• General settings
  • General project settings
    • Compliance frameworks
    • Compliance pipeline configuration
      • Ensure compliance jobs are always run
  • Sharing and permissions
    • Disabling the CVE ID request button
    • Disabling email notifications
  • Merge request settings
  • Service Desk
  • Export project
  • Advanced settings
    • Archiving a project
    • Unarchiving a project
    • Renaming a repository
    • Transferring an existing project into another namespace
    • Delete a project
    • Restore a project
    • Removing a fork relationship
• Monitor settings
  • Alerts
  • Incidents
    • Alert integration
    • PagerDuty integration
    • Incident settings
  • Error Tracking
  • Jaeger tracing
  • Status Page

Project settings

The Settings page in GitLab provides a centralized home for your project configuration options. To access it, go to your project’s homepage and, in the left navigation menu, clicking Settings. To reduce complexity, settings are grouped by topic into sections. To display all settings in a section, click Expand.

In GitLab versions 13.10 and later, GitLab displays a search box to help you find the settings you want to view.

General settings

Under a project’s general settings, you can find everything concerning the functionality of a project.

General project settings

Adjust your project’s name, description, avatar, default branch, and topics:

The project description also partially supports standard Markdown. You can use emphasis, links, and line-breaks to add more context to the project description.

Compliance frameworks

You can create a framework label to identify that your project has certain compliance requirements or needs additional oversight.

Group owners can create, edit and delete compliance frameworks by going to Settings > General and expanding the Compliance frameworks section. Compliance frameworks created can then be assigned to any number of projects via the project settings page inside the group or subgroups.

Compliance pipeline configuration

Group owners can use the compliance pipeline configuration to define compliance requirements such as scans or tests, and enforce them in individual projects.

The custom compliance framework feature allows group owners to specify the location of a compliance pipeline configuration stored and managed in a dedicated project, distinct from a developer’s project.

When you set up the compliance pipeline configuration field, use the file@group/project format. For example, you can configure .compliance-gitlab-ci.yml@compliance-group/compliance-project. This field is inherited by projects where the compliance framework label is applied. The result forces the project to run the compliance configurations.

When a project with a custom label executes a pipeline, it begins by evaluating the compliance pipeline configuration. The custom pipeline configuration can then execute any included individual project configuration.

The user running the pipeline in the project should at least have Reporter access to the compliance project.

Example .compliance-gitlab-ci.yml

# Allows compliance team to control the ordering and interweaving of stages/jobs.
# Stages without jobs defined will remain hidden.
stages:
- pre-compliance
- build
- test
- pre-deploy-compliance
- deploy
- post-compliance

variables: # can be overriden by a developer's local .gitlab-ci.yml
  FOO: sast

sast: # none of these attributes can be overriden by a developer's local .gitlab-ci.yml
  variables:
    FOO: sast
  image: ruby:2.6
  stage: pre-compliance
  rules:
        - when: always
  allow_failure: false
  before_script:
  - "# No before scripts."
  script:
  - echo "running $FOO"
  after_script:
  - "# No after scripts."

sanity check:
  image: ruby:2.6
  stage: pre-deploy-compliance
  rules:
        - when: always
  allow_failure: false
  before_script:
  - "# No before scripts."
  script:
  - echo "running $FOO"
  after_script:
  - "# No after scripts."


audit trail:
  image: ruby:2.6
  stage: post-compliance
  rules:
        - when: always
  allow_failure: false
  before_script:
  - "# No before scripts."
  script:
  - echo "running $FOO"
  after_script:
  - "# No after scripts."

include: # Execute individual project's configuration
  project: '$CI_PROJECT_PATH'
  file: '$CI_CONFIG_PATH'

Ensure compliance jobs are always run

Compliance pipelines use GitLab CI/CD to give you an incredible amount of flexibility for defining any sort of compliance jobs you like. Depending on your goals, these jobs can be configured to be:

• Modified by users.
• Non-modifiable.

At a high-level, if a value in a compliance job:

• Is set, it cannot be changed or overridden by project-level configurations.
• Is not set, a project-level configuration may set.

Either might be wanted or not depending on your use case.

There are a few best practices for ensuring that these jobs are always run exactly as you define them and that downstream, project-level pipeline configurations cannot change them:

• Add a rules:when:always block to each of your compliance jobs. This ensures they are non-modifiable and are always run.
• Explicitly set any variables the job references. This:
  • Ensures that project-level pipeline configurations do not set them and alter their behavior.
  • Includes any jobs that drive the logic of your job.
• Explicitly set the container image file to run the job in. This ensures that your script steps execute in the correct environment.
• Explicitly set any relevant GitLab pre-defined job keywords. This ensures that your job uses the settings you intend and that they are not overriden by project-level pipelines.

Sharing and permissions

For your repository, you can set up features such as public access, repository features, documentation, access permissions, and more. To do so from your project, go to Settings > General, and expand the Visibility, project features, permissions section.

You can now change the Project visibility. If you set Project Visibility to public, you can limit access to some features to Only Project Members. In addition, you can select the option to Allow users to request access.

