following the process we suggest will lead them to better and better understanding until they can find their own way and become autonomous.\n\n## Outreach interns share their key takeaways\n\nWe asked Joey and Charvi to share some of the ways that the Outreachy technology internship has impacted them.\n\n### Joey has a better understanding of herself\n\n_This section was written by Joey._\n\n> My Outreachy internship helped me better define the type of team and community that I'd like to join and which will benefit the most from the wide range of skills that I can offer. – Joey\n\nOutreachy was an amazing help, not only in technical areas, but also with soft skills. For example, I formed a solid understanding of Git. Now I can use `git cherry-pick` and `git rebase`, as well as squash, comfortably since I understand better what they do, and how. Those Git commands gave me lots of trouble when I was a junior developer for [BIND](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIND), and now they don't give me trouble anymore. I also reinforced fundamentals in C -- implementing pointers and references without panic and knowing about vtables -- and I learned how to write test cases in Python.\n\nA crowning achievement was finding balance between patience and impatience, and between autonomy and guidance.\n\n### Charvi has fallen in love with the open source world\n\n_This section was written by Charvi._\n\n> Outreachy helped me start my open source journey. - Charvi\n\nI have always been fascinated with the open source work culture as a way to learn, share, and grow. I finally got wonderful working experience too, since both Outreachy and the Git project are prestigious organizations.\n\nI learned a lot throughout the entire internship, starting from when the Outreachy contribution period began before I qualified for the internship. On the technical side, I enhanced my C programming and debugging skills, learned to write neat code, learned about shell scripts, and developed a deeper understanding of Git commands and about the Git project workflow.\n\nApart from this, my internship helped me improve my communication skills, make connections with amazing software developers, and  become more confident in myself. I am sincerely thankful for the Outreachy program, Git community, and my mentors, Christian and Phillip. It was an amazing learning journey.\n\n## So what's next?\n\nNow that the Outreachy internship has concluded, both Joey and Charvi are ready to leverage their skills and experience working on the Git project to future work in FOSS. Learn more about [Charvi's experience](https://charvi-077.github.io/about/) and [Joey's experience](https://about.me/gomezsalazar-jogebeth) by following the links.\n\n## GitLab's continued internship opportunities\n\nGitLab is proud to have sponsored and mentored an intern for the Git project during the most recent round of Outreachy technology internships. We hope to someday qualify for our own Outreachy interns to work on the [GitLab FOSS project](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss) (which celebrates 10 years in October 2021).\n\nThis summer, GitLab will also be participating for the first time in [Google Summer of Code 2021](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/4961424868114432/). We look forward to mentoring engineering students through that technology internship program.\n\nIn addition to participating in these two great technology internship programs, GitLab held its first [engineering internship program](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/working-groups/engineering-internship/) in 2020 with great success. As a result, GitLab will continue to hire interns for various projects and teams in an ongoing fashion, with a specific [focus on recruiting interns from underrepresented groups in engineering](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/working-groups/engineering-internship/#recruitment).\n\nWe look forward to supporting these programs that help foster diversity in open source and the wider tech industry, and are excited for the year ahead!\n",[29,30,31],"open 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AI Hackathon 2026: Meet the winners","Nearly 7,000 developers built 600+ AI agents and flows on GitLab Duo Agent Platform. Find out who won and what they created.",[760],"Nick Veenhof","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1776457632/llddiylsgwuze0u1rjks.png","2026-04-22","AI writes code. That is expected now. But planning, security, compliance, and deployments? Those gaps remain. I have run contributor programs for years. I have never seen a community respond to technology like this.\n\nThat is why we opened [GitLab Duo Agent Platform](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo-agent-platform/) and invited developers worldwide to build AI agents that help teams ship secure software faster. Not chatbots that answer questions, but agents that jump into workflows, respond to events, and act on your behalf. The GitLab AI Hackathon ran from February 9 to March 25, 2026, on Devpost, the hackathon platform. Google Cloud and Anthropic joined as co-sponsors.