Project import/export (FREE)

Introduced in GitLab 8.9.

From GitLab 10.0, administrators can disable the project export option on the GitLab instance.

Existing projects running on any GitLab instance or GitLab.com can be exported with all their related data and be moved into a new GitLab instance.

The GitLab import/export button is displayed if the project import option is enabled.

Important notes

Note the following:

Before you can import a project, you must export the data first. See Export a project and its data for how you can export a project through the UI.
Imports from a newer version of GitLab are not supported. The Importing GitLab version must be greater than or equal to the Exporting GitLab version.
Imports fail unless the import and export GitLab instances are compatible as described in the Version history.
Exports are generated in your configured shared_path, a temporary shared directory, and are moved to your configured uploads_directory. Every 24 hours, a specific worker deletes these export files.
Group members are exported as project members, as long as the user has a maintainer or administrator role in the group where the exported project lives.
Project members with the Owner role are imported as Maintainers.
Imported users can be mapped by their public email on self-managed instances, if an administrative user (not an owner) does the import. Otherwise, a supplementary comment is left to mention that the original author and the MRs, notes, or issues are owned by the importer.
- For project migration imports performed over GitLab.com Groups, preserving author information is possible through a professional services engagement.
If an imported project contains merge requests originating from forks, then new branches associated with such merge requests are created in a project during the import/export. Thus, the number of branches in the exported project could be bigger than in the original project.
Deploy keys allowed to push to protected branches are not exported. Therefore, you must recreate this association by first enabling these deploy keys in your imported project and then updating your protected branches accordingly.

Version history

14.0+

In GitLab 14.0, the JSON format is no longer supported for project and group exports. To allow for a transitional period, you can still import any JSON exports. The new format for imports and exports is NDJSON.

13.0+

Starting with GitLab 13.0, GitLab can import bundles that were exported from a different GitLab deployment. This ability is limited to two previous GitLab minor releases, which is similar to our process for Security Releases.

For example:

Current version	Can import bundles exported from
13.0	13.0, 12.10, 12.9
13.1	13.1, 13.0, 12.10

12.x

Prior to 13.0 this was a defined compatibility table:

Exporting GitLab version	Importing GitLab version
11.7 to 12.10	11.7 to 12.10
11.1 to 11.6	11.1 to 11.6
10.8 to 11.0	10.8 to 11.0
10.4 to 10.7	10.4 to 10.7
10.3	10.3
10.0 to 10.2	10.0 to 10.2
9.4 to 9.6	9.4 to 9.6
9.2 to 9.3	9.2 to 9.3
8.17 to 9.1	8.17 to 9.1
8.13 to 8.16	8.13 to 8.16
8.12	8.12
8.10.3 to 8.11	8.10.3 to 8.11
8.10.0 to 8.10.2	8.10.0 to 8.10.2
8.9.5 to 8.9.11	8.9.5 to 8.9.11
8.9.0 to 8.9.4	8.9.0 to 8.9.4

Projects can be exported and imported only between versions of GitLab with matching Import/Export versions.

For example, 8.10.3 and 8.11 have the same Import/Export version (0.1.3) and the exports between them are compatible.

Between CE and EE

You can export projects from the Community Edition to the Enterprise Edition and vice versa. This assumes version history requirements are met.

If you're exporting a project from the Enterprise Edition to the Community Edition, you may lose data that is retained only in the Enterprise Edition. For more information, see downgrading from EE to CE.

Exported contents

The following items are exported:

Project and wiki repositories
Project uploads
Project configuration, excluding integrations
Issues with comments, merge requests with diffs and comments, labels, milestones, snippets, time tracking, and other project entities
Design Management files and data
LFS objects
Issue boards
Pipelines history
Push Rules
Awards

The following items are not exported:

Build traces and artifacts
Container registry images
CI/CD variables
Webhooks
Any encrypted tokens
Merge Request Approvers

NOTE: For more details on the specific data persisted in a project export, see the import_export.yml file.

Export a project and its data

Full project export functionality is limited to project maintainers and owners. You can configure such functionality through project settings:

To export a project and its data, follow these steps:

Go to your project's homepage.
Click Settings in the sidebar.
Scroll down to find the Export project button:
After the export is generated, you should receive an email with a link to download the file:
Alternatively, you can come back to the project settings and download the file from there, or generate a new export. After the file is available, the page should show the Download export button:

Import the project

WARNING: Only import projects from sources you trust. If you import a project from an untrusted source, it may be possible for an attacker to steal your sensitive data.

The GitLab project import feature is the first import option when creating a new project. Click on GitLab export:
Enter your project name and URL. Then select the file you exported previously:
Click on Import project to begin importing. Your newly imported project page appears shortly.

NOTE: If use of the Internal visibility level is restricted, all imported projects are given the visibility of Private.

NOTE: The maximum import file size can be set by the Administrator, default is 0 (unlimited). As an administrator, you can modify the maximum import file size. To do so, use the max_import_size option in the Application settings API or the Admin Area UI. Default modified from 50MB to 0 in GitLab 13.8.

Project import status

You can query an import through the Project import/export API. As described in the API documentation, the query may return an import error or exceptions.

Import large projects (FREE SELF)

If you have a larger project, consider using a Rake task, as described in our developer documentation.

Rate Limits

To help avoid abuse, by default, users are rate limited to:

Request Type	Limit
Export	6 projects per minute
Download export	1 download per group per minute
Import	6 projects per minute

GitLab.com may have different settings from the defaults.

Troubleshooting

Import workaround for large repositories

Maximum import size limitations can prevent an import from being successful. If changing the import limits is not possible, the following local workflow can be used to temporarily reduce the repository size for another import attempt.

Create a temporary working directory from the export:

EXPORT=<filename-without-extension>

mkdir "$EXPORT"
tar -xf "$EXPORT".tar.gz --directory="$EXPORT"/
cd "$EXPORT"/
git clone project.bundle

# Prevent interference with recreating an importable file later
mv project.bundle ../"$EXPORT"-original.bundle
mv ../"$EXPORT".tar.gz ../"$EXPORT"-original.tar.gz

To reduce the repository size, identify and remove large files or interactively rebase and fixup to reduce the number of commits.

# Reduce the .git/objects/pack/ file size
cd project
git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --prune=now --aggressive

# Prepare recreating an importable file 
git bundle create ../project.bundle <default-branch-name>
cd ..
mv project/ ../"$EXPORT"-project
cd ..

# Recreate an importable file 
tar -czf "$EXPORT"-smaller.tar.gz --directory="$EXPORT"/ .

Import this new, smaller file into GitLab.
In a full clone of the original repository, use git remote set-url origin <new-url> && git push --force --all to complete the import.
Update the imported repository's branch protection rules and its default branch, and delete the temporary, smaller-… branch, and the local, temporary data.