Search code examples
gitversion-controlmirroringgitlab

Gitlab repository mirroring

Is it possible to have gitlab set up to automatically sync (mirror) a repository hosted at another location?

At the moment, the easiest way I know of doing this involves manually pushing to the two (gitlab and the other) repository, but this is time consuming and error prone.

The greatest problem is that a mirror can resynchronize if two users concurrently push changes to the two different repositories. The best method I can come up with to prevent this issue is to ensure users can only push to one of the repositories.

Solution

  • Update Dec 2016: Mirroring is suported with GitLAb EE 8.2+: see "Repository mirroring".

    As commented by Xiaodong Qi:

    This answer can be simplified without using any command lines (just set it up on Gitlab repo management interface)

    Original answer (January 2013)

    If your remote mirror repo is a bare repo, then you can add a post-receive hook to your gitlab-managed repo, and push to your remote repo in it.

    #!/bin/bash
git push --mirror [email protected]:/path/to/repo.git

    As Gitolite (used by Gitlab) mentions:

    if you want to install a hook in only a few specific repositories, do it directly on the server.

    which would be in:

    ~git/repositories/yourRepo.git/hook/post-receive

    Caveat (Update Ocotober 2014)

    Ciro Santilli points out in the comments:

    Today (Q4 2014) this will fail because GitLab automatically symlinks github.com/gitlabhq/gitlab-shell/tree/… into every repository it manages.
    So if you make this change, every repository you modify will try to push.
    Not to mention possible conflicts when upgrading gitlab-shell, and that the current script is a ruby script, not bash (and you should not remove it!).

    You could correct this by reading the current directory name and ensuring bijection between that and the remote, but I recommend people to stay far far away from those things

    See (and vote for) feeadback "Automatic push to remote mirror repo after push to GitLab Repo".

    Update July 2016: I see this kind of feature added for GitLab EE (Enterprise Edition): MR 249

    • Add ability to enter remote push URL under Mirror Repository settings
    • Add implementation code to push to remote repository
    • Add new background worker
    • Show latest update date and sync errors if they exists.
    • Sync remote mirror every hour.

    Note that the recent Remote Mirror Repository (issues 17940) can be tricky:

    I'm currently trying to shift main development of the Open Source npm modules of my company Lossless GmbH (https://www.npmjs.com/~lossless) from GitHub.com to GitLab.com

    I'm importing all the repos from GitHub, however when I try to switch off Mirror Repository and switch on Remote Mirror Repository with the original GitHub URL I get an error saying: 

    Remote mirrors url is already in use

    Here is one of the repos this fails with: https://gitlab.com/pushrocks/npmts Edited 2 months ago

    turns out, it just requires multiple steps:

    • disable the Mirror Repository
    • press save
    • remove the URl
    • press save
    • then add the Remote Mirror