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A repository is where you store your code and make changes to it. Your changes are tracked with version control.
Each project contains a repository.
Create a repository
To create a repository, you can:
Add files to a repository
You can add files to a repository:
- When you create a project.
- After you create a project, by using:
Add a file from the UI
You can upload a file from the GitLab UI.
- On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
- Go to the directory where you want to upload the file.
- Next to the directory name, select the plus icon () > Upload file.
- Complete the fields.
- To create a merge request with your changes, enter a branch name that’s not your repository’s default branch.
- Select Upload file.
Commit changes to a repository
You can commit your changes, to a branch in the repository. When you use the command line, you can commit multiple times before you push.
-
Commit message:
A commit message identifies what is being changed and why.
In GitLab, you can add keywords to the commit
message to perform one of the following actions:
- Trigger a GitLab CI/CD pipeline: If the project is configured with GitLab CI/CD, you trigger a pipeline per push, not per commit.
-
Skip pipelines:
Add the
ci skip
keyword to your commit message to make GitLab CI/CD skip the pipeline. - Cross-link issues and merge requests: Use cross-linking to keep track of related parts of your workflow. If you mention an issue or a merge request in a commit message, they are displayed on their respective thread.
- Cherry-pick a commit: In GitLab, you can cherry-pick a commit from the UI.
- Revert a commit: Revert a commit from the UI to a selected branch.
- Sign a commit: Add extra security by signing your commits.
Clone a repository
You can clone a repository by using the command line.
Alternatively, you can clone directly into a code editor.
Clone and open in Apple Xcode
Projects that contain a .xcodeproj
or .xcworkspace
directory can be cloned
into Xcode on macOS.
- From the GitLab UI, go to the project’s overview page.
- Select Clone.
- Select Xcode.
The project is cloned onto your computer and you are prompted to open Xcode.
Clone and open in Visual Studio Code
Introduced in GitLab 13.10.
All projects can be cloned into Visual Studio Code from the GitLab user interface, but you can also install the GitLab Workflow VS Code extension to clone from Visual Studio Code:
- From the GitLab interface:
- Go to the project’s overview page.
- Select Clone.
- Under Open in your IDE, select Visual Studio Code (SSH) or Visual Studio Code (HTTPS).
-
Select a folder to clone the project into.
After Visual Studio Code clones your project, it opens the folder.
- From Visual Studio Code, with the extension installed, use the
extension’s
Git: Clone
command.
Clone and open in IntelliJ IDEA
All projects can be cloned into IntelliJ IDEA from the GitLab user interface.
Prerequisites:
- The JetBrains Toolbox App must be also be installed.
To do this:
- Go to the project’s overview page.
- Select Clone.
- Under Open in your IDE, select IntelliJ IDEA (SSH) or IntelliJ IDEA (HTTPS).
Download the code in a repository
Support for including Git LFS blobs was introduced in GitLab 13.5.
You can download the source code that’s stored in a repository.
- Above the file list, select the download icon ().
-
From the options, select the files you want to download.
-
Source code:
Download the source code from the current branch you’re viewing.
Available extensions:
zip
,tar
,tar.gz
, andtar.bz2
. -
Directory:
Download a specific directory. Visible only when you view a subdirectory.
Available extensions:
zip
,tar
,tar.gz
, andtar.bz2
. - Artifacts: Download the artifacts from the latest CI job.
-
Source code:
Download the source code from the current branch you’re viewing.
Available extensions:
The checksums of generated archives can change even if the repository itself doesn’t change. This can occur, for example, if Git or a third-party library that GitLab uses changes.
Repository languages
For the default branch of each repository, GitLab determines which programming languages are used. This information is displayed on the Project overview page.
When new files are added, this information can take up to five minutes to update.
Add repository languages
Not all files are detected and listed on the Project overview page. Documentation, vendor code, and most markup languages are excluded.
You can change this behavior by overriding the default settings.
- In your repository’s root directory, create a file named
.gitattributes
. -
Add a line that tells GitLab to include files of this type. For example, to enable
.proto
files, add the following code:*.proto linguist-detectable=true
View a list of supported data types.
This feature can use excessive CPU. For more information, see the troubleshooting section.
Supported markup languages
If your file has one of the following file extensions, GitLab renders the contents of the file’s markup language in the UI.
Markup language | Extensions |
---|---|
Plain text | txt
|
Markdown |
mdown , mkd , mkdn , md , markdown
|
reStructuredText | rst
|
AsciiDoc |
adoc , ad , asciidoc
|
Textile | textile
|
Rdoc | rdoc
|
Org mode | org
|
creole | creole
|
MediaWiki |
wiki , mediawiki
|
README and index files
When a README
or index
file is present in a repository, GitLab renders its contents.
These files can either be plain text or have the extension of a
supported markup language.
- When both a
README
and anindex
file are present, theREADME
always takes precedence. - When multiple files have the same name but a different extension, the files are
ordered alphabetically. Any file without an extension is ordered last.
For example,
README.adoc
takes precedence overREADME.md
, andREADME.rst
takes precedence overREADME
.
OpenAPI viewer
Introduced in GitLab 12.6.