\n\nWhen my team planned this hackathon with Google Cloud and Anthropic, I asked the judges to score four things: technical work, design, potential impact, and idea quality. We hoped for strong turnout. What we got surprised all of us. Nineteen judges spent 18 days reviewing every entry. Google Cloud and Anthropic provided judges, prizes, and cloud access. The community built hundreds of agents and flows because they wanted to solve these problems.\n\nNearly 7,000 developers showed up. They built 600+ agents and flows in weeks. The prizes across all categories totaled $65,000 from GitLab, Google Cloud, and Anthropic.\n\n\nIf you have ever watched a senior engineer leave and take half the team's knowledge with them, you know why the winning project hit so hard.\n\nRead on to find out what the community built.\n\n## Grand Prize: LORE\n\n[LORE](https://devpost.com/software/lore-living-organizational-record-engine), the Living Organizational Record Engine, uses eight agents with a router that sends each question to the right agent, logic to prevent circular loops in the knowledge graph, a visual dashboard, and carbon tracking. The command-line tool ships with 43 tests (yes, 43 tests in a hackathon project).\n\nLORE solves a real problem: the knowledge that lives in engineers' heads and walks out the door when they leave. In my experience, a hackathon project with 43 tests is rare. That many tests in a hackathon project tells you something about the team behind it.\n\nJudge April Guo (Anthropic) wrote: \"This feels like a product, not a hackathon project.\"\n\n\n### Google Cloud winners\n\n[Gitdefender](https://devpost.com/software/gitdefender) won the Google Cloud Grand Prize. It works inside code review workflows, finding and fixing security issues. It spots the bug, writes the fix, and opens the code review. No developer needs to step in.\n\n[Aegis](https://devpost.com/software/aegis-2m1oq0) won the Google Cloud Runner Up. It gives AI-powered explanations for every decision it makes, deployed to Google Cloud and ready for production use.\n\n### Anthropic winners\n\n[GraphDev](https://devpost.com/software/graphdev) won the Anthropic Grand Prize. It maps code links and shows how systems change over time. Judge Aboobacker MK (GitLab) noted it was \"in sync with our work on GitLab knowledge graph.\" Judge Ayush Billore (GitLab) wrote: \"Loved the demo and UX, super useful for understanding how the system evolved and what gets impacted by changes.\" You can see the full impact of a change before you make it.\n\n[DocSync](https://devpost.com/software/pipeheal) won the Anthropic Runner Up. It uses three agents: Detector, Writer, and Reviewer. If DocSync is confident in the fix, it opens a code review. If not, it creates an issue for a human to check.\n\n## Category winners\n\n### Most Technically Impressive\n\nDatabase migrations break things. [Time-Traveler](https://devpost.com/software/time-traveler-w3cxp0) creates a safe copy of your production setup, runs the migration against that copy, and reports the result. It runs five agents connected by a bridge, with real Google Cloud deployment, real PostgreSQL migrations, and real data.\n\n### Most Impactful\n\n[RedAgent](https://devpost.com/software/redagent) checks AI-generated security reports, closing the trust gap between AI findings and developer action. If your team uses AI for security scanning, you know this problem. I have seen teams dismiss AI findings because they could not verify them. RedAgent gives teams a way to check AI output before it reaches developers.\n\n### Easiest to Use\n\n[Launch Control](https://devpost.com/software/launch-control-bgp8az) delivers polished UX and solid infrastructure, and scored well on sustainability too.\n\n## The sustainability signal\n\nFive projects won prizes or bonuses for environmental impact. Software delivery has a carbon cost as CI/CD pipelines, but now LLMs also run compute at scale. We created the Green Agent category to challenge developers to measure and reduce that footprint. Stacy Cline and Kim Buncle from GitLab's sustainability team helped judge the Green Agent category. \n\n### Green Agent prize\n\n[GreenPipe](https://devpost.com/software/greenpipe) scans CI/CD pipelines for environmental impact and produces carbon footprint reports. Judges Kim Buncle and Rajesh Agadi (Google) both backed the project.\n\n### Sustainable Design bonus\n\nSustainable Design bonuses were awarded to the projects with exceptional sustainability practices in their design, from model optimization techniques to energy-efficient architecture choices.\n\n* [BugFlow](https://devpost.com/software/bugflow-ai-regression-detective-ci-optimizer) turned one bug report into 10 fixes in 20 minutes. \n* [DELTA Cyber Reasoning](https://devpost.com/software/delta-cyber-reasoning-system) is automated fuzz testing for security. \n* [CarbonLint](https://devpost.com/software/carbonlint) applied code analysis to energy use.\n* [TFGuardian](https://devpost.com/software/tfguardian) features a carbon footprint analyzer, among other agents.