GitLab Docs

Welcome to GitLab documentation.

Here you can access the complete documentation for GitLab, the single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle.

Overview

No matter how you use GitLab, we have documentation for you.

Essential documentation	Essential documentation
User documentation Discover features and concepts for GitLab users.	Administrator documentation Everything GitLab self-managed administrators need to know.
Contributing to GitLab At GitLab, everyone can contribute!	New to Git and GitLab? We have the resources to get you started.
Build an integration with GitLab Consult our automation and integration documentation.	Coming to GitLab from another platform? Consult our guides.
Install GitLab Installation options for different platforms.	Customers Information for new and existing customers.
Update GitLab Update your GitLab self-managed instance to the latest version.	Reference Architectures GitLab's reference architectures
GitLab releases What's new in GitLab.

Popular topics

Have a look at some of our most popular topics:

Popular topic	Description
Two-factor authentication	Improve the security of your GitLab account.
GitLab groups	Manage projects together.
GitLab CI/CD pipeline configuration reference	Available configuration options for .gitlab-ci.yml files.
Activate GitLab EE with a license (STARTER ONLY)	Activate GitLab Enterprise Edition functionality with a license.
Back up and restore GitLab (CORE ONLY)	Rake tasks for backing up and restoring GitLab self-managed instances.
GitLab release and maintenance policy	Policies for version naming and cadence, and also upgrade recommendations.
Elasticsearch integration (STARTER ONLY)	Integrate Elasticsearch with GitLab to enable advanced searching.
Omnibus GitLab database settings (CORE ONLY)	Database settings for Omnibus GitLab self-managed instances.
Omnibus GitLab NGINX settings (CORE ONLY)	NGINX settings for Omnibus GitLab self-managed instances.
Omnibus GitLab SSL configuration (CORE ONLY)	SSL settings for Omnibus GitLab self-managed instances.
GitLab.com settings	Settings used for GitLab.com.

The entire DevOps lifecycle

GitLab is the first single application for software development, security, and operations that enables Concurrent DevOps, making the software lifecycle faster and radically improving the speed of business.

GitLab provides solutions for each of the stages of the DevOps lifecycle:

GitLab is like a top-of-the-line kitchen for making software. As the executive chef, you decide what software you want to serve. Using your recipe, GitLab handles all the prep work, cooking, and delivery, so you can turn around orders faster than ever.

The following sections provide links to documentation for each DevOps stage:

DevOps stage	Documentation for
Manage	Statistics and analytics features.
Plan	Project planning and management features.
Create	Source code, data creation, and management features.
Verify	Testing, code quality, and continuous integration features.
Package	Docker container registry.
Secure	Security capability features.
Release	Application release and delivery features.
Configure	Application and infrastructure configuration tools.
Monitor	Application monitoring and metrics features.
Defend	Protection against security intrusions.

Manage

GitLab provides statistics and insights into ways you can maximize the value of GitLab in your organization.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Manage stage:

Manage topics	Description
Authentication and Authorization (CORE ONLY)	Supported authentication and authorization providers.
GitLab Value Stream Analytics	Measure the time it takes to go from an idea to production for each project you have.
Instance-level analytics	Discover statistics on how many GitLab features you use and user activity.

Plan

Whether you use Waterfall, Agile, or Conversational Development, GitLab streamlines your collaborative workflows.

Visualize, prioritize, coordinate, and track your progress your way with GitLab’s flexible project management tools.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Plan stage:

