Import and export settings

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• Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
• Offering: GitLab Self-Managed, GitLab Dedicated

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Settings for import- and export-related features.

Configure allowed import sources

Before you can import projects from other systems, you must enable the import source for that system.

1. Sign in to GitLab as a user with Administrator access level.
2. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
3. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
4. Expand the Import and export settings section.
5. Select each of Import sources to allow.
6. Select Save changes.

Disable unused import sources

Only import projects from sources you trust. If you import a project from an untrusted source, an attacker could steal your sensitive data. For example, an imported project with a malicious .gitlab-ci.yml file could allow an attacker to exfiltrate group CI/CD variables.

GitLab Self-Managed administrators can reduce their attack surface by disabling import sources they don't need:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Scroll to Import sources.
5. Clear checkboxes for importers that are not required.

Enable project export

To enable the export of projects and their data:

1. Sign in to GitLab as a user with Administrator access level.
2. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
3. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
4. Expand the Import and export settings section.
5. Scroll to Project export.
6. Select the Enabled checkbox.
7. Select Save changes.

Enable migration of groups and projects by direct transfer

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• Generally available in GitLab 18.3.

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Migration of groups and projects by direct transfer is disabled by default. To enable migration of groups and projects by direct transfer:

1. Sign in to GitLab as a user with Administrator access level.
2. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
3. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
4. Expand the Import and export settings section.
5. Scroll to Allow migrating GitLab groups and projects by direct transfer.
6. Select the Enabled checkbox.
7. Select Save changes.

The same setting is available in the API as the bulk_import_enabled attribute.

Allow S3-compatible object storage for offline transfer

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• Introduced in GitLab 18.9 with a feature flag named offline_transfer_exports. Disabled by default.

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[!flag] The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history.

Prerequisites:

• You must be an administrator.

By default, offline transfer supports only AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage. Turn on this setting to also allow S3-compatible providers, such as MinIO.

[!warning] When you enable this setting, users who can perform offline transfers can supply an arbitrary endpoint URL in the offline transfer object storage configuration. GitLab then sends requests to that endpoint. Enable this setting only if you trust the users who can perform offline transfers.

To allow S3-compatible object storage for offline transfer:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand the Import and export settings section.
4. Scroll to Allow S3 compatible object storage for offline transfer.
5. Select the Enabled checkbox.
6. Select Save changes.

Allow application default credentials for offline transfer

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• Introduced as an experiment in GitLab 19.3 with feature flags named offline_transfer_exports, offline_transfer_imports, and offline_transfer_ui. Disabled by default.

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[!flag] The availability of this feature is controlled by a feature flag. For more information, see the history.

Turn on this setting to allow offline transfer to authenticate with Google Cloud Storage by using Application Default Credentials (ADC).

With every other object storage provider, the user who creates an export or an import supplies the credentials. With ADC, no user supplies credentials. GitLab stores only the Google Cloud project ID and resolves the credentials for each request from the environment of the instance, either from the Compute Engine metadata server or from the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable.

Prerequisites:

• You must be an administrator.

[!warning] An offline transfer that uses ADC acts with every Cloud Storage permission that the service account of the instance holds. That service account is usually more privileged than any individual user, so a user who creates an ADC transfer can reach buckets they hold no credentials for.

To limit this risk, GitLab applies the following restrictions, which you cannot turn off:

• Only users with administrator access can create an offline transfer export or import that uses ADC. Other users receive the error Only administrators can use Application Default Credentials for offline transfer.
• The bucket name must start with gitlab-offline-transfer-. This prefix keeps ADC transfers away from the buckets that the instance uses for its own object storage, such as uploads, job artifacts, and LFS objects.
• ADC is not available on GitLab.com.

The Google Cloud project ID that you provide for a transfer does not limit which buckets that transfer can reach. Bucket names are globally unique in Cloud Storage, so an ADC transfer can use any bucket that the service account can access and whose name starts with gitlab-offline-transfer-, in any Google Cloud project.

GitLab checks these restrictions when a user creates a transfer. If you turn off this setting, users can no longer create ADC transfers, but transfers that already started continue to run.

To allow Application Default Credentials for offline transfer:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand the Import and export settings section.
4. Scroll to Allow Google Cloud Application Default Credentials for offline transfer.
5. Select the Enabled checkbox.
6. Select Save changes.

The same setting is available in the API as the allow_application_default_credentials_for_offline_transfer attribute.

Enable silent admin exports

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• Introduced in GitLab 17.0 with a feature flag named export_audit_events. Disabled by default.
• Generally available in GitLab 17.1. Feature flag export_audit_events removed.
• Introduced for file export downloads in GitLab 17.1.

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Enable silent admin exports to prevent audit events when instance administrators trigger a project or group file export or download the export file. Exports from non-administrators still generate audit events.

To enable silent admin project and group file exports:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General, then expand Import and export settings.
3. Scroll to Silent exports by admins.
4. Select the Enabled checkbox.

