VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle content lifecycle management integrates natively into a GitLab and Bitbucket endpoint to provide content source control.

You can store content in both the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle version-controlled repository and a GitLab or Bitbucket branch. This allows developers to work together to check in and check out content, and to code review changes prior to deploying to test or production environments.

VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle stores all source control commit hashes for the purpose of check in, so the correct state of content is known. This enables multi-developer support, which reduces the risk of overwriting content and reduces the number of merge conflicts that can occur.

To use source control in VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle, you must meet the following prerequisites:
  • Verify that you have a GitLab or Bitbucket server. If you do not have an existing GitLab server, you can use the Gitlab-CE free docker container.
  • Verify that at least one VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle user has access to GitLab or Bitbucket.
  • Create a branch in GitLab and apply the necessary permissions in GitLab for other developers to check in and check out content to the branch.
  • The GitLab user must create an access token in GitLab and store the token against the GitLab instance under VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle Content Settings.

As a best practice, each time content is checked in to source control, a new version should be checked out and deployed to a content endpoint. This saves the latest changes from other developers (effective rebase of the content) and also communicates to the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle content services which GIT Commit Hash is deployed to which content per endpoint.

Contents referring to multiple commit hashes