Regarding Gitlab updates

Gitlab will be updated to v17 for the upcoming semester during August. As this is a major update, UI changes and changes in operation are expected. For a full list of major changes/breakages, see the official Gitlab release notes for v17

Subsequent updates to minor versions of 17.x will follow on quiet times during semester. Since the upstream policy of Gitlab maintainers is to support only three newest releases, we will try to keep up with this cycle and stay on [newest-1] as the newest release almost always breaks functionality.

Patches and vulnerability updates are done during office hours on thursdays or fridays, depending on upstream releases. This will usually take less than half an hour and you can see if updates are in progress from the maintenance banner in the Gitlab UI. When update window is active Gitlab is in read-only mode, making sure no data is lost during updates. Keeping personal backups is still highly recommended.