How to integrate Gitlab Git repository into Redmine

Setting up the Redmine Git infrastructure

• Copy the access token to your clipboard and save it somewhere safe. You won’t be able to see it again.

The following is based on Redmine docker-compose config with Traefik & Let’s Encrypt

• Create a new directory to hold Git repositories for your Redmine instance.

mkdir redmine_git

• Add that to the docker-compose.yml so it’s mapped inside the container

services:
  redmine:
    # ...
    volumes:
      # ...
      - './redmine_git:/git'

Cloning a Gitlab repository into Redmine

Repeat this for every repository you want to integrate into Redmine.

• In Gitlab, open the project and goto Settings -> Access Tokens
• Create an Access Token with the following settings:
  • You can name it Redmine, but the name doesn’t matter, so feel free to choose any other name.
  • As Role, select Developer
  • As Expiration Date, I recommend deleting the value by clicking the x icon, so the token never expires. Otherwise, you would have to regularly re-create tokens for all repositories.
  • As Scopes, select read_repository and nothing else.
• Now go to the project’s page on Gitlab and copy the Git URL, e.g. https://gitlab.mydomain.com/myuser/MyProject.git
• Edit that URL and add username:password@ after https:// with username being the name of the token (e.g. Redmine) and the password being the token you copied earlier.

https://Redmine:[email protected]/myuser/MyProject.git

• Now clone that URL as a mirror repository into the redmine_git directory

cd redmine_git
git clone --mirror https://Redmine:[email protected]/myuser/MyProject.git

• In redmine, navigate to the project you want to integrate the repository into, go into Settings -> Repositories and click on New Repository:

• Enter the path to the repository, e.g. /git/MyProject.git and a new identifier which may contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores. This identifier is used to reference the repository in Redmine’s database.

• Click on Create and you’re done!

Setup automatic repository fetch

Redmine currently does not support fetching repositories automatically. You can set up a cronjob to fetch repositories every 5 minutes.

I recommend to use SystemD timers for this, as they are more reliable and generally more flexible than cronjobs.

In the directory where redmine_git resides, create a new file setup-git-fetch.sh, which sets up the fetch script and timer:

#!/bin/bash
export NAME=$(basename $(pwd))-gitfetch

cat >/etc/systemd/system/${NAME}.service <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=${NAME}

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c 'cd redmine_git && for i in *; do [ -d "\$i" ] && cd "\$i" && git fetch --all; cd ..; done'
WorkingDirectory=$(pwd)
EOF

cat >/etc/systemd/system/${NAME}.timer <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=${NAME} timer

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*:0/2
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target
EOF

# Enable and start service
systemctl enable --now ${NAME}.timer

Run that script from the directory where redmine_git resides:

sudo bash setup-git-fetch.sh

This script sets up a SystemD service and timer that fetches all repositories in redmine_git every 2 minutes.