Gitter is an open-sourceinstant messaging and chat room system for developers and users of GitLab and GitHubrepositories. Gitter is provided as software-as-a-service, with a free option providing all basic features and the ability to create a single private chat room, and paid subscription options for individuals and organisations, which allows them to create arbitrary numbers of private chat rooms. Individual chat rooms can be created for individual git repositories on GitHub. Chatroom privacy follows the privacy settings of the associated GitHub repository: thus, a chatroom for a private GitHub repository is also private to those with access to the repository. A graphical badge linking to the chat room can then be placed in the git repository's README file, bringing it to the attention of all users and developers of the project. Users can chat in the chat rooms, or access private chat rooms for repositories they have access to, by logging into Gitter via GitHub. Gitter is similar to Slack. Like Slack, it automatically logs all messages in the cloud.
Features
Gitter supports:
Notifications, which are batched up on mobile devices to avoid annoyance
Inline media files
Viewing and subscribing to multiple chat rooms in one web browser tab
Linking to individual files in the linked git repository
Linking to GitHub issues in the linked git repository, with hovercards showing the details of the issue
Official Gitter apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android are available.
Advantages and disadvantages
Like other chat technologies, Gitter allows users and developers to instant message. Because of its integration with Github authentication and its web-based chat client, it is easy for developers who use GitHub to create or join a chat room without needing to install any extra software, or create another username/password pair to remember.
Maximalist GitHub permissions
Gitter does not provide a regular password authentication. Instead, it asks for maximalist GitHub account permissions.
Pervasive logging
The fact that messages posted to Gitter chat rooms are preserved indefinitely in chat room logs means that all users can see all messages in a chat room going back to when the chat room was created, which is useful for finding previous discussions and solutions to problems. However, like logged IRC channels, Gitter has a tradeoff of greater convenience against lower privacy relative to unlogged IRC channels.
History
Gitter was created by some developers who were initially trying to create a generic web-based chat product, but then wrote extra code to hook their chat application up to GitHub to meet their own needs, and realised that they could turn the combined product into a viable specialist product in its own right. Gitter came out of beta in 2014. During the beta period, Gitter delivered 1.8 million chat messages. On March 15, 2017, GitLab announced the acquisition of Gitter. Included in the announcement was the stated intent that Gitter would continue as a standalone project. Additionally, GitLab announced that the code would become open source under an MIT License no later than June 2017. The source code has since been published in a on GitLab's own instance of .
Implementation
The Gitter web application is implemented entirely in JavaScript, with the back end being implemented on Node.js. The source code to the web application was formerly proprietary, although Gitter had made numerous auxiliary projects available as open-source software, such as an IRC bridge for power users who prefer using IRC client applications to converse in the Gitter chat rooms.