\n\nCongratulations on all the Sustainable Design bonus winners! \n\nJudge Jens-Joris Decorte (TechWolf) cited the result: Costs dropped from $556 to $18 per month, a 96% carbon cut (that is a $538 monthly saving with a sustainability label on it).\n\n## Honorable mentions and the long tail\n\nSix projects received honorable mentions:\n\n\n- [SecurityMonkey](https://devpost.com/software/securitymonkey) injects known vulnerabilities into a test branch and scores how well your security scanners catch them.\n- [stregent](https://devpost.com/software/stregent) monitors CI/CD pipelines and lets developers investigate and merge fixes from WhatsApp without opening a laptop.\n- [Compliance Sentinel](https://devpost.com/software/compliance-sentinel-autonomous-devsecops-governance) scores every merge request for compliance risk and blocks the merge if critical violations are detected.\n- [Carbon Tracker](https://devpost.com/software/carbon-tracker-ij25kf) calculates the carbon footprint of each CI/CD pipeline job and posts optimization tips on the merge request.\n- [RepoWarden](https://devpost.com/software/docuguard) is the first Living Specification Engine, an AI system that captures why code was written, not just what it does.\n- [MR Compliance Auditor](https://devpost.com/software/mr-compliance-auditor) collects evidence across merge requests, maps it to SOC 2 controls, and streams compliance scores to a live dashboard.\n\nMy favorite quote from the judging came from Luca Chun Lun Lit (Anthropic), who described stregent's mobile-first approach: \"Being able to essentially code from your phone is a next level in the engineering experience.\"\n\n> Explore the 600+ entries in the [project gallery](https://gitlab.devpost.com/project-gallery).\n\n## What comes next\n\nEvery agent in this hackathon worked within a single project. They still delivered impressive results. Some participants ran a local knowledge graph alongside their agents to surface code relationships and dependencies within the repo. LORE captures project history. Gitdefender finds vulnerabilities. Pairing agents with richer local context is already helping contributors build sharper tools. The next hackathon will build on what contributors are already doing with richer context. Sign up on [contributors.gitlab.com](https://contributors.gitlab.com/) to be the first to know when details drop.\n\n\n## Get started\n\nA special thanks to Lee Tickett (GitLab) and Mattias Michaux (GitLab) for orchestrating the orchestrators and innovators behind this hackathon!\n\nThank you to every developer who submitted. Nearly 7,000 of you showed what GitLab Duo Agent Platform can do when a community decides to build. I am proud of what you built here, and I cannot wait to see what you build next.\n\nBuild your own agent on [GitLab Duo Agent Platform](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/duo_agent_platform/). Browse community-built agents in the [AI Catalog](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/duo_agent_platform/ai_catalog/). You orchestrate. AI accelerates.\n",[765,265],"AI/ML",{"featured":15,"template":16,"slug":767},"gitlab-ai-hackathon-2026-meet-the-winners",{"content":769,"config":778},{"title":770,"description":771,"authors":772,"heroImage":774,"date":775,"category":12,"tags":776,"body":777},"What’s new in Git 2.54.0?","Learn about release contributions, including new repository maintenance, a new command to edit commit history, a replacement for git-sizer(1), and more.",[773],"Patrick Steinhardt","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1776711651/sj7xxyyuimlarswbyft5.png","2026-04-20",[29,30,265],"The Git project recently released [Git 2.54.0](https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa4uxsjrs.fsf@gitster.g/T/#u). Let's look at a few notable highlights from this release, which includes contributions from the Git team at GitLab.\n\n## Pluggable Object Databases\n\nGit already has the ability to store references with either the \"files\" backend or with the [\"reftable\" backend](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-git-reftable-format/). This is achieved by having proper abstractions in Git that allows us to have different backends.\n\nBut references are just one of the two important types of data that are stored in repositories, with the other being objects. Objects are stored in the object database, and each object database in turn consists of multiple object sources where objects can be read from or written to. Each object source either stores individual objects as so-called \"loose\" objects, or compresses multiple objects into a \"packfile\" in your `.git/objects` directory.\n\nUntil now, however, these sources did not have a proper abstraction boundary, so the storage format for objects is completely hardcoded into Git. But this is finally changing with pluggable object databases! The concept is straightforward and similar to how we did this for references in the past: Instead of having hardcoded code paths for how to store objects, we introduce an abstraction boundary that allows us to have different backends for storing objects.