Use the switches to enable or disable the following features:

Some features depend on others:

• If you disable the Issues option, GitLab also removes the following features:
  • Issue Boards
  • Service Desk
  When the Issues option is disabled, you can still access Milestones from merge requests.
• Additionally, if you disable both Issues and Merge Requests, you cannot access:
  • Labels
  • Milestones
• If you disable Repository functionality, GitLab also disables the following features for your project:
  • Merge Requests
  • Pipelines
  • Container Registry
  • Git Large File Storage
  • Packages
• Metrics dashboard access requires reading both project environments and deployments. Users with access to the metrics dashboard can also access environments and deployments.

Disabling the CVE ID request button

In applicable environments, a Create CVE ID Request button is present in the issue sidebar. The button may be disabled on a per-project basis by toggling the setting Enable CVE ID requests in the issue sidebar.

Disabling email notifications

Project owners can disable all email notifications related to the project by selecting the Disable email notifications checkbox.

Merge request settings

Set up your project’s merge request settings:

• Set up the merge request method (merge commit, fast-forward merge).
• Add merge request description templates.
• Enable merge request approvals.
• Enable status checks.
• Enable merge only if pipeline succeeds.
• Enable merge only when all threads are resolved.
• Enable require an associated issue from Jira.
• Enable delete source branch after merge option by default.
• Configure suggested changes commit messages.
• Configure the default target project for merge requests coming from forks.

Service Desk

Enable Service Desk for your project to offer customer support.

Export project

Learn how to export a project in GitLab.

Advanced settings

Here you can run housekeeping, archive, rename, transfer, remove a fork relationship, or remove a project.

Archiving a project

Archiving a project makes it read-only for all users and indicates that it’s no longer actively maintained. Projects that have been archived can also be unarchived. Only project owners and administrators have the permissions to archive a project.

When a project is archived, the repository, packages, issues, merge requests, and all other features are read-only. Archived projects are also hidden in project listings.

To archive a project:

1. Navigate to your project’s Settings > General.
2. Under Advanced, click Expand.
3. In the Archive project section, click the Archive project button.
4. Confirm the action when asked to.

Unarchiving a project

Unarchiving a project removes the read-only restriction on a project, and makes it available in project listings. Only project owners and administrators have the permissions to unarchive a project.

To find an archived project:

1. Sign in to GitLab as a user with project owner or administrator permissions.
2. If you:
   • Have the project’s URL, open the project’s page in your browser.
   • Don’t have the project’s URL:
     1. On the top bar, select Menu > Project.
     2. Select Explore projects.
     3. In the Sort projects dropdown box, select Show archived projects.
     4. In the Filter by name field, provide the project’s name.
     5. Click the link to the project to open its Details page.

Next, to unarchive the project:

1. Navigate to your project’s Settings > General.
2. Under Advanced, click Expand.
3. In the Unarchive project section, click the Unarchive project button.
4. Confirm the action when asked to.

Renaming a repository

A project’s repository name defines its URL (the one you use to access the project via a browser) and its place on the file disk where GitLab is installed.

To rename a repository:

1. Navigate to your project’s Settings > General.
2. Under Advanced, click Expand.
3. Under Change path, update the repository’s path.
4. Click Change path.

Remember that this can have unintended side effects since everyone with the old URL can’t push or pull. Read more about what happens with the redirects when renaming repositories.

Transferring an existing project into another namespace

You can transfer an existing project into a group if:

• You have at least the Maintainer** role in that group.
• You’re at least an Owner of the project to be transferred.
• The group to which the project is being transferred to must allow creation of new projects.

To transfer a project:

1. Navigate to your project’s Settings > General.
2. Under Advanced, click Expand.
3. Under “Transfer project”, choose the namespace you want to transfer the project to.
4. Confirm the transfer by typing the project’s path as instructed.

Once done, you are redirected to the new project’s namespace. At this point, read what happens with the redirects from the old project to the new one.

Delete a project

To delete a project:

1. Navigate to your project, and select Settings > General > Advanced.
2. In the “Delete project” section, click the Delete project button.
3. Confirm the action when asked to.

This action:

• Deletes a project including all associated resources (issues, merge requests etc).
• From GitLab 13.2 on Premium or higher tiers, group Owners can configure projects within a group to be deleted after a delayed period. When enabled, actual deletion happens after number of days specified in instance settings.

Restore a project

To restore a project marked for deletion:

1. Navigate to your project, and select Settings > General > Advanced.
2. In the Restore project section, click the Restore project button.

Removing a fork relationship

Forking is a great way to contribute to a project of which you’re not a member. If you want to use the fork for yourself and don’t need to send merge requests to the upstream project, you can safely remove the fork relationship.

To do so:

1. Navigate to your project’s Settings > General > Advanced.
2. Under Remove fork relationship, click the likewise-labeled button.
3. Confirm the action by typing the project’s path as instructed.

Monitor settings

Alerts

Configure alert integrations to triage and manage critical problems in your application as alerts.

Incidents

Alert integration

Automatically create, notify on, and resolve incidents based on GitLab alerts.

PagerDuty integration

Create incidents in GitLab for each PagerDuty incident.

Incident settings

Manage Service Level Agreements for incidents with an SLA countdown timer.

Error Tracking

Configure Error Tracking to discover and view Sentry errors within GitLab.

Jaeger tracing

Add the URL of a Jaeger server to allow your users to easily access the Jaeger UI from within GitLab.

Status Page

Add Storage credentials to enable the syncing of public Issues to a deployed status page.