GitLab: self hosted Git management software

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 50,000 organizations, GitLab is the most popular solution to manage git repositories on-premises
• Completely free and open source (MIT Expat license)
• Powered by Ruby on Rails

Code status

• on ci.gitlab.org (master branch)

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Resources

• GitLab.com includes information about subscriptions, consultancy, the community and the hosted GitLab Cloud.

• GitLab Enterprise Edition offers additional features that are useful for larger organizations (100+ users).

• GitLab CI is a continuous integration (CI) server that is easy to integrate with GitLab.

• Unofficial third-party iPhone app and Android app for GitLab

Requirements

• Ubuntu/Debian/CentOS/RHEL**
• ruby 1.9.3+
• git 1.7.10+
• redis 2.0+
• MySQL or PostgreSQL

** More details are in the requirements doc

Installation

Official installation methods

• GitLab packages These packages contain GitLab and all its depencies (Ruby, PostgreSQL, Redis, Nginx, Unicorn, etc.). They are made with omnibus-gitlab that also contains the installation instructions.

• GitLab virtual machine images contain an operating system and a preinstalled GitLab. They are made with GitLab Packer that also contains the installation instructions.

• GitLab Chef Cookbook This cookbook can be used both for development installations and production installations. If you want to contribute to GitLab we suggest you follow the development installation on a virtual machine with Vagrant instructions to install all testing dependencies.

• Manual installation guide This guide to set up a production server offers detailed and complete step-by-step instructions.

Third party one-click installers

• Digital Ocean 1-Click Application Install Have a new server up in 55 seconds. Digital Ocean uses SSD disks which is great for an IO intensive app such as GitLab. We recommend selecting a droplet with 1GB of memory.

• BitNami one-click installers This package contains both GitLab and GitLab CI. It is available as installer, virtual machine or for cloud hosting providers (Amazon Web Services/Azure/etc.).

Unofficial installation methods

• GitLab recipes repository with unofficial guides for using GitLab with different software (operating systems, webservers, etc.) than the official version.

• Installation guides public wiki with unofficial guides to install GitLab on different operating systems.

New versions and upgrading

Since 2011 GitLab is released on the 22nd of every month. Every new release includes an upgrade guide and new features are detailed in the Changelog.

It is recommended to follow a monthly upgrade schedule. Security releases come out when needed. For more information about the release process see the documentation for monthly and security releases.

• Features that will be in the next releases are listed on the feature request forum with the status started and completed.

Run in production mode

The Installation guide contains instructions on how to download an init script and run it automatically on boot. You can also start the init script manually:

sudo service gitlab start

or by directly calling the script

 sudo /etc/init.d/gitlab start

Run in development mode

Start it with Foreman

bundle exec foreman start -p 3000

or start each component separately

bundle exec rails s
script/background_jobs start

Run the tests

• Seed the database

    bundle exec rake db:setup RAILS_ENV=test
    bundle exec rake db:seed_fu RAILS_ENV=test

• Run all tests

    bundle exec rake gitlab:test RAILS_ENV=test

• RSpec unit and functional tests

    All RSpec tests: bundle exec rake spec
  
    Single RSpec file: bundle exec rspec spec/controllers/commit_controller_spec.rb

• Spinach integration tests

    All Spinach tests: bundle exec rake spinach
  
    Single Spinach test: bundle exec spinach features/project/issues/milestones.feature

GitLab interfaces

• GitLab API doc or see the GitLab API website

• Rake tasks including a backup and restore procedure

• Directory structure

• Database installation

• Markdown specification

• Security guide to throttle abusive requests

Getting help

• Maintenance policy specifies what versions are supported.

• Troubleshooting guide contains solutions to common problems.

• Mailing list and Stack Overflow are the best places to ask questions. For example you can use it if you have questions about: permission denied errors, invisible repos, can't clone/pull/push or with web hooks that don't fire. Please search for similar issues before posting your own, there's a good chance somebody else had the same issue you have now and has resolved it. There are a lot of helpful GitLab users there who may be able to help you quickly. If your particular issue turns out to be a bug, it will find its way from there to a fix.

• Feature request forum is the place to propose and discuss new features for GitLab.

• Contributing guide describes how to submit merge requests and issues. Pull requests and issues not in line with the guidelines in this document will be closed.

• Support subscription connects you to the knowledge of GitLab experts that will resolve your issues and answer your questions.

• Consultancy from the GitLab experts for installations, upgrades and customizations.

• #gitlab IRC channel on Freenode to get in touch with other GitLab users and get help, it's managed by James Newton (newton), Drew Blessing (dblessing), and Sam Gleske (sag47).

• Book written by GitLab enthusiast Jonathan M. Hethey is unofficial but it offers a good overview.

• Gitter chat room here you can ask questions when you need help.