Repository X-Ray

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History

Repository X-Ray automatically enriches code generation requests for GitLab Duo Code Suggestions by providing additional context about a project’s dependencies to improve the accuracy and relevance of code recommendations.

Repository X-Ray gives the code assistant more insight into the project’s codebase and dependencies by:

  • Searching for dependency manager configuration files (for example, Gemfile.lock, package.json, go.mod).
  • Extracting a list of libraries from their content.
  • Providing the extracted list as additional context to be used by GitLab Duo Code Suggestions in code generation requests.

By understanding the libraries and other dependencies in use, Repository X-Ray helps the code assistant tailor suggestions to match the coding patterns, styles and technologies used in the project. This results in code suggestions that integrate more seamlessly and follow best practices for the given stack.

note
Repository X-Ray only enhances code generation requests and not code completion requests.

How Repository X-Ray works

When a new commit is pushed to your project’s default branch, the Repository X-Ray triggers a background job that scans and parses the applicable configuration files in your repository automatically.

Typically, only one scanning job runs at a time in each project. This means that if a second scan is triggered while a scan is already in progress, that second scan waits until the first scan is complete before executing. This could result in a small delay before the latest configuration file data is parsed and updated in the database.

Enable Repository X-Ray

History
  • Introduced in GitLab 17.4 with a flag named ai_enable_internal_repository_xray_service. Disabled by default.
The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history. This feature is available for testing, but not ready for production use.

The Repository X-Ray service is automatically enabled if:

  • You have enabled the ai_enable_internal_repository_xray_service feature flag.
  • Your project has access to GitLab Duo Code Suggestions.

Supported languages and dependency managers

The Repository X-Ray searches a maximum of two directory levels from the repository’s root. For example, it supports Gemfile.lock, api/Gemfile.lock, or api/client/Gemfile.lock, but not api/v1/client/Gemfile.lock. For each language, only the first matching dependency manager is processed. Where available, lock files take precedence over their non-lock file counterparts.

Language Dependency manager Configuration file GitLab version
C/C++ Conan conanfile.py 17.5 or later
C/C++ Conan conanfile.txt 17.5 or later
C/C++ vcpkg vcpkg.json 17.5 or later
C# NuGet *.csproj 17.5 or later
Go Go Modules go.mod 17.4 or later
Java Gradle build.gradle 17.4 or later
Java Maven pom.xml 17.4 or later
JavaScript NPM package-lock.json, package.json 17.5 or later
Kotlin Gradle build.gradle.kts 17.5 or later
PHP Composer composer.lock, composer.json 17.5 or later
Python Conda environment.yml 17.5 or later
Python Pip *requirements*.txt 1 17.5 or later
Python Poetry poetry.lock, pyproject.toml 17.5 or later
Ruby RubyGems Gemfile.lock 17.4 or later

Footnotes:

  1. For Python Pip, all configuration files matching the *requirements*.txt glob pattern are processed.

Enable Repository X-Ray in your CI pipeline (deprecated)

caution
This feature was deprecated in GitLab 17.4.

Prerequisites:

  • You must have access to GitLab Duo Code Suggestions in the project.
  • GitLab Runner must be set up and enabled for the project, because Repository X-Ray runs analysis pipelines using GitLab runners.

To enable Repository X-Ray, add the following definition job to the project’s .gitlab-ci.yml. 

xray:
  stage: build
  image: registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/code-creation/repository-x-ray:latest
  allow_failure: true
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
  variables:
    OUTPUT_DIR: reports
  script:
    - x-ray-scan -p "$CI_PROJECT_DIR" -o "$OUTPUT_DIR"
  artifacts:
    reports:
      repository_xray: "$OUTPUT_DIR/*/*.json"
  • The $OUTPUT_DIR environment variable defines the:
    • Output directory for reports.
    • Path that artifacts are uploaded from.
  • The added rules restrict the job to the default branch only. Restricting the job this way ensures development changes do not impact the baseline X-Ray data used for production Code Suggestions.

After the initial x-ray job completes and uploads the repository analysis reports, no further action is required. Repository X-Ray automatically enriches all code generation requests from that point forward.

The X-Ray data for your project updates each time a CI/CD pipeline containing the xray job is run. To learn more about pipeline configuration and triggers, see the pipelines documentation.

Supported languages and package managers

Language Package Manager Configuration File
Go Go Modules go.mod
JavaScript NPM, Yarn package.json
Ruby RubyGems Gemfile.lock
Python Poetry pyproject.toml
Python Pip requirements.txt
Python Conda environment.yml
PHP Composer composer.json
Java Maven pom.xml
Java Gradle build.gradle
Kotlin Gradle build.gradle.kts
C# NuGet *.csproj
C/C++ Conan conanfile.txt
C/C++ Conan conanfile.py
C/C++ vcpkg vcpkg.json

Troubleshooting

401: Unauthorized when running Repository X-Ray

When running Repository X-Ray, you might get an error that states 401: Unauthorized.

A Duo Pro add-on is linked to a group when you buy that add-on. To solve the error, ensure that your current project is part of a group with the Duo Pro add-on.

This link can be either of the following:

  • Direct, that is, the project is in a group that has the Duo Pro add-on.
  • Indirect, for example, the parent group of the current project’s group has the Duo Pro add-on.