Allow contribution mapping to administrators

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• Introduced in GitLab 17.5 with a feature flag named importer_user_mapping. Disabled by default.
• Enabled on GitLab.com and GitLab Self-Managed in GitLab 17.7.
• Generally available in GitLab 18.3. Feature flag importer_user_mapping removed.

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To allow mapping of imported user contributions to administrators:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General, then expand Import and export settings.
3. Scroll to Allow contribution mapping to administrators.
4. Select the Enabled checkbox.

Skip confirmation when administrators reassign placeholder users

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• Introduced in GitLab 18.1 with a feature flag named importer_user_mapping_allow_bypass_of_confirmation. Disabled by default.
• Generally available in GitLab 18.6. Feature flag importer_user_mapping_allow_bypass_of_confirmation removed.

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Prerequisites:

• Ensure user impersonation is not disabled on the GitLab instance.

To skip confirmation when administrators reassign placeholder users:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Under Skip confirmation when administrators reassign placeholder users, select the Enabled checkbox.

When this setting is enabled, administrators can reassign contributions and memberships to non-bot users with any of the following states:

• active
• banned
• blocked
• blocked_pending_approval
• deactivated
• ldap_blocked

Max export size

To modify the maximum file size for exports in GitLab:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General, then expand Import and export settings.
3. Increase or decrease by changing the value in Maximum export size (MiB).

Max import size

To modify the maximum file size for imports in GitLab:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Increase or decrease by changing the value in Maximum import size (MiB).

This setting applies only to repositories imported from a GitLab export file.

If you choose a size larger than the configured value for the web server, you may receive errors. See the troubleshooting section for more details.

For GitLab.com repository size limits, read accounts and limit settings.

Maximum remote file size for imports

By default, the maximum remote file size for imports from external object storages (for example, AWS) is 10 GiB.

To modify this setting:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. In Maximum import remote file size (MiB), enter a value. Set to 0 for no file size limit.

Maximum download file size for imports by direct transfer

By default, the maximum download file size for imports by direct transfer is 5 GiB.

To modify this setting:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. In Maximum download file size (MiB), enter a value. Set to 0 for no file size limit.

Maximum decompressed file size for imported archives

When you import a project using file exports or direct transfer, you can specify the maximum decompressed file size for imported archives. The default value is 25 GiB.

When you import a compressed file, the decompressed size cannot exceed the maximum decompressed file size limit. If the decompressed size exceeds the configured limit, the following error is returned:

Decompressed archive size validation failed.

To modify this setting:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Set another value for Maximum decompressed file size for archives from imports (MiB).

Timeout for decompressing archived files

When you import a project, you can specify the maximum time out for decompressing imported archives. The default value is 210 seconds.

To modify the maximum decompressed file size for imports in GitLab:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Set another value for Timeout for decompressing archived files (seconds).

Maximum number of simultaneous import jobs

You can specify the maximum number of import jobs that are executed simultaneously for:

• GitHub importer
• Bitbucket Cloud importer
• Bitbucket Server importer

The job limit is not applied when importing merge requests because there is a hard-coded limit for merge requests to avoid overloading servers.

The default job limit is:

• For the GitHub importer, 1000.
• For the Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Server importer, 100. The Bitbucket importers have a low default limit because we haven't yet determined a good default limit. Instance administrators should experiment with a higher limit.

To modify this setting:

1. In the upper-right corner, select Admin.
2. In the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
3. Expand Import and export settings.
4. Set another value for Maximum number of simultaneous import jobs for the desired importer.

Maximum number of simultaneous batch export jobs

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• Introduced in GitLab 17.6.

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Direct transfer exports can consume a significant amount of resources. To prevent using up the database or Sidekiq processes, administrators can configure the concurrent_relation_batch_export_limit setting.

The default value is 8 jobs, which corresponds to a reference architecture for up to 40 RPS or 2,000 users. If you encounter PG::QueryCanceled: ERROR: canceling statement due to statement timeout errors or jobs getting interrupted due to Sidekiq memory limits, you might want to reduce this number. If you have enough resources, you can increase this number to process more concurrent export jobs.

To modify this setting, send an API request to /api/v4/application/settings with concurrent_relation_batch_export_limit. For more information, see application settings API.

Export batch size

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• Introduced in GitLab 18.2.

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To further manage memory usage and database load, use the relation_export_batch_size setting to control the number of records processed in each batch during export operations.

The default value is 50 records per batch. To modify this setting, send an API request to /api/v4/application/settings with relation_export_batch_size. For more information, see application settings API.

Troubleshooting

Error: Help page documentation base url is blocked: execution expired

While enabling application settings like import source, you might get a Help page documentation base url is blocked: execution expired error. To work around this error:

1. Add docs.gitlab.com, or the redirect help documentation pages URL, to the allowlist.
2. Select Save Changes.

Related topics

• Import and migrate to GitLab.
• Sidekiq configuration imports.
• Running multiple Sidekiq processes.
• Processing specific job classes.