\n\nWhile the idea is simple, the implementation is not, as we have hardcoded assumptions about the storage formats used in Git all over the place. In fact, we have started working on this topic in Git 2.48, which was released in January 2025. Initially, we focused on making object-related subsystems self-contained and creating proper subsystems for the existing backends that we had in Git.\n\nWith Git 2.54, we have now reached a milestone: The object database backend is now pluggable. Not all of Git's functionality is covered yet, but introducing an alternate backend that handles a meaningful subset of operations is now a realistic undertaking.\n\nFor now, only local workflows like creating commits, showing commit graphs, or performing merges will work with such an alternative implementation. This notably excludes anything that interacts with a remote, such as when you want to fetch or push changes. Regardless, this is the culmination of almost two years of work spanning across almost 400 commits that have been merged upstream, and we will of course continue to iterate on this effort.\n\nSo why does this matter? The idea is that it becomes practical to introduce new storage formats into Git. Examples could be:\n- A storage format that is able to store large binary files more efficiently\n  than packfiles do today\n\n- A storage format that is custom-tailored for GitLab to ensure that we can\n  serve repositories to our users even more efficiently than we currently can\n\n\nThis is a large-scale effort that is likely to shape the future of Git and GitLab.\n\n*This project was led by [Patrick Steinhardt](https://gitlab.com/pks-gitlab).*\n\n## Easier editing of your commit history\n\nIn many software development projects it is common practice for developers to not only polish the code they want to contribute, but to also polish the commit history so that it becomes easy to review. The result is a set of small and atomic commits that each do one thing, with a good commit message that describes the intent of the commit as well as specific nuances.\n\nOf course, more often than not, these atomic commits are not something that just happens naturally during the development process. Instead, the author of the changes will gain a better understanding of what they are while iterating on them, and the way to split up the commits will become clearer over time. Furthermore, the subsequent review process may result in feedback that requires changes to the crafted commits.\n\nThe consequence of this process is that the developer will have to rewrite their commit history many times during the development process. Historically, Git has allowed for this use case via [interactive rebases](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-rebase#_interactive_mode). These interactive rebases are an extremely powerful tool: They let you reorder commits, rewrite commit messages, squash multiple commits together, or perform arbitrary edits of any commit.\n\nBut they are also somewhat arcane and hard to understand. The user needs to figure out the base commit for the rebase, they need to understand how to edit a somewhat obscure \"instruction sheet,\" and they need to be aware of how the stateful rebasing process works. For example, users are presented with an instruction sheet similar to the following when rebasing a topic branch:\n\n```shell\npick b60623f382 # t: detect errors outside of test cases # empty\npick b80cb55882 # t: prepare `test_match_signal ()` calls for `set -e`\npick 5ffe397f30 # t: prepare `test_must_fail ()` for `set -e`\npick 5e9b0cf5e1 # t: prepare `stop_git_daemon ()` for `set -e`\npick 299561e7a2 # t: prepare `git config --unset` calls for `set -e`\npick ed0e7ca2b5 # t: detect errors outside of test cases\n```\n\nSo while interactive rebases are powerful, they are also quite intimidating for the average user.\n\nIt doesn't have to be this way, though. Tools like [Jujutsu](https://www.jj-vcs.dev/latest/) provide interfaces that are much easier to use compared to Git, as you can for example simply execute `jj split` to split up a commit into two commits. With Git and interactive rebases, this use case requires a lot of different steps with confusing command line arguments.\n\nWe have thus taken inspiration from Jujutsu and have introduced a new git-history(1) command into Git that is the foundation for better history editing. For now, this command has two subcommands:\n\n- `git history reword` allows you to easily rewrite a commit message. You simply\n  give it the commit whose message you want to reword, Git asks you for the new\n  commit message, and that's it.\n\n- `git history split` allows you to split up a commit into two, which is\n  inspired by `jj split`. You give it a commit, Git asks you which changes to\n  stage into which commit and for the two commit messages, and then you're done.\n\n\nThis is of course only a start, and we want to add additional subcommands over time. For example:\n\n- `git history fixup` to take staged changes and automatically amend them to a\n  specific commit\n\n- `git history drop` to remove a commit\n- `git history reorder` to reorder the sequence of commits\n- `git history squash` to squash a range of commits\n\nBut that's not all! In addition to making history editing easy, this new command also knows to automatically rebase all of your local branches that previously included this commit. So that means that you can even edit a commit that is not on the current branch, and all branches that contain the commit will be rewritten.