Platform Engineering · 2024
SVN → GitLab CE Migration & DevSecOps Rollout
Evaluated free Git platforms for an SVN-bound business unit, migrated the codebase to GitLab CE, and published the DevSecOps guidelines, tooling and training that went with it.
- Unit-wide
- Migration scope
- 5+
- Teams supported
Choosing the platform
The unit ran on SVN. Moving off it was a prerequisite for the pipeline work, and the replacement had to be free and self-hostable to get through procurement.
We installed, load-tested and scored the candidates against how the teams actually work. GitLab CE won on self-hosting, CI integration and permission model.
We ran the same exercise for project tracking, comparing Redmine and OpenProject under load before standardising on OpenProject.
Migration
History, branches and access mappings moved over per repository, alongside the pipeline work landing in parallel.
Rollout
The larger part was adoption. We published DevSecOps guidelines and process documentation covering code review, scanning, deployment and access requests under the new model, released the tooling, and ran knowledge-transfer sessions for engineers and senior stakeholders.
I later helped several other Platform Solutions teams through the same migration and worked with their DevOps engineers on pipeline and automation design.