Plan topics	Description
Burndown charts (STARTER)	Watch your project's progress throughout a specific milestone.
Discussions	Threads, comments, and resolvable threads in issues, commits, and merge requests.
Due dates	Keep track of issue deadlines.
Epics (ULTIMATE)	Tracking groups of issues that share a theme.
Issues, including confidential issues, issue and merge request templates, and moving issues	Project issues and restricting access to issues as well as creating templates for submitting new issues and merge requests. Also, moving issues between projects.
Labels	Categorize issues or merge requests with descriptive labels.
Milestones	Set milestones for delivery of issues and merge requests, with optional due date.
Project Issue Board	Display issues on a Scrum or Kanban board.
Quick Actions	Shortcuts for common actions on issues or merge requests, replacing the need to click buttons or use dropdowns in GitLab's UI.
Related issues	Create a relationship between issues.
Requirements Management (ULTIMATE)	Check your products against a set of criteria.
Roadmap (ULTIMATE)	Visualize epic timelines.
Service Desk	A simple way to allow people to create issues in your GitLab instance without needing their own user account.
Time Tracking	Track time spent on issues and merge requests.
To-Do list	Keep track of work requiring attention with a chronological list displayed on a simple dashboard.

Create

Consolidate source code into a single distributed version control system that’s easily managed and controlled without disrupting your workflow.

GitLab repositories come complete with branching tools and access controls, providing a scalable, single source of truth for collaborating on projects and code.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Create stage:

Projects and groups

Create topics - Projects and Groups	Description
Advanced search (STARTER)	Leverage Elasticsearch for faster, more advanced code search across your entire GitLab instance.
Advanced syntax search (STARTER)	Use advanced queries for more targeted search results.
Contribution analytics (STARTER)	See detailed statistics of group contributors.
Create and fork projects, and import and export projects between instances	Create, duplicate, and move projects.
File locking (PREMIUM)	Lock files to avoid merge conflicts.
GitLab Pages	Build, test, and deploy your static website with GitLab Pages.
Groups and Subgroups	Organize your projects in groups.
Issue analytics (PREMIUM)	Check how many issues were created per month.
Merge Request analytics (PREMIUM)	Check your throughput productivity - how many merge requests were merged per month.
Projects, including project access and settings	Host source code, and control your project's visibility and set configuration.
Search through GitLab	Search for issues, merge requests, projects, groups, and to-dos.
Snippets	Snippets allow you to create little bits of code.
Web IDE	Edit files within GitLab's user interface.
Static Site Editor	Edit content on static websites.
Wikis	Enhance your repository documentation with built-in wikis.

Repositories

Create topics - Repositories	Description
Branches and the default branch	How to use branches in GitLab.
Commits and signing commits	Work with commits, and use GPG to sign your commits.
Create branches, create and upload files, and create directories	Create branches, create and upload files, and create directories within GitLab.
Delete merged branches	Bulk delete branches after their changes are merged.
File templates	File templates for common files.
Files	Files management.
Jupyter Notebook files	GitLab's support for .ipynb files.
Protected branches	Use protected branches.
Push rules (STARTER)	Additional control over pushes to your projects.
Repositories	Manage source code repositories in GitLab's user interface.
Repository mirroring (STARTER)	Push to or pull from repositories outside of GitLab
Start a merge request	Start merge request when committing via GitLab's user interface.

Merge requests

Create topics - Merge Requests	Description
Checking out merge requests locally	Tips for working with merge requests locally.
Cherry-picking	Use GitLab for cherry-picking changes.
Merge request thread resolution	Resolve threads, move threads in a merge request to an issue, and only allow merge requests to be merged if all threads are resolved.
Merge requests	Merge request management.
Draft merge requests	Prevent merges of draft merge requests.

Integration and Automation

Create topics - Integration and Automation	Description
GitLab REST API	Integrate with GitLab using our REST API.
GitLab GraphQL API	Integrate with GitLab using our GraphQL API.
GitLab integrations	Integrate with multiple third-party services with GitLab to allow external issue trackers and external authentication.
GitLab Webhooks	Let GitLab notify you when new code has been pushed to your project.
Jira Development Panel	See GitLab information in the Jira Development Panel.
Integrations	Integrate a project with external services, such as CI and chat.
Trello Power-Up	Integrate with GitLab's Trello Power-Up.

Verify

Spot errors sooner, improve security and shorten feedback cycles with built-in static code analysis, code testing, code quality, dependency checking, and Review Apps. Customize your approval workflow controls, automatically test the quality of your code, and spin up a staging environment for every code change.

