GitLab Community Edition

GitLab is open source software to collaborate on code.
Manage git repositories with fine-grained access controls that keep your code secure.
Perform code reviews and enhance collaboration with merge requests.
Each project can also have an issue tracker and a wiki.
Used by more than 100,000 organizations, GitLab is the most popular solution to manage git repositories on-premises.
Read more about GitLab at about.gitlab.com.

Check the current instance configuration


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GitLab Docs

Welcome to GitLab Documentation.

Here you can access the complete documentation for GitLab, the single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle.

Overview

No matter how you use GitLab, we have documentation for you.

Essential Documentation Essential Documentation
User Documentation
Discover features and concepts for GitLab users.
Administrator documentation
Everything GitLab self-managed administrators need to know.
Contributing to GitLab
At GitLab, everyone can contribute!
New to Git and GitLab?
We have resources to get you started.
Building an integration with GitLab?
Consult our automation and integration documentation.
Coming to GitLab from another platform?
Consult our handy guides.
Install GitLab
Installation options for different platforms.
Customers
Information for new and existing customers.
Update GitLab
Update your GitLab self-managed instance to the latest version.
GitLab Releases
What's new in GitLab.

Popular Documentation

Have a look at some of our most popular documentation resources:

Popular Topic Description
Configuring .gitlab-ci.yml Complete syntax documentation for configuring your CI pipelines.
GitLab CI/CD examples Get up to speed quickly with common CI/CD scenarios.
GitLab Container Registry Host containers within GitLab.
GitLab Pages Host static websites for your projects with GitLab.
GitLab.com settings Settings for GitLab.com.
Kubernetes integration Use GitLab with Kubernetes.
SSH authentication Secure your network communications.
Using Docker images Build and test your applications with Docker.

The entire DevOps Lifecycle

GitLab is the first single application for software development, security, and operations that enables Concurrent DevOps, making the software lifecycle faster and radically improving the speed of business.

GitLab provides solutions for all the stages of the DevOps lifecycle:

DevOps Stages

GitLab is like a top-of-the-line kitchen for making software. As the executive chef, you decide what software you want to serve. Using your recipe, GitLab handles all the prep work, cooking, and delivery, so you can turn around orders faster than ever.

The following sections provide links to documentation for each DevOps stage:

DevOps Stage Documentation for
Manage Statistics and analytics features.
Plan Project planning and management features.
Create Source code and data creation and management features.
Verify Testing, code quality, and continuous integration features.
Package Docker container registry.
Release Application release and delivery features.
Configure Application and infrastructure configuration tools.
Monitor Application monitoring and metrics features.
Secure Security capability features.

Manage

GitLab provides statistics and insight into ways you can maximize the value of GitLab in your organization.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Manage stage:

Manage Topics Description
Authentication and
Authorization
(CORE ONLY)
Supported authentication and authorization providers.
GitLab Cycle Analytics Measure the time it takes to go from an idea to production for each project you have.
Instance Statistics Discover statistics on how many GitLab features you use and user activity.

Plan

Whether you use Waterfall, Agile, or Conversational Development, GitLab streamlines your collaborative workflows.

Visualize, prioritize, coordinate, and track your progress your way with GitLab’s flexible project management tools.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Plan stage:

Plan Topics Description
Burndown Charts (STARTER) Watch your project's progress throughout a specific milestone.
Discussions Threads, comments, and resolvable threads in issues, commits, and merge requests.
Due Dates Keep track of issue deadlines.
Epics (ULTIMATE) Tracking groups of issues that share a theme.
Issues, including confidential issues,
issue and merge request templates,
and moving issues
Project issues, restricting access to issues, create templates for submitting new issues and merge requests, and moving issues between projects.
Labels Categorize issues or merge requests with descriptive labels.
Milestones Set milestones for delivery of issues and merge requests, with optional due date.
Project Issue Board Display issues on a Scrum or Kanban board.
Quick Actions Shortcuts for common actions on issues or merge requests, replacing the need to click buttons or use dropdowns in GitLab's UI.
Related Issues (STARTER) Create a relationship between issues.
Roadmap (ULTIMATE) Visualize epic timelines.
Service Desk (PREMIUM) A simple way to allow people to create issues in your GitLab instance without needing their own user account.
Time Tracking Track time spent on issues and merge requests.
Todos Keep track of work requiring attention with a chronological list displayed on a simple dashboard.

Create

Consolidate source code into a single distributed version control system that’s easily managed and controlled without disrupting your workflow.