\n\nIt may seem puzzling at first that Git is automatically rebasing dependent branches, as that is a significant diversion from how git-rebase(1) works. But this is part of a bigger effort to bring better support for Stacked Diffs to Git, which are a way to create a series of multiple dependent branches that can be reviewed independently, but that together work towards a bigger goal.\n\n*This project was led by [Patrick Steinhardt](https://gitlab.com/pks-gitlab) with support from [Elijah Newren](https://github.com/newren).*\n\n## A native replacement for git-sizer(1)\n\nThe size of a Git repository is an important factor that determines how well Git and GitLab can handle it. But size alone is not the only factor, as the performance of a repository is ultimately a combination of multiple different dimensions:\n\n- The depth of the commit history\n- The shape of the directory structure\n- The size of files stored in the repository\n- The number of references\n\nThese are only some of the dimensions one needs to consider when trying to predict whether Git will be able to handle a repository well.\n\nBut while it is clear that the mere repository size is insufficient, Git itself does not provide any tooling that gives the user an easy overview of these metrics. Instead, users are forced to rely on third-party tools like [git-sizer(1)](https://github.com/github/git-sizer) to fill this gap. This tool does an excellent job at surfacing this information, but it is not part of Git itself and thus needs to be installed separately.\n\nObservability of repository internals is critical to us at GitLab, so we introduced a [new `git repo structure` command into Git 2.52](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/whats-new-in-git-2-52-0/#new-subcommand-for-git-repo1-to-display-repository-metrics) to display repository metrics, which we have extended in Git 2.53 to [show inflated and disk sizes for objects by type](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/whats-new-in-git-2-53-0/#more-data-collected-in-git-repo-structure).\n\nIn Git 2.54, we are now iterating some more on this command so that we don't only show the overall size, but also show the largest objects by type:\n\n```shell\n$ git clone https://gitlab.com/git-scm/git.git\n$ cd git\n$ git repo structure\nCounting objects: 410445, done.\n| Repository structure      | Value       |\n| ------------------------- | ----------- |\n| * References              |             |\n|   * Count                 |    1.01 k   |\n|     * Branches            |       1     |\n|     * Tags                |    1.00 k   |\n|     * Remotes             |       9     |\n|     * Others              |       0     |\n|                           |             |\n| * Reachable objects       |             |\n|   * Count                 |  410.45 k   |\n|     * Commits             |   83.99 k   |\n|     * Trees               |  164.46 k   |\n|     * Blobs               |  161.00 k   |\n|     * Tags                |    1.00 k   |\n|   * Inflated size         |    7.46 GiB |\n|     * Commits             |   57.53 MiB |\n|     * Trees               |    2.33 GiB |\n|     * Blobs               |    5.07 GiB |\n|     * Tags                |  737.48 KiB |\n|   * Disk size             |  181.37 MiB |\n|     * Commits             |   33.11 MiB |\n|     * Trees               |   40.58 MiB |\n|     * Blobs               |  107.11 MiB |\n|     * Tags                |  582.67 KiB |\n|                           |             |\n| * Largest objects         |             |\n|   * Commits               |             |\n|     * Maximum size    [1] |   17.23 KiB |\n|     * Maximum parents [2] |      10     |\n|   * Trees                 |             |\n|     * Maximum size    [3] |   58.85 KiB |\n|     * Maximum entries [4] |    1.18 k   |\n|   * Blobs                 |             |\n|     * Maximum size    [5] | 1019.51 KiB |\n|   * Tags                  |             |\n\n|     * Maximum size    [6] |    7.13 KiB |\n\n[1] f6ecb603ff8af608a417d7724727d6bc3a9dbfdf\n[2] 16d7601e176cd53f3c2f02367698d06b85e08879\n[3] 203ee97047731b9fd3ad220faa607b6677861a0d\n[4] 203ee97047731b9fd3ad220faa607b6677861a0d\n[5] aa96f8bc361fd84a1459440f1e7de02ab0dc3543\n[6] 07e38db6a5a03690034d27104401f6c8ea40f1fc\n```\n\nWith this information we're now almost feature-complete as compared to git-sizer(1). We're not done yet, though — we plan to eventually add additional features such as:\n\n- Severity levels as they exist in git-sizer(1)\n- Graphs that show you the distribution of object sizes\n- The ability to scan objects reachable via a subset of references\n\n*This project was led by [Justin Tobler](https://gitlab.com/justintobler).