GitLab Documentation

Welcome to GitLab, a Git-based fully featured platform for software development!

GitLab offers the most scalable Git-based fully integrated platform for software development, with flexible products and subscriptions. To understand what features you have access to, check the GitLab subscriptions below.

Shortcuts to GitLab's most visited docs

GitLab CI/CD	Other
Quick start guide	API
Configuring .gitlab-ci.yml	SSH authentication
Using Docker images	GitLab Pages

• User documentation
• Administrator documentation
• Contributor documentation

Getting started with GitLab

• GitLab Basics: Start working on your command line and on GitLab.
• GitLab Workflow: Enhance your workflow with the best of GitLab Workflow.
  • See also GitLab Workflow - an overview.
• GitLab Markdown: GitLab's advanced formatting system (GitLab Flavored Markdown).
• GitLab Quick Actions: Textual shortcuts for common actions on issues or merge requests that are usually done by clicking buttons or dropdowns in GitLab's UI.
• Auto DevOps

User account

• User account: Manage your account
  • Authentication: Account security with two-factor authentication, setup 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 (external/guest/reporter/developer/master/owner) can do.

Projects and groups

• Projects:
  • Project settings
  • Create a project
  • Fork a project
  • Importing and exporting projects between instances.
  • Project access: Setting up your project's visibility to public, internal, or private.
  • GitLab Pages: Build, test, and deploy your static website with GitLab Pages.
• Groups: Organize your projects in groups.
  • Subgroups
  • (Ultimate) Epics
  • (Ultimate) Roadmap
  • (Starter/Premium) Contribution Analytics: See detailed statistics of group contributors.
• Search through GitLab: Search for issues, merge requests, projects, groups, todos, and issues in Issue Boards.
  • (Starter/Premium) Advanced Global Search: Leverage Elasticsearch for faster, more advanced code search across your entire GitLab instance.
  • (Starter/Premium) Advanced Syntax Search: Use advanced queries for more targeted search results.
• Snippets: Snippets allow you to create little bits of code.
• Wikis: Enhance your repository documentation with built-in wikis.
• GitLab Pages: Build, test, and deploy your static website with GitLab Pages.
• (Premium) GitLab Service Desk: A simple way to allow people to create issues in your GitLab instance without needing their own user account.
• (Ultimate) Web IDE

Repository

Manage your repositories from the UI (user interface):

• Files
  • Create a file
  • Upload a file
  • File templates
  • Create a directory
  • Start a merge request (when committing via UI)
  • (Premium) File locking: Lock a file to avoid merge conflicts.
• Branches
  • Default branch
  • Create a branch
  • Protected branches
  • Delete merged branches
• Commits
  • Signing commits: use GPG to sign your commits.
• (Starter/Premium) Repository Mirroring
• (Starter/Premium) Push rules: Additional control over pushes to your project.

Issues and Merge Requests (MRs)

• Discussions: Threads, comments, and resolvable discussions in issues, commits, and merge requests.
• Issues
• Project issue Board
• Group Issue Boards
• (Starter/Premium) Related Issues: create a relationship between issues
• Issues and merge requests templates: Create templates for submitting new issues and merge requests.
• Labels: Categorize your issues or merge requests based on descriptive titles.
• Merge Requests
  • Work In Progress Merge Requests
  • Merge Request discussion resolution: Resolve discussions, move discussions in a merge request to an issue, only allow merge requests to be merged if all discussions are resolved.
  • (Starter/Premium) Merge Request approval: Make sure every merge request is approved by one or more people before getting merged.
  • (Ultimate) Static Application Security Testing: Scan your code for vulnerabilities and display the results in merge requests.
  • Checkout merge requests locally
  • Cherry-pick
• Milestones: Organize issues and merge requests into a cohesive group, optionally setting a due date.
  • (Starter/Premium) Burndown Charts: Watch your project's progress throughout a specific milestone.
• Related issues
• Todos: A chronological list of to-dos that are waiting for your input, all in a simple dashboard.

Git and GitLab

• Git: Getting started with Git, branching strategies, Git LFS, advanced use.
• Git cheatsheet: Download a PDF describing the most used Git operations.
• GitLab Flow: explore the best of Git with the GitLab Flow strategy.

Migrate and import your projects from other platforms

• 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.

Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment

• GitLab CI: Explore the features and capabilities of Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment with GitLab.
  • Auto Deploy: Configure GitLab CI for the deployment of your application.
  • Review Apps: Preview changes to your app right from a merge request.
  • (Premium) Deploy Boards: View of the current health and status of each CI environment running on Kubernetes, displaying the status of the pods in the deployment.
  • (Premium) Canary Deployments: A popular CI strategy, where a small portion of the fleet is updated to the new version first.
• GitLab Cycle Analytics: Cycle Analytics measures the time it takes to go from an idea to production for each project you have.
• GitLab Container Registry: Learn how to use GitLab's built-in Container Registry.

Automation

• API: Automate GitLab via a simple and powerful API.
• GitLab Webhooks: Let GitLab notify you when new code has been pushed to your project.

Integrations

• Project Services: Integrate a project with external services, such as CI and chat.
• GitLab Integration: Integrate with multiple third-party services with GitLab to allow external issue trackers and external authentication.
• Trello Power-Up: Integrate with GitLab's Trello Power-Up
• (Premium) JIRA Development Panel: See GitLab information in the JIRA Development Panel

Administrator documentation

Administration documentation applies to admin users of GitLab self-hosted instances.

Learn how to install, configure, update, upgrade, integrate, and maintain your own instance. Regular users don't have access to GitLab administration tools and settings.

Contributor documentation

GitLab Community Edition is open source and GitLab Enterprise Edition is open-core. Learn how to contribute to GitLab:

• Development: All styleguides and explanations how to contribute.
• Legal: Contributor license agreements.
• Writing documentation: Contributing to GitLab Docs.

GitLab subscriptions

You have two options to use GitLab:

• GitLab self-hosted: Install, administer, and maintain your own GitLab instance.
• GitLab.com: GitLab's SaaS offering. You don't need to install anything to use GitLab.com, you only need to sign up and start using GitLab straight away.

GitLab self-hosted

With GitLab self-hosted, you deploy your own GitLab instance on-premises or on a private cloud of your choice. GitLab self-hosted is available for free and with paid subscriptions: Libre, Starter, Premium, and Ultimate.

Every feature available in Libre is also available in Starter, Premium, and Ultimate. Starter features are also available in Premium and Ultimate, and Premium features are also available in Ultimate.

GitLab.com

GitLab.com is hosted, managed, and administered by GitLab, Inc., with free and paid subscriptions for individuals and teams: Free, Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

GitLab.com subscriptions grants access to the same features available in GitLab self-hosted, expect administration tools and settings:

• GitLab.com Free includes the same features available in GitLab Libre
• GitLab.com Bronze includes the same features available in GitLab Starter
• GitLab.com Silver includes the same features available in GitLab Premium
• GitLab.com Gold includes the same features available in GitLab Ultimate

For supporting the open source community and encouraging the development of open source projects, GitLab grants access to Gold features for all GitLab.com public projects, regardless of the subscription.

To know more about GitLab subscriptions and licensing, please refer to the GitLab Product Marketing Handbook.