Routing

The GitLab backend is written primarily with Rails so it uses Rails routing. Beside Rails best practices, there are few rules unique to the GitLab application. To support subgroups, GitLab project and group routes use the wildcard character to match project and group routes. For example, we might have a path such as:

/gitlab-com/customer-success/north-america/west/customerA

However, paths can be ambiguous. Consider the following example:

/gitlab-com/edit

It's ambiguous whether there is a subgroup named edit or whether this is a special endpoint to edit the gitlab-com group.

To eliminate the ambiguity and to make the backend easier to maintain, we introduced the /-/ scope. The purpose of it is to separate group or project paths from the rest of the routes. Also it helps to reduce the number of reserved names.

Global routes

We have a number of global routes. For example:

/-/health
/-/metrics

Group routes

Every group route must be under the /-/ scope.

Examples:

gitlab-org/-/edit
gitlab-org/-/activity
gitlab-org/-/security/dashboard
gitlab-org/serverless/-/activity

To achieve that, use the scope '-' method.

Project routes

Every project route must be under the /-/ scope, except cases where a Git client or other software requires something different.

Examples:

gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/-/activity
gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/-/jobs/123
gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/-/settings/repository
gitlab-org/serverless/runtimes/-/settings/repository

Currently, only some project routes are placed under the /-/ scope. However, you can help us migrate more of them! To migrate project routes:

1. Modify existing routes by adding - scope.
2. Add redirects for legacy routes by using Gitlab::Routing.redirect_legacy_paths.
3. Create a technical debt issue to remove deprecated routes in later releases.

To get started, see an example merge request.