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stage | group | info | type |
---|---|---|---|
Verify | Continuous Integration | To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#designated-technical-writers | index, howto |
GitLab CI/CD for external repositories (PREMIUM)
Introduced in GitLab Premium 10.6.
GitLab CI/CD can be used with:
- GitHub.
- Bitbucket Cloud.
- Any other Git server.
Instead of moving your entire project to GitLab, you can connect your external repository to get the benefits of GitLab CI/CD.
Connecting an external repository will set up repository mirroring and create a lightweight project with issues, merge requests, wiki, and snippets disabled. These features can be re-enabled later.
To connect to an external repository:
- From your GitLab dashboard, click New project.
- Switch to the CI/CD for external repo tab.
- Choose GitHub or Repo by URL.
- The next steps are similar to the import flow.
Pipelines for external pull requests
Introduced in GitLab Premium 12.3.
When using GitLab CI/CD with an external repository on GitHub, it's possible to run a pipeline in the context of a Pull Request.
When you push changes to a remote branch in GitHub, GitLab CI/CD can run a pipeline for the branch. However, when you open or update a Pull Request for that branch you may want to:
- Run extra jobs.
- Not run specific jobs.
For example:
always-run:
script: echo 'this should always run'
on-pull-requests:
script: echo 'this should run on pull requests'
only:
- external_pull_requests
except-pull-requests:
script: echo 'this should not run on pull requests'
except:
- external_pull_requests
How it works
When a repository is imported from GitHub, GitLab subscribes to webhooks
for push
and pull_request
events. Once a pull_request
event is received,
the Pull Request data is stored and kept as a reference. If the Pull Request
has just been created, GitLab immediately creates a pipeline for the external
pull request.
If changes are pushed to the branch referenced by the Pull Request and the Pull Request is still open, a pipeline for the external pull request is created.
GitLab CI/CD will create 2 pipelines in this case. One for the branch push and one for the external pull request.
After the Pull Request is closed, no pipelines are created for the external pull request, even if new changes are pushed to the same branch.
Additional predefined variables
By using pipelines for external pull requests, GitLab exposes additional predefined variables to the pipeline jobs.
The variable names are prefixed with CI_EXTERNAL_PULL_REQUEST_
.
Limitations
This feature currently does not support Pull Requests from fork repositories. Any Pull Requests from fork repositories will be ignored. Read more.
Given that GitLab will create 2 pipelines, if changes are pushed to a remote branch that
references an open Pull Request, both will contribute to the status of the Pull Request
via GitHub integration. If you want to exclusively run pipelines on external pull
requests and not on branches you can add except: [branches]
to the job specs.
Read more.