GitLab can render OpenAPI specification files. The file name must include openapi
or swagger
and the extension must be yaml
,
yml
, or json
. The following examples are all correct:
openapi.yml
openapi.yaml
openapi.json
swagger.yml
swagger.yaml
swagger.json
gitlab_swagger.yml
openapi_gitlab.yml
OpenAPI.YML
openapi.Yaml
openapi.JSON
openapi.gitlab.yml
gitlab.openapi.yml
To render an OpenAPI file:
- Go to the OpenAPI file in your repository.
- Between the Display source and Edit buttons, select Display OpenAPI. When an OpenAPI file is found, it replaces the Display rendered file button.
- To display the
operationId
in the operations list, adddisplayOperationId=true
to the query string.
displayOperationId
is present in the query string and has any value, it
evaluates to true
. This behavior matches the default behavior of Swagger.Repository size
Introduced in GitLab 15.3, feature flags gitaly_revlist_for_repo_size
and gitaly_catfile_repo_size
for alternative repository size calculations.
du -sk
command to determine the size of a repository. GitLab can use either
git-rev-list
(enabled with feature flag gitaly_revlist_for_repo_size
) or git-cat-file
(enabled with feature flag
gitaly_catfile_repo_size
) instead. To switch between different calculation methods, an administrator can
enable or disable these feature flags.The Project overview page shows the size of all files in the repository. The size is updated, at most, every 15 minutes. The file size includes repository files, artifacts, and LFS.
The size can differ slightly from one instance to another due to compression, housekeeping, and other factors.
Administrators can set a repository size limit. GitLab sets the size limits for GitLab.com.
Repository contributor analytics
You can view a list and charts of commits made by project members in Contributor analytics.
Repository history graph
A repository graph displays a visual history of the repository network, including branches and merges. This graph can help you visualize the Git flow strategy used in the repository.
Go to your project’s Code > Repository graph.
What happens when a repository path changes
When a repository path changes, GitLab handles the transition from the old location to the new one with a redirect.
When you rename a user, change a group path, or rename a repository:
- URLs for the namespace and everything under it, like projects, are redirected to the new URLs.
- Git remote URLs for projects under the namespace redirect to the new remote URL. When you push or pull to a repository that has changed location, a warning message to update your remote is displayed. Automation scripts or Git clients continue to work after a rename.
- The redirects are available as long as the original path is not claimed by another group, user, or project.
- API redirects may need to be followed explicitly.
After you change a path, you must update the existing URL in the following resources, because they can’t follow redirects:
-
Include statements except
include:component
, otherwise pipelines fail with a syntax error. CI/CD component references can follow redirects. - Namespaced API calls that use the encoded path instead of the numeric namespace and project IDs.
- Docker image references.
- Variables that specify a project or namespace.
Related topics
- GitLab Workflow VS Code extension
- Lock files and prevent change conflicts
- Repository API
- Find files
- Branches
- Create a directory
- Find file history
- Identify changes by line (Git blame)
- Use Jupyter notebooks with GitLab
Troubleshooting
Repository Languages: excessive CPU use
To determine which languages are in a repository’s files, GitLab uses a Ruby gem. When the gem parses a file to determine which type it is, the process can use excessive CPU. The gem contains a heuristics configuration file that defines which file extensions must be parsed.
Files with the .txt
extension and XML files with an extension not defined by the gem can take excessive CPU.
The workaround is to specify the language to assign to specific file extensions. The same approach should also allow misidentified file types to be fixed.
-
Identify the language to specify. The gem contains a configuration file for known data types. To add an entry for text files, for example:
Text: type: prose wrap: true aliases: - fundamental - plain text extensions: - ".txt"
-
Add or modify
.gitattributes
in the root of your repository:*.txt linguist-language=Text
*.txt
files have an entry in the heuristics file. This example prevents parsing of these files.
Search sequence of pushes to a repository
If it seems that a commit has gone “missing”, search the sequence of pushes to a repository.
This StackOverflow article
describes how you can end up in this state without a force push. Another cause can be a misconfigured server hook that changes a HEAD ref in a git reset
operation.
If you look at the output from the sample code below for the target branch, you
see a discontinuity in the from/to commits as you step through the output.
The commit_from
of each new push should equal the commit_to
of the previous push.
A break in that sequence indicates one or more commits have been “lost” from the repository history.
Using the rails console, the following example checks the last 100 pushes and prints the commit_from
and commit_to
entries:
p = Project.find_by_full_path('project/path')
p.events.pushed_action.last(100).each do |e|
puts "%-20.20s %8s...%8s (%s)", e.push_event_payload[:ref], e.push_event_payload[:commit_from], e.push_event_payload[:commit_to], e.author.try(:username)
end ; nil
Example output showing break in sequence at line 4:
master f21b07713251e04575908149bdc8ac1f105aabc3...6bc56c1f46244792222f6c85b11606933af171de root
master 6bc56c1f46244792222f6c85b11606933af171de...132da6064f5d3453d445fd7cb452b148705bdc1b root
master 132da6064f5d3453d445fd7cb452b148705bdc1b...a62e1e693150a2e46ace0ce696cd4a52856dfa65 root
master 58b07b719a4b0039fec810efa52f479ba1b84756...f05321a5b5728bd8a89b7bf530aa44043c951dce root
master f05321a5b5728bd8a89b7bf530aa44043c951dce...7d02e575fd790e76a3284ee435368279a5eb3773 root