Move a repository from Github to Gitlab

Question

Is there a way to move an entire repository from Github to GitLab?

For the code itself, this would be a simple matter of creating a new repo on GitLab and pushing to it.

Wiki pages live in a separate branch on Github and are managed with Git mechanisms; AFAIK the same goes for GitLab. Same story for pages.

That leaves issues and merge requests as the main open points. Is there a way to copy those from Github to GitLab, at least in the state they were in at the time of the migration?

Github offers an export ferature, and GitLab has an import feature which can import a Github repository—do any of these help with the above?

Answer 1

GitLab’s import feature has worked quite nicely.

• On https://gitlab.com (make sure you are logged in), you will get a list of your projects. Click New Project.
• Open the Import Project tab, and click Github.
• If you have not granted Gitlab authorization to access your Github account, you will be prompted to do so now.
• A list of your Github repos will appear. For each repo you wish to import, choose the namespace (your personal one or that of any of your organizations, if any) and change the project name if you wish. (Default is to import to your personal namespace and use the same repo name as on Github.) Then click Import next to the repo you wish to import.

Import will take a couple of minutes. When it finishes, you will get your entire repo, including wiki, issues and merge requests. Issues and merge requests will retain ticket numbers as on Github, and labels also seem to get migrated.

Github Pages do not seem to get migrated automatically. This requires some manual steps. For purely static content (no SSG), with content stored in the gh-pages branch, the process is as follows:

• Switch to your gh-pages branch.
• Create a new folder public and move all content there.
• Commit your changes.
• Switch back to master and merge gh-pages (so that your content now resides on a separate folder in master rather than its own branch).
• On your project’s main page, click Add CI/CD. This will create a new .gitlab-ci.yml file; add the following content and commit:

image: alpine:latest

pages:
  stage: deploy
  script:
  - echo 'Nothing to do...'
  artifacts:
    paths:
    - public
  only:
  - master

This will take another few minutes. Navigate to Settings > Pages and click the link to your pages.

Github has multiple options for storing web content; the above may also work for others with slight modifications.