How to create a project by importing it from another GitLab instance (it's private)

[w7089]

I'd like to create a new project by importing it from another GitLab instance using CLI (see screenshot from UI) where the source repository is private and requires authentication.

I tried gitlab -g [target_glab] project create --name sample-app --import-url [https://url], but there's no option to specify username and password as in UI.

Is it supported?

[nejch]

@w7089 it doesn't seem like the GitLab API supports supplying this as extra arguments, so python-gitlab won't be able to do it at the moment. You'd have to request this upstream at GitLab first. See available parameters here https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/projects.html#create-project.

However, you could probably get around this by supplying auth via user:name@host, e.g. providing your import URL as https://user:[email protected]/repo.git. But please check if GitLab sanitizes the credentials after the project is created so you don't leak the password in your import_url later on.

Also, this is just a simple repository import. You could import a complete GitLab project using gitlab project-export and gitlab project-import, though that's a bit more involved as you have to download and upload the files between the two instances.

[w7089]

Thanks a lot, i succeeded to import using user:name@host import_url. Actually, i needed the credentials to stay as I imported it as pull mirror. Or you talked about a diff. place?

[nejch]

Ah ok, in that case that's actually the documented way of doing it, yes. You should be ok then. I didn't realize you were setting up pull mirroring.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/projects.html#configure-pull-mirroring-for-a-project

[w7089]

actually, that didn't work :(

gitlab -g [target_glab] project create --name sample-app --import-url [https://url] --mirror true

creates the project, but the mirroring is not set...

gitlab -g [target_glab] project get --id [id] | grep mirror
mirror: false

Should I raise an issue or i'm doing smth. wrong?

[w7089]

moreover, gitlab project mirror-pull --id [id] shows an exception stacktrace gitlab.exceptions.GitlabCreateError: 400: The project is not mirrored instead of a clear message.

[w7089]

gitlab -g [tgt-glab] project-remote-mirror create --project-id [id] --url [url] --enabled true created the mirror, but only push one, didn't see an option to specify pull mirror :(

[w7089]

probably GitLab api has a bug :(. Tried to create the project with pull mirroring enabled using curl directly using the API and the mirror wasn't created... only the project was