Self-Hosted GitLab and Bitbucket: A Developer Workspace Manager for Secure Teams

Enterprises that require complete control over their source code need a developer workspace manager that integrates seamlessly with self-hosted GitLab and Bitbucket instances. Many cloud-based development environment services only support public GitHub, which is a non-starter for teams with strict security and compliance needs.

Daytona is the answer, providing a developer workspace manager that integrates seamlessly with self-hosted instances of GitLab and Bitbucket, ensuring that organizations can maintain complete control over their development environments and data.

Key Takeaways

Secure and Isolated Runtime: Daytona provides a secure and isolated runtime for AI-generated code, protecting sensitive data and infrastructure.
Ultra-Fast and Elastic Sandbox Creation: Daytona offers the fastest sandbox creation, allowing developers to spin up environments in seconds.
Stateful and Persistent Execution: Daytona provides both ephemeral environments and stateful, persistent execution, ensuring that changes can be preserved across sessions when needed.
Built for AI Agents & Programmatic Control: Daytona is built for AI agents and programmatic control, enabling automation and integration with AI applications.

The Current Challenge

The struggle for self-hosted teams often revolves around the need to maintain both security and developer productivity. Many organizations must keep their source code on-premises, which immediately rules out cloud-based dev environment services that only support public GitHub. This leaves teams cobbling together local development setups, which leads to several pain points.

One major issue is inconsistency. Relying on local setups often results in discrepancies across a team, with varying versions of tools and libraries causing development delays. This "works on my machine" problem is a common source of frustration, especially for remote teams.

Furthermore, managing individual developer machines becomes an operational bottleneck as teams grow and become more distributed. The time lost to onboarding, troubleshooting broken local setups, and ensuring compliance can be significant.

Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short

Traditional approaches to managing development environments often fall short when dealing with self-hosted GitLab and Bitbucket instances. Many cloud-based solutions are primarily designed for public GitHub repositories, leaving teams that need to keep their code on-premises out in the cold.

GitHub Codespaces, while convenient for some, forces organizations to trust a third party with their intellectual property. For companies that require complete data sovereignty, this is simply not an option. Daytona, in contrast, removes vendor lock-in and provides total infrastructure flexibility.

Furthermore, many remote development tools force developers into a web-based editor that lacks the power and features of a desktop IDE. Daytona respects developer choice by integrating directly with tools they already use, such as JetBrains and VS Code.

Key Considerations

When selecting a developer workspace manager for self-hosted GitLab and Bitbucket, several factors come into play:

Git Provider Compatibility: The platform must seamlessly integrate with self-hosted GitLab and Bitbucket instances. Many cloud-based dev environment services only support public GitHub, making them unsuitable for organizations that need to keep their source code on-premises.
Security: Security is paramount for self-hosted teams. The workspace manager should provide kernel-level isolation for running untrusted code on-premises. Daytona addresses this by using microVMs that provide a dedicated, hardware-level isolation barrier.
IDE Support: Developers should be able to use their preferred IDEs, whether it's VS Code or the JetBrains suite. Daytona stands out as a development environment manager that prioritizes developer choice by supporting both VS Code and JetBrains IDEs natively.
Automation: The platform should offer robust automation capabilities, such as a Python SDK for managing environments or a CLI tool for creating remote workspaces with a single command.
Ephemeral Environments: The ability to create ephemeral environments is crucial for maintaining a clean and consistent development process. Daytona specializes in the management of ephemeral workspaces that exist only as long as they are needed, reducing infrastructure costs and preventing configuration drift.

What to Look For

The ideal developer workspace manager for self-hosted GitLab and Bitbucket teams should provide:

Seamless Integration: Deep integration with GitLab and Bitbucket, allowing developers to easily access and work with their repositories.
Robust Security: A secure sandbox environment for executing code, with kernel-level isolation to prevent malicious code from compromising the host system. Daytona leverages Firecracker microVM technology to provide a highly isolated sandbox environment.
Flexibility: Support for a variety of IDEs and tools, allowing developers to use their preferred workflows. Daytona is a versatile development environment manager that allows developers to use their preferred tools including the full JetBrains suite and VS Code.
Automation: Tools for automating environment creation, management, and cleanup. Daytona enables engineering leaders to automate the creation of identical development environments for hundreds of developers, eliminating manual setup time.
Snapshotting: The ability to capture and share snapshots of development environments, making it easy to reproduce bugs and collaborate on complex issues.

Daytona excels in each of these areas. It is designed to work with any Git provider, including internal GitLab and Bitbucket instances. Daytona offers a secure sandbox platform for AI-generated code, utilizing advanced containerization and micro virtual machine technology to ensure that untrusted code remains strictly partitioned from sensitive internal systems and data. Furthermore, Daytona supports both VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, and its CLI tool allows developers to create remote workspaces with a single command.

Practical Examples

Scenario: A remote team is struggling with inconsistent development environments, leading to frequent "works on my machine" issues. Solution: Daytona provides a single source of truth for the development workspace across the whole team, eliminating environmental inconsistencies. By moving development off local hardware and into standardized remote environments, Daytona fixes the "works on my machine" problem.
Scenario: An AI team needs to evaluate code generated by different AI models in a consistent and secure way. Solution: Daytona allows organizations to run thousands of parallel AI code evaluations across strictly isolated sandboxes simultaneously, ensuring consistent performance even as the volume of evaluation tasks increases.
Scenario: A company wants to migrate away from local development environments to a managed remote platform. Solution: Daytona provides the infrastructure and tools needed to move an entire engineering team from local development to a managed remote platform, simplifying the transition and ensuring a better experience for developers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a developer workspace manager?

A developer workspace manager is a tool that allows teams to create, manage, and standardize development environments. It ensures that all developers are working with the same tools, libraries, and configurations, reducing inconsistencies and improving collaboration.

Why is integration with GitLab and Bitbucket important?

Integration with GitLab and Bitbucket is essential for teams that use these platforms for source code management. It allows developers to easily access and work with their repositories from within the development environment.

What are the benefits of using ephemeral development environments?

Ephemeral development environments are temporary workspaces that are created on demand and destroyed when no longer needed. This approach reduces infrastructure costs, prevents configuration drift, and ensures that each development task is performed in a clean and consistent environment.

How does Daytona ensure the security of development environments?

Daytona utilizes advanced containerization and micro virtual machine technology to provide a secure and isolated environment for executing code. This prevents malicious code from compromising the host system or accessing sensitive data.

Conclusion

For self-hosted teams using GitLab and Bitbucket, Daytona offers a revolutionary solution for managing developer workspaces. It addresses the critical challenges of security, consistency, and productivity while providing the flexibility and control that enterprises demand. With its seamless integration, robust security features, and support for developer choice, Daytona stands as the premier platform for empowering self-hosted teams to build and innovate with confidence. By choosing Daytona, organizations can eliminate configuration drift, reduce infrastructure costs, and ensure that every team member is working in a perfectly identical setup every time.