• Prerequisites
• Import repositories
• Items that are imported
• Items that are not imported
• Items that are imported but changed
• User assignment
  • User assignment by username
• Troubleshooting
  • General
  • LFS objects not imported
• Related topics

Import your project from Bitbucket Server

Import your projects from Bitbucket Server to GitLab.

Prerequisites

• Bitbucket Server import source must be enabled. If not enabled, ask your GitLab administrator to enable it. The Bitbucket Server import source is enabled by default on GitLab.com.
• At least the Maintainer role on the destination group to import to.
• Bitbucket Server authentication token with administrator access.

Import repositories

To import your Bitbucket repositories:

1. Sign in to GitLab.
2. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Create new () and New project/repository.
3. Select Import project.
4. Select Bitbucket Server.
5. Log in to Bitbucket and grant GitLab access to your Bitbucket account.
6. Select the projects to import, or import all projects. You can filter projects by name and select the namespace for which to import each project.
7. To import a project:
   • For the first time: Select Import.
   • Again: Select Re-import. Specify a new name and select Re-import again. Re-importing creates a new copy of the source project.

Items that are imported

• Repository description
• Git repository data
• Pull requests
• Pull request comments, reviewers, approvals, and merge events
• LFS objects

When importing, repository public access is retained. If a repository is private in Bitbucket, it’s created as private in GitLab as well.

When closed or merged pull requests are imported, commit SHAs that do not exist in the repository are fetched from the Bitbucket server to make sure pull requests have commits tied to them:

• Source commit SHAs are saved with references in the format refs/merge-requests/<iid>/head.
• Target commit SHAs are saved with references in the format refs/keep-around/<SHA>.

If the source commit does not exist in the repository, a commit containing the SHA in the commit message is used instead.

Items that are not imported

The following items aren’t imported:

• Attachments in Markdown
• Task lists
• Emoji reactions

Items that are imported but changed

The following items are changed when they are imported:

• GitLab doesn’t allow comments on arbitrary lines of code. Any out-of-bounds Bitbucket comments are inserted as comments in the merge request.
• Multiple threading levels are collapsed into one thread and quotes are added as part of the original comment.
• Project filtering doesn’t support fuzzy search. Only starts with or full match strings are supported.

User assignment

When issues and pull requests are importing, the importer tries to find the author’s email address with a confirmed email address in the GitLab user database. If no such user is available, the project creator is set as the author. The importer appends a note in the comment to mark the original creator.

The importer creates any new namespaces (groups) if they don’t exist. If the namespace is taken, the repository imports under the namespace of the user who started the import process.

The importer attempts to find:

• Reviewers by their email address in the GitLab user database. If they don’t exist in GitLab, they are not added as reviewers to a merge request.
• Approvers by username or email. If they don’t exist in GitLab, the approval is not added to a merge request.

User assignment by username

With this feature enabled, the importer tries to find a user in the GitLab user database with the author’s:

• username
• slug
• displayName

If no user matches these properties, the project creator is set as the author.

Troubleshooting

General

If the GUI-based import tool does not work, you can try to:

• Use the GitLab Import API Bitbucket Server endpoint.
• Set up repository mirroring. It provides verbose error output.

See the troubleshooting section for Bitbucket Cloud.

LFS objects not imported

If the project import completes but LFS objects can’t be downloaded or cloned, you may be using a password or personal access token containing special characters. For more information, see this issue.

Related topics

• Automate group and project import