GitLab Community Edition (CE) is a free and open-source version of GitLab, a web-based Git repository manager that provides Git repository hosting, issue tracking, and code review. GitLab CE is designed for use by small to medium-sized organizations, and offers many of the same features as the paid versions of GitLab, such as support for multiple programming languages, access control, and collaboration tools.

GitLab CE is a self-hosted solution, which means that you can install it on your own servers and maintain full control over your data. This allows you to customize GitLab CE to suit the needs of your organization, and integrate it with other tools and services.

GitLab CE is released under the MIT License, and the source code is available on GitHub. This allows anyone to download, modify, and contribute to the development of GitLab CE.

In conclusion, GitLab Community Edition is a free and open-source version of GitLab that provides Git repository hosting and collaboration tools for small to medium-sized organizations. It can be installed on your own servers and customized to suit your needs.

To install GitLab Community Edition on Rocky Linux 8, you will first need to have Rocky Linux 8 installed on your system. If you do not have Rocky Linux 8 installed, please refer to the Rocky Linux 8 documentation for instructions on how to do so.

Once you have Rocky Linux 8 installed, the first step in installing GitLab Community Edition is to ensure that your system is up to date. To do this, you can use the following commands:

sudo yum update
sudo yum upgrade

These commands will update your system and install any available updates and upgrades.

Next, you will need to install the necessary dependencies for GitLab Community Edition. These dependencies include PostgreSQL, Redis, and the GitLab package itself. You can install these dependencies using the following commands:

sudo yum install postgresql-server postgresql-contrib redis gitlab-ce

After the dependencies have been installed, you will need to initialize and start the PostgreSQL server. This can be done using the following commands:

sudo postgresql-setup initdb
sudo systemctl enable postgresql
sudo systemctl start postgresql

These commands will initialize the PostgreSQL database and start the PostgreSQL service.

Now that the necessary dependencies are installed and the PostgreSQL service is running, you can configure GitLab. This is done using the gitlab-ctl command-line utility.

To use the gitlab-ctl reconfigure command, you will first need to navigate to the directory where GitLab is installed. This is typically /opt/gitlab/. Once you are in this directory, you can run the gitlab-ctl reconfigure command as follows:

cd /opt/gitlab/
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

When you run this command, you will be prompted for various configuration options, such as the URL of your GitLab instance and the email address of the administrator user. After providing these values, the command will configure and start the GitLab service.

Alternatively, you can provide these configuration options as arguments to the gitlab-ctl reconfigure command. For example, to configure GitLab with a custom URL and administrator email address, you can use the following command:

cd /opt/gitlab/
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure --external-url=https://gitlab.example.com --user-email=admin@example.com

This command will configure GitLab with the specified URL and administrator email address, and start the GitLab service.

In addition to the reconfigure command, the gitlab-ctl utility also provides other commands for managing and configuring GitLab, such as status for checking the status of the GitLab service, and stop and start for stopping and starting the GitLab service, respectively. You can view the full list of available gitlab-ctl commands by running the gitlab-ctl command without any arguments.

In conclusion, to configure GitLab Community Edition on Rocky Linux 8, you can use the gitlab-ctl reconfigure command and provide the necessary configuration options either interactively or as arguments to the command. This will configure and start the GitLab service, allowing you to access the GitLab web interface and set up your GitLab instance.

This command will prompt you for various configuration options, such as the URL of your GitLab instance and the email address of the administrator user. After providing these values, the command will configure and start the GitLab service.

Once GitLab is installed and configured, you can access the GitLab web interface by navigating to the URL you specified during the configuration process. You can then log in with the default administrator user and password (which is “root” and “5iveL!fe”, respectively) and begin setting up your GitLab instance.

In conclusion, installing GitLab Community Edition on Rocky Linux 8 involves installing dependencies, initializing and starting the PostgreSQL service, and configuring GitLab using the gitlab-ctl utility. With these steps, you can easily set up your own GitLab Community Edition instance on Rocky Linux 8.