Running a local instance of GitLab and syncing with remote GitLab?
I have been toying with an idea and I want to ask if it makes any sense from the other experts here.
My company has an enterprise GitLab instance which is run in the corporate HQ. What I am thinking of doing is installing a local version of GitLab (I administrate my own laptop) and GitLab runners for local development as well as using the runners for primarily testing though I can think of some other possible use cases as well. I have the following two questions:
Would I be able to bidirectionally sync the repositories between my local GitLab instance and the enterprise GitLab environment - and if so, how? I figure the repositories must exist in both instances before it is able to be set up, but I'm not sure if there is a plugin to handle this kind of integration or if it is even possible. I figured somebody would have encountered an issue similar to this before but unfortunately my GoogleFu is letting me down here and not providing me any information which seems relevant.
Does this type of set up even make sense? Am I overthinking things?
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
5 comments · 100% upvoted · other discussions
Look at bi-directional repo mirroring, it's a feature built-in to gitlab
Not really sure it makes sense. Gitlab is a fairly hefty app, the omnibus install runs a ruby app, postgres db, and some cache's like redis. I'm not sure what having local runners gets you, why can't you just have runners setup for your use case on the enterprise gitlab? If you're really wanting this then I'd look at just hosting a runner that's registered with the enterprise Gitlab to run things locally when you push.
kewlness [OP] 1 points · Mar 2025
GitLab Runner is pretty much exactly what I am looking for but could not find. I did not realize it was a stand-alone capability but I thought it was integrated into GitLab itself.
Thank you for the enlightenment.