I am running gitlab-ce in docker containers. I am currently using version 10.5.4. I want to update because of a few bugs with kubernetes in this old version. Reading the documentation Here the advice is to "first upgrade to the latest available minor version within your major version." But reading other docs Here says I should update through each minor version. Is that just to avoid downtime?
What is the simplest Upgrade path for me to 11.8, if we're not too worried about downtime?
For anyone else reading it, the quote from the first link is:
We recommend that you first upgrade to the latest available minor version within your major version. By doing this, you can address any deprecation messages that could change behavior in the next major release.
Based on the table below that, the GitLab upgrade path would be 10.5.4 -> 10.8.(latest), fix the deprecations, then 10.8 -> 11.8. The page makes clear that one can (probably) jump between any patch/minor versions without going through the intermediate steps:
It is considered safe to jump between patch versions and minor versions within one major version.
The second source is presumably the Upgrading without Downtime section immediately below the one linked in the question.
Starting with GitLab 9.1.0 it’s possible to upgrade to a newer major, minor, or patch version of GitLab without having to take your GitLab instance offline. However, for this to work there are the following requirements:
- You can only upgrade 1 minor release at a time. So from 9.1 to 9.2, not to 9.3.
It then provides details on background processes required for migrations. These are substantial, so it makes sense that jumping multiple minor versions could be a bit much is not recommended. One minor version at a time for upgrading without downtime. Useful once you are up-to-date, but may be worth skipping with so many minor versions to get through.