GitLab’s Git repositories come complete with branching tools and access controls, providing a scalable, single source of truth for collaborating on projects and code.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Create stage:

Projects and Groups

Create Topics - Projects and Groups Description
Advanced global search (STARTER) Leverage Elasticsearch for faster, more advanced code search across your entire GitLab instance.
Advanced syntax search (STARTER) Use advanced queries for more targeted search results.
Contribution analytics (STARTER) See detailed statistics of group contributors.
Create and fork projects, and
import and export projects
between instances
Create, duplicate, and move projects.
File locking (PREMIUM) Lock files to avoid merge conflicts.
GitLab Pages Build, test, and deploy your static website with GitLab Pages.
Groups and Subgroups Organize your projects in groups.
Issues Analytics (PREMIUM) Check how many issues were created per month.
Projects, including project access
and settings
Host source code, and control your project's visibility and set configuration.
Search through GitLab Search for issues, merge requests, projects, groups, and todos.
Snippets Snippets allow you to create little bits of code.
Web IDE Edit files within GitLab's user interface.
Wikis Enhance your repository documentation with built-in wikis.

Repositories

Create Topics - Repositories Description
Branches and the default branch How to use branches in GitLab.
Commits and signing commits Work with commits, and use GPG to sign your commits.
Create branches, create
and upload files, and create directories
Create branches, create and upload files, and create directories within GitLab.
Delete merged branches Bulk delete branches after their changes are merged.
File templates File templates for common files.
Files Files management.
Jupyter Notebook files GitLab's support for .ipynb files.
Protected branches Use protected branches.
Push rules (STARTER) Additional control over pushes to your projects.
Repositories Manage source code repositories in GitLab's user interface.
Repository mirroring (STARTER) Push to or pull from repositories outside of GitLab
Start a merge request Start merge request when committing via GitLab's user interface.

Merge Requests

Create Topics - Merge Requests Description
Checking out merge requests locally Tips for working with merge requests locally.
Cherry-picking Use GitLab for cherry-picking changes.
Merge request thread resolution Resolve threads, move threads in a merge request to an issue, and only allow merge requests to be merged if all threads are resolved.
Merge requests Merge request management.
Work In Progress "WIP" merge requests Prevent merges of work-in-progress merge requests.

Integration and Automation

Create Topics - Integration and Automation Description
GitLab API Integrate GitLab via a simple and powerful API.
GitLab Integration Integrate with multiple third-party services with GitLab to allow external issue trackers and external authentication.
GitLab Webhooks Let GitLab notify you when new code has been pushed to your project.
Jira Development Panel (PREMIUM) See GitLab information in the Jira Development Panel.
Project Services Integrate a project with external services, such as CI and chat.
Trello Power-Up Integrate with GitLab's Trello Power-Up.

Verify

Spot errors sooner, improve security and shorten feedback cycles with built-in static code analysis, code testing, code quality, dependency checking, and Review Apps. Customize your approval workflow controls, automatically test the quality of your code, and spin up a staging environment for every code change.

GitLab Continuous Integration is the most popular next generation testing system that scales to run your tests faster.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Verify stage:

Verify Topics Description
Code Quality reports (STARTER) Analyze source code quality.
GitLab CI/CD Explore the features and capabilities of Continuous Integration with GitLab.
JUnit test reports Display JUnit test reports on merge requests.
Multi-project pipelines (PREMIUM) Visualize entire pipelines that span multiple projects, including all cross-project inter-dependencies.
Pipeline Graphs Visualize builds.
Review Apps Preview changes to your application right from a merge request.

Package

GitLab Container Registry gives you the enhanced security and access controls of custom Docker images without 3rd party add-ons. Easily upload and download images from GitLab CI/CD with full Git repository management integration.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Package stage:

Package Topics Description
GitLab Container Registry Learn how to use GitLab's built-in Container Registry.
GitLab Packages (PREMIUM) Use GitLab as an NPM registry or Maven repository.

Release

Spend less time configuring your tools, and more time creating. Whether you’re deploying to one server or thousands, build, test, and release your code confidently and securely with GitLab’s built-in Continuous Delivery and Deployment.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Release stage:

Release Topics Description
Auto Deploy Configure GitLab for the deployment of your application.
Canary Deployments (PREMIUM) Employ a popular CI strategy where a small portion of the fleet is updated to the new version first.
Deploy Boards (PREMIUM) View the current health and status of each CI environment running on Kubernetes, displaying the status of the pods in the deployment.
Environments and deployments With environments, you can control the continuous deployment of your software within GitLab.
Environment-specific variables Limit scope of variables to specific environments.
GitLab CI/CD Explore the features and capabilities of Continuous Deployment and Delivery with GitLab.
GitLab Pages Build, test, and deploy a static site directly from GitLab.
Protected Runners Select Runners to only pick jobs for protected branches and tags.
Scheduled Pipelines Execute pipelines on a schedule.