*\n\n## New infrastructure for repository maintenance\n\nWhenever you write data into a Git repository you will typically end up adding more loose objects. Left unmanaged, this leads to a large number of separate files in your `.git/objects/` directory, which slows down several operations that want to access many objects at once. Git thus regularly packs these objects into \"packfiles\" to ensure good performance.\n\nThis isn't the only data structure that may become inefficient over time: Updating references may create loose references, reflogs will need trimming, worktrees may become stale, and caches like commit-graphs need to be refreshed regularly.\n\nAll of these tasks have historically been managed by [git-gc(1)](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gc). However, this tool has a monolithic architecture, where it basically executes all of the tasks required in sequential order. This foundation is hard to extend and doesn't give the end user much flexibility in case they want to slightly modify how housekeeping is performed.\n\nThe Git project introduced the new [git-maintenance(1)](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-maintenance) tool in Git 2.29. In contrast to git-gc(1), git-maintenance(1) is not monolithic but is instead structured around tasks. These tasks are freely configurable by the user so that the user can control which tasks are running, giving them much more fine-grained control over repository maintenance.\n\nEventually, Git has migrated to use git-maintenance(1) by default. But in the beginning, the only task that was default-enabled was the git-gc(1) task, which as you might have guessed, simply executes `git gc`. To manually run maintenance using this new command you can execute `git maintenance run`, but Git knows to execute this automatically after several other commands.\n\nOver the last couple releases we have implemented all the individual tasks that are supported by git-gc(1) in git-maintenance(1) to ensure that we have feature parity between these two tools.\n\nFurthermore, we have implemented a new task that uses Git's modern architecture for repacking objects with [geometric compaction](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-repack#Documentation/git-repack.txt---geometricfactor).\nGeometric compaction is a much better fit for large monorepos, and with our efforts to make them work well with partial clones [that landed in Git 2.53](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/whats-new-in-git-2-53-0/#geometric-repacking-support-with-promisor-remotes) they are now a full replacement for our previous repacking strategy in Git.\n\nIn Git 2.54, we have now reached another significant milestone: Instead of using the git-gc(1)-based strategy by default, we are now using geometric repacking with fine-grained individual maintenance tasks! Besides being more efficient for large monorepos, it also ensures that we have an easier foundation to iterate on going forward.\n\n*The git-maintenance(1) infrastructure was originally implemented by [Derrick Stolee](https://github.com/derrickstolee) and geometric maintenance was introduced by [Taylor Blau](https://github.com/ttaylorr). The effort to introduce the new fine-grained tasks and migrate to the new maintenance strategy was led by [Patrick Steinhardt](https://gitlab.com/pks-gitlab).*\n\n## Read more\n\nThis article highlighted just a few of the contributions made by GitLab and the wider Git community for this latest release. You can learn about these from the [official release announcement](https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqa4uxsjrs.fsf@gitster.g/T/#u) of the Git project. Also, check out our [previous Git release blog posts](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/tags/git/) to see other past highlights of contributions from GitLab team members.",{"slug":779,"featured":15,"template":16},"whats-new-in-git-2-54-0",{"content":781,"config":790},{"title":782,"description":783,"authors":784,"date":786,"body":787,"heroImage":788,"category":12,"tags":789},"What’s new in Git 2.53.0?","Learn about release contributions, including fixes for geometric repacking, updates to git-fast-import(1) commit signature handing options, and more.",[785],"Justin Tobler","2026-02-02","The Git project recently released [Git 2.53.0](https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqq4inz13e3.fsf@gitster.g/T/#u). Let's look at a few notable highlights from this release, which includes\ncontributions from the Git team at GitLab.\n\n## Geometric repacking support with promisor remotes\n\nNewly written objects in a Git repository are often stored as individual loose files. To ensure good performance and optimal use of disk space, these loose objects are regularly compressed into so-called packfiles. The number of packfiles in a repository grows over time as a result of the user’s activities, like writing new commits or fetching from a remote. As the number of packfiles in a repository increases, Git has to do more work to look up individual objects. Therefore, to preserve optimal repository performance, packfiles are periodically repacked via git-repack(1) to consolidate the objects into fewer packfiles. When repacking there are two strategies: “all-into-one” and “geometric”.