GitLab Continuous Integration is the most popular next generation testing system that scales to run your tests faster.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Verify stage:

Verify topics	Description
Code Quality reports	Analyze source code quality.
GitLab CI/CD	Explore the features and capabilities of Continuous Integration with GitLab.
Unit test reports	Display Unit test reports on merge requests.
Multi-project pipelines (PREMIUM)	Visualize entire pipelines that span multiple projects, including all cross-project inter-dependencies.
Pipeline graphs	Visualize builds.
Review Apps	Preview changes to your application right from a merge request.

Package

GitLab Packages allows organizations to use GitLab as a private repository for a variety of common package managers. Users are able to build and publish packages, which can be consumed as a dependency in downstream projects.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Package stage:

Package topics	Description
Container Registry	The GitLab Container Registry enables every project in GitLab to have its own space to store Docker images.
Dependency Proxy	The GitLab Dependency Proxy sets up a local proxy for frequently used upstream images/packages.
Package Registry	Use GitLab as a private or public registry for a variety of common package managers, including NPM, Maven, PyPI, and others. You can also store generic files.

Secure

Check your application for security vulnerabilities that may lead to unauthorized access, data leaks, or denial of service. GitLab can perform static and dynamic tests on your application's code, looking for known flaws and reporting them in the merge request. You can then fix flaws prior to merge. Security teams can use dashboards to get a high-level view on projects and groups, and start remediation processes when needed.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Secure stage:

Secure topics	Description
Compliance Dashboard (ULTIMATE)	View the most recent Merge Request activity in a group.
Container Scanning (ULTIMATE)	Use Clair to scan Docker images for known vulnerabilities.
Dependency List (ULTIMATE)	View your project's dependencies and their known vulnerabilities.
Dependency Scanning (ULTIMATE)	Analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (ULTIMATE)	Analyze running web applications for known vulnerabilities.
Group Security Dashboard (ULTIMATE)	View vulnerabilities in all the projects in a group and its subgroups.
Instance Security Center (ULTIMATE)	View vulnerabilities in all the projects you're interested in.
License Compliance (ULTIMATE)	Search your project's dependencies for their licenses.
Pipeline Security (ULTIMATE)	View the security reports for your project's pipelines.
Project Security Dashboard (ULTIMATE)	View the latest security reports for your project.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (ULTIMATE)	Analyze source code for known vulnerabilities.

Release

Spend less time configuring your tools, and more time creating. Whether you’re deploying to one server or thousands, build, test, and release your code confidently and securely with GitLab’s built-in Continuous Delivery and Deployment.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Release stage:

Release topics	Description
Auto Deploy	Configure GitLab for the deployment of your application.
Canary Deployments (PREMIUM)	Employ a popular CI strategy where a small portion of the fleet is updated to the new version first.
Deploy Boards (PREMIUM)	View the current health and status of each CI environment running on Kubernetes, displaying the status of the pods in the deployment.
Environments and deployments	With environments, you can control the continuous deployment of your software within GitLab.
Environment-specific variables	Limit the scope of variables to specific environments.
GitLab CI/CD	Explore the features and capabilities of Continuous Deployment and Delivery with GitLab.
GitLab Pages	Build, test, and deploy a static site directly from GitLab.
Protected runners	Select Runners to only pick jobs for protected branches and tags.
Schedule pipelines	Execute pipelines on a schedule.

Configure

Automate your entire workflow from build to deploy and monitoring with GitLab Auto DevOps. Best practice templates help get you started with minimal to zero configuration. Then customize everything from buildpacks to CI/CD.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Configure stage:

Configure topics	Description
Auto DevOps	Automatically employ a complete DevOps lifecycle.
Create Kubernetes clusters	Use Kubernetes and GitLab.
Executable Runbooks	Documented procedures that explain how to carry out particular processes.
GitLab ChatOps	Interact with CI/CD jobs through chat services.
Installing applications	Install Helm charts such as Ingress and Prometheus on Kubernetes.
Mattermost slash commands	Enable and use slash commands from within Mattermost.
Multiple Kubernetes clusters	Associate more than one Kubernetes clusters to your project.
Protected variables	Restrict variables to protected branches and tags.
Serverless	Run serverless workloads on Kubernetes.
Slack slash commands	Enable and use slash commands from within Slack.
Manage your infrastructure with Terraform	Manage your infrastructure as you run your CI/CD pipeline.

