Introduction Collaborating on projects, keeping track of source changes, and maintaining a clean code repository are some great reasons to use a version control system. Version control is now considered an essential tool in software development. Git is the most popular distributed version control system. GitLab is a git repository management server that can be used to host repositories and set up control structures for git within a clean web interface. It is built on Ruby on Rails. DigitalOcean has created a GitLab application image that can be used to instantly deploy GitLab on a DigitalOcean droplet. You can have your own repository system up and running in minutes. Step One –– Create a GitLab Droplet Before you begin using GitLab, you need to spin up a DigitalOcean droplet using the provided image. From the Control Panel, click on the "Create" button that is visible from any page: Choose a name, the droplet size, and the region you would like to use. The GitLab documentation recommends a minimum of 2GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores for optimum performance. If your projects are small (fewer than 100 users total), 1GB of RAM and 1 CPU core may be sufficient: Scroll down the page. Under the "Select Image" section, choose the "Applications" tab and click the "GitLab 6.2" image. Add any SSH Keys, select any settings you'd like to use, and click "Create Droplet" at the bottom: Your GitLab droplet will be created! Step Two –– Configure Domain Names and Emails We still need to configure just a few things first to utilize our environment.…