\n\nThe all-into-one strategy is fairly straightforward and the current default. As its name implies, all objects in the repository are packed into a single packfile. From a performance perspective this is great for the repository as Git only has to scan through a single packfile when looking up objects. The main downside of such a repacking strategy is that computing a single packfile for a repository can take a significant amount of time for large repositories.\n\nThe geometric strategy helps mitigate this concern by maintaining a geometric progression of packfiles based on their size instead of always repacking into a single packfile. To explain more plainly, when repacking Git maintains a set of packfiles ordered by size where each packfile in the sequence is expected to be at least twice the size of the preceding packfile. If a packfile in the sequence violates this property, packfiles are combined as needed until the progression is restored. This strategy has the advantage of still minimizing the number of packfiles in a repository while also minimizing the amount of work that must be done for most repacking operations.\n\nOne problem with the geometric repacking strategy was that it was not compatible with partial clones. Partial clones allow the user to clone only parts of a repository by, for example, skipping all blobs larger than 1 megabyte. This can significantly reduce the size of a repository, and Git knows how to backfill missing objects that it needs to access at a later point in time.\n\nThe result is a repository that is missing some objects, and any object that may not be fully connected is stored in a “promisor” packfile.  When repacking, this promisor property needs to be retained going forward for packfiles containing a promisor object so it is known whether a missing object is expected and can be backfilled from the promisor remote. With an all-into-one repack, Git knows how to handle promisor objects properly and stores them in a separate promisor packfile. Unfortunately, the geometric repacking strategy did not know to give special treatment to promisor packfiles and instead would merge them with normal packfiles without considering whether they reference promisor objects. Luckily, due to a bug the underlying git-pack-objects(1) dies when using geometric repacking in a partial clone repository. So this means repositories in this configuration were not able to be repacked anyways which isn’t great, but better than repository corruption.\n\nWith the release of Git 2.53, geometric repacking now works with partial clone repositories. When performing a geometric repack, promisor packfiles are handled separately in order to preserve the promisor marker and repacked following a separate geometric progression. With this fix, the geometric strategy moves closer towards becoming the default repacking strategy. For more information check out the corresponding [mailing list thread](https://lore.kernel.org/git/20260105-pks-geometric-repack-with-promisors-v1-0-c4660573437e@pks.im/).\n\nThis project was led by [Patrick Steinhardt](https://gitlab.com/pks-gitlab).\n\n## git-fast-import(1) learned to preserve only valid signatures\n\nIn our [Git 2.52 release article](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/whats-new-in-git-2-52-0/), we covered signature related improvements to git-fast-import(1) and git-fast-export(1). Be sure to check out that post for a more detailed explanation of these commands, how they are used, and the changes being made with regards to signatures.\n\nTo quickly recap, git-fast-import(1) provides a backend to efficiently import data into a repository and is used by tools such as [git-filter-repo(1)](https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo) to help rewrite the history of a repository in bulk. In the Git 2.52 release, git-fast-import(1) learned the `--signed-commits=\u003Cmode>` option similar to the same option in git-fast-export(1). With this option, it became possible to unconditionally retain or strip signatures from commits/tags.\n\nIn situations where only part of the repository history has been rewritten, any signature for rewritten commits/tags becomes invalid. This means git-fast-import(1) is limited to either stripping all signatures or keeping all signatures even if they have become invalid. But retaining invalid signatures doesn’t make much sense, so rewriting history with git-repo-filter(1) results in all signatures being stripped, even if the underlying commit/tag is not rewritten. This is unfortunate because if the commit/tag is unchanged, its signature is still valid and thus there is no real reason to strip it. What is really needed is a means to preserve signatures for unchanged objects, but strip invalid ones.\n\nWith the release of Git 2.53, the git-fast-import(1) `--signed-commits=\u003Cmode>` option has learned a new `strip-if-invalid` mode which, when specified, only strips signatures from commits that become invalid due to being rewritten. Thus, with this option it becomes possible to preserve some commit signatures when using git-fast-import(1). This is a critical step towards providing the foundation for tools like git-repo-filter(1) to preserve valid signatures and eventually re-sign invalid signatures.