Monitor

Ensure your applications are always responsive and available.

GitLab collects and displays performance metrics for deployed applications so you can know in an instant how code changes impact your production environment.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Monitor stage:

Monitor topics	Description
GitLab Performance Monitoring (CORE ONLY)	Use Prometheus and Grafana to monitor the performance of your GitLab instance.
GitLab Prometheus (CORE ONLY)	Configure the bundled Prometheus to collect various metrics from your GitLab instance.
Health check	GitLab provides liveness and readiness probes to indicate service health and reachability to required services.
Prometheus project integration	Configure the Prometheus integration per project and monitor your CI/CD environments.
Prometheus metrics	Let Prometheus collect metrics from various services, like Kubernetes, NGINX, NGINX Ingress controller, HAProxy, and Amazon Cloud Watch.
Incident management	Use GitLab to help you better respond to incidents that may occur in your systems.

Defend

GitLab Defend enables organizations to proactively protect cloud-native environments by providing context-aware technologies to reduce overall security risk. Defend is a natural extension of your existing operation's practices and provides security visibility across the entire DevSecOps lifecycle. This visibility empowers your organization to apply DevSecOps best practices from the first line of code written and extends all the way through to greater monitoring and protection for your applications that are deployed in production.

The following documentation relates to the DevOps Defend stage:

Defend topics	Description
Web Application Firewall with ModSecurity	Filter, monitor, and block HTTP traffic to and from a web application.
Container host security	Detect and respond to security threats at the Kubernetes, network, and host level.
Container network security	Detect and block unauthorized network traffic between pods and to/from the internet.

New to Git and GitLab?

Working with new systems can be daunting.

We have the following documentation to rapidly uplift your GitLab knowledge:

Topic	Description
GitLab basics guides	Start working on the command line and with GitLab.
GitLab workflow overview	Enhance your workflow with the best of GitLab Workflow.
Get started with GitLab CI/CD	Quickly implement GitLab CI/CD.
Auto DevOps	Learn more about GitLab's Auto DevOps.
GitLab Markdown	GitLab's advanced formatting system (GitLab Flavored Markdown)

User account

Learn more about GitLab account management:

Topic	Description
User account	Manage your account.
Authentication	Account security with two-factor authentication, set up your SSH keys, and deploy keys for secure access to your projects.
Profile settings	Manage your profile settings, two factor authentication, and more.
User permissions	Learn what each role in a project can do.

Git and GitLab

Learn more about using Git, and using Git with GitLab:

Topic	Description
Git	Getting started with Git, branching strategies, Git LFS, and advanced use.
Git cheat sheet	Download a PDF describing the most used Git operations.
GitLab Flow	Explore the best of Git with the GitLab Flow strategy.

Coming to GitLab from another platform

If you are coming to GitLab from another platform, the following information is useful:

Topic	Description
Importing to GitLab	Import your projects from GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab.com, FogBugz, and SVN into GitLab.
Migrating from SVN	Convert a SVN repository to Git and GitLab.

Build an integration with GitLab

There are many ways to integrate with GitLab, including:

Topic	Description
GitLab REST API	Integrate with GitLab using our REST API.
GitLab GraphQL API	Integrate with GitLab using our GraphQL API.
Integrations and automation	All GitLab integration and automation options.

Contributing to GitLab

GitLab Community Edition is open source and GitLab Enterprise Edition is open-core.

Learn how to contribute to GitLab with the following resources:

Topic	Description
Development	How to contribute to GitLab development.
Legal	Contributor license agreements.
Writing documentation	How to contribute to GitLab Docs.