Configure

Automate your entire workflow from build to deploy and monitoring with GitLab Auto DevOps. Best practice templates get you started with minimal to zero configuration. Then customize everything from buildpacks to CI/CD.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Configure stage:

Configure Topics Description
Auto DevOps Automatically employ a complete DevOps lifecycle.
Create Kubernetes clusters on GKE Use Google Kubernetes Engine and GitLab.
Executable Runbooks Documented procedures that explain how to carry out particular processes.
GitLab ChatOps Interact with CI/CD jobs through chat services.
Installing Applications Deploy Helm, Ingress, and Prometheus on Kubernetes.
Mattermost slash commands Enable and use slash commands from within Mattermost.
Multiple Kubernetes Clusters (PREMIUM) Associate more than one Kubernetes clusters to your project.
Protected variables Restrict variables to protected branches and tags.
Serverless Run serverless workloads on Kubernetes.
Slack slash commands Enable and use slash commands from within Slack.

Monitor

Ensure your applications are always responsive and available.

GitLab collects and displays performance metrics for deployed applications so you can know in an instant how code changes impact your production environment.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Monitor stage:

Monitor Topics Description
GitLab Performance Monitoring (CORE ONLY) Use InfluxDB and Grafana to monitor the performance of your GitLab instance (will be eventually replaced by Prometheus).
GitLab Prometheus (CORE ONLY) Configure the bundled Prometheus to collect various metrics from your GitLab instance.
Health check GitLab provides liveness and readiness probes to indicate service health and reachability to required services.
Prometheus project integration Configure the Prometheus integration per project and monitor your CI/CD environments.
Prometheus metrics Let Prometheus collect metrics from various services, like Kubernetes, NGINX, NGINX ingress controller, HAProxy, and Amazon Cloud Watch.

Secure

Check your application for security vulnerabilities that may lead to unauthorized access, data leaks, and denial of services. GitLab will perform static and dynamic tests on the code of your application, looking for known flaws and report them in the merge request so you can fix them before merging. Security teams can use dashboards to get a high-level view on projects and groups, and start remediation processes when needed.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Secure stage:

Secure Topics Description
Container Scanning (ULTIMATE) Use Clair to scan docker images for known vulnerabilities.
Dependency List (ULTIMATE) View your project's dependencies and their known vulnerabilities.
Dependency Scanning (ULTIMATE) Analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (ULTIMATE) Analyze running web applications for known vulnerabilities.
Group Security Dashboard (ULTIMATE) View vulnerabilities in all the projects in a group and its subgroups.
License Compliance (ULTIMATE) Search your project's dependencies for their licenses.
Project Security Dashboard (ULTIMATE) View the latest security reports for your project.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (ULTIMATE) Analyze source code for known vulnerabilities.

New to Git and GitLab?

Working with new systems can be daunting.

We have the following documentation to rapidly uplift your GitLab knowledge:

Topic Description
GitLab basics guides Start working on the command line and with GitLab.
GitLab Workflow and overview Enhance your workflow with the best of GitLab Workflow.
Get started with GitLab CI/CD Quickly implement GitLab CI/CD.
Auto DevOps Learn more about GitLab's Auto DevOps.
GitLab Markdown GitLab's advanced formatting system (GitLab Flavored Markdown)

User account

Learn more about GitLab account management:

Topic Description
User account Manage your account.
Authentication Account security with two-factor authentication, set up your ssh keys, and deploy keys for secure access to your projects.
Profile settings Manage your profile settings, two factor authentication, and more.
User permissions Learn what each role in a project can do.

Git and GitLab

Learn more about using Git, and using Git with GitLab:

Topic Description
Git Getting started with Git, branching strategies, Git LFS, and advanced use.
Git cheatsheet Download a PDF describing the most used Git operations.
GitLab Flow Explore the best of Git with the GitLab Flow strategy.

Coming to GitLab from another platform

If you are coming to GitLab from another platform, you'll find the following information useful:

Topic Description
Importing to GitLab Import your projects from GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab.com, FogBugz, and SVN into GitLab.
Migrating from SVN Convert a SVN repository to Git and GitLab.

Building an integration with GitLab

There are many ways to integrate with GitLab, including:

Topic Description
GitLab API Integrate GitLab via a simple and powerful API.
Integrations and automation All GitLab integration and automation options.

Contributing to GitLab

GitLab Community Edition is open source and GitLab Enterprise Edition is open-core.

Learn how to contribute to GitLab with the following resources:

Topic Description
Development How to contribute to GitLab development.
Legal Contributor license agreements.
Writing documentation How to contribute to GitLab Docs.