\n\nThis project was led by [Christian Couder](https://gitlab.com/chriscool).\n\n## More data collected in git-repo-structure\n\nIn the Git 2.52 release, the “structure” subcommand was introduced to git-repo(1). The intent of this command was to collect information about the repository and eventually become a native replacement for tools such as [git-sizer(1)](https://github.com/github/git-sizer). At GitLab, we host some extremely large repositories, and having insight into the general structure of a repository is critical to understand its performance characteristics. In this release, the command now also collects total size information for reachable objects in a repository to help understand the overall size of the repository. In the output below, you can see the command now collects both the total inflated and disk sizes of reachable objects by object type.\n\n```shell\n$ git repo structure\n\n| Repository structure | Value      |\n| -------------------- | ---------- |\n| * References         |            |\n|   * Count            |   1.78 k   |\n|     * Branches       |      5     |\n|     * Tags           |   1.03 k   |\n|     * Remotes        |    749     |\n|     * Others         |      0     |\n|                      |            |\n| * Reachable objects  |            |\n|   * Count            | 421.37 k   |\n|     * Commits        |  88.03 k   |\n|     * Trees          | 169.95 k   |\n|     * Blobs          | 162.40 k   |\n|     * Tags           |    994     |\n|   * Inflated size    |   7.61 GiB |\n|     * Commits        |  60.95 MiB |\n|     * Trees          |   2.44 GiB |\n|     * Blobs          |   5.11 GiB |\n|     * Tags           | 731.73 KiB |\n|   * Disk size        | 301.50 MiB |\n|     * Commits        |  33.57 MiB |\n|     * Trees          |  77.92 MiB |\n|     * Blobs          | 189.44 MiB |\n|     * Tags           | 578.13 KiB |\n```\n\nThe keen-eyed among you may have also noticed that the size values in the table output are also now listed in a more human-friendly manner with units appended. In subsequent releases we hope to further expand this command's output to provide additional data points such as the largest individual objects in the repository.\n\nThis project was led by [Justin Tobler](https://gitlab.com/justintobler).\n\n## Read more\n\nThis article highlighted just a few of the contributions made by GitLab and\nthe wider Git community for this latest release. You can learn about these from\nthe [official release announcement](https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqq4inz13e3.fsf@gitster.g/T/#u) of the Git project. Also, check\nout our [previous Git release blog posts](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/tags/git/)\nto see other past highlights of contributions from GitLab team members.","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749663087/Blog/Hero%20Images/git3-cover.png",[29,30,265],{"featured":34,"template":16,"slug":791},"whats-new-in-git-2-53-0",{"promotions":793},[794,808,820,832],{"id":795,"categories":796,"header":798,"text":799,"button":800,"image":805},"ai-modernization",[797],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":801,"config":802},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":803,"dataGaName":804,"dataGaLocation":247},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":806},{"src":807},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":809,"categories":810,"header":812,"text":799,"button":813,"image":817},"devops-modernization",[811,573],"product","Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":814,"config":815},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":816,"dataGaName":804,"dataGaLocation":247},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":818},{"src":819},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":821,"categories":822,"header":824,"text":799,"button":825,"image":829},"security-modernization",[823],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":826,"config":827},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":828,"dataGaName":804,"dataGaLocation":247},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":830},{"src":831},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"id":833,"paths":834,"header":837,"text":838,"button":839,"image":844},"github-azure-migration",[835,836],"migration-from-azure-devops-to-gitlab","integrating-azure-devops-scm-and-gitlab","Is your team ready for GitHub's Azure move?","GitHub is already rebuilding around Azure. Find out what it means for you.",{"text":840,"config":841},"See how GitLab compares to GitHub",{"href":842,"dataGaName":843,"dataGaLocation":247},"/compare/gitlab-vs-github/github-azure-migration/","github azure migration",{"config":845},{"src":819},{"header":847,"blurb":848,"button":849,"secondaryButton":854},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":850,"config":851},"Get your free trial",{"href":852,"dataGaName":54,"dataGaLocation":853},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":509,"config":855},{"href":58,"dataGaName":59,"dataGaLocation":853},1777576634002]