gitlab.md

[GitLab](https://gitlab.com/) is *a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a
Git-repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking and continuous
integration/continuous deployment pipeline features, using an
open-source license, developed by GitLab Inc* ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitLab)). Tor
uses GitLab mainly for issue tracking, wiki hosting and code review
for now, at <https://gitlab.torproject.org>, after migrating from
[howto/trac](howto/trac).

[[_TOC_]]

<!-- note: this template was designed based on multiple sources: -->
<!-- https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/ -->
<!-- http://opsreportcard.com/section/9-->
<!-- http://opsreportcard.com/section/11 -->
<!-- comments like this one should be removed on instanciation -->

# Tutorial

<!-- simple, brainless step-by-step instructions requiring little or -->
<!-- no technical background -->

## How to get an account?

You might already *have* an account! If you were active on Trac, your
account was migrated with the same username and email address as Trac,
unless you have an LDAP account, in which case that was used. So head
over to the [password reset page](https://gitlab.torproject.org/users/password/new) to get access to your account.

If your account was *not* migrated, send a mail to
<gitlab-admin@torproject.org> to request a new one.

We hope to have something else in place for user registration once the
migration is successful.

## How to report an issue in Tor software?

You first need to figure out which project the issue resides in. The
[project list][] is a good place to get started. Here are a few quick
links for popular projects:

[project list]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo

 * [core tor](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor): [issues](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues), [new issue](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/new)
 * [Tor Browser](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser): [issues](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues), [new issue](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/new)
 * [gitlab](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab): [issues](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues), [new issue](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/new)

If you do not have a GitLab account or can't figure it out for any
reason, you can also use the mailing lists. The
<tor-dev@lists.torproject.org> mailing list is the best for now.

## How to report an issue in the bugtracker itself?

If you have access to GitLab, you can [file a new issue][File] after
you have [searched the GitLab project for similar bugs][search]. 

If you do *not* have access to GitLab, you can email
<gitlab-admin@torproject.org>.

## How to contribute code?

As reporting an issue, you first need to figure out which project you
are working on in the GitLab [project list][]. Then, if you are not
familiar with merge requests, you should read the [merge requests
introduction](https://gitlab.torproject.org/help/user/project/merge_requests/getting_started.md) in the GitLab documentation. If you are unfamiliar
with merge requests but familiar with GitHub's pull requests, those
are similar.

Note that we do not necessarily use merge requests in all teams yet,
and Gitolite still has the canonical version of the code. See [issue
36][] for a followup on this.

[issue 36]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/36

Also note that different teams might have different workflows. If a
team has a special workflow that diverges from the one here, it should
be documented here. Those are the workflows we know about:

 * [Network Team](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/wikis/NetworkTeam/GitlabReviews)
 * [Web Team](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/community/-/wikis/Git-flow-and-merge-requests)
 * Bridge DB: merge requests

If you do not have access to GitLab, please use one of the mailing
lists: <tor-dev@lists.torproject.org> would be best.

## How to quote a comment in a reply?

The "Reply" button only creates a new comment without any quoted text
by default.  It seems the solution to that is currently highlighting
the text to quote and then pressing the `r`-key. See also the [other
keyboard shortcuts](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/shortcuts.html).

Alternatively, you can copy-paste the text in question in the comment
form, select the pasted text, and hit the `Insert a quote` button
which look like a styled, curly, and closing quotation mark `”`.

# How-to

## How to find the right emoji?

It's possible to add "reaction emojis" to comments and issues and
merge requests in GitLab. Just hit the little smiley face and a dialog
will pop up. You can then browse through the list and pick the right
emoji for how you feel about the comment, but remember to be nice!

It's possible you get lost in the list. You can type the name of the
emoji to restrict your search, but be warned that some emojis have
[particular, non-standard names](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/29057) that might not be immediately
obvious. For example, `🎉`, `U+1F389 PARTY POPPER`, is found as
`tada` in the list! See [this upstream issue for more details](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/29057).

## Hooking up a project with the bots

By default, new projects do *not* have notifications setup in
`#tor-bots` like all the others. To do this, you need to configure a
"Webhook", in the `Settings -> Webhooks` section of the project. The
URL should be:

    https://kgb-bot.torproject.org/webhook/

... and you should select the notifications you wish to see in
`#tor-bots`. You can also enable notifications to other channels by
adding more parameters to the URL, like (say)
`?channel=%23tor-foo`. The parameters are documented the [KGB
documentation](https://salsa.debian.org/kgb-team/kgb/-/wikis/usage).

Note that GitLab admins might be able to configure [system-wide
hooks](https://gitlab.torproject.org/help/system_hooks/system_hooks) in [the admin section](https://gitlab.torproject.org/admin/hooks), although it's not entirely clear
how does relate to the per-project hooks so those have not been
enabled. Furthermore, it is possible for GitLab admins with root
access to enable webhooks on *all* projects, with the [webhook rake
task](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/web_hooks.html#webhooks). For example, running this on the GitLab server (currently
`gitlab-02`) will enable the above hook on all repositories:

    sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:web_hook:add URL='https://kgb-bot.torproject.org/webhook/'

Note that by default, the rake task only enables `Push` events. You
need the following patch to enable others:

    modified   lib/tasks/gitlab/web_hook.rake
    @@ -10,7 +10,19 @@ namespace :gitlab do
           puts "Adding webhook '#{web_hook_url}' to:"
           projects.find_each(batch_size: 1000) do |project|
             print "- #{project.name} ... "
    -        web_hook = project.hooks.new(url: web_hook_url)
    +        web_hook = project.hooks.new(
    +          url: web_hook_url,
    +          push_events: true,
    +          issues_events: true,
    +          confidential_issues_events: false,
    +          merge_requests_events: true,
    +          tag_push_events: true,
    +          note_events: true,
    +          confidential_note_events: false,
    +          job_events: true,
    +          pipeline_events: true,
    +          wiki_page_events: true,
    +        )
             if web_hook.save
               puts "added".color(:green)
             else

See also the [upstream issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/17966) and [our GitLab issue 7](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/7) for
details.

You can also remove a given hook from all repos with:

    sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:web_hook:rm URL='https://kgb-bot.torproject.org/webhook/'

And, finally, list all hooks with:

    sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:web_hook:list

## Setting up two-factor authentication (2FA)

We strongly recommend you enable two-factor authentication on
GitLab. This is [well documented in the GitLab manual](https://gitlab.torproject.org/help/user/profile/account/two_factor_authentication.md#two-factor-authentication), but basically:

 1. first, pick a 2FA "app" (and optionally a hardware token) if you
    don't have one already

 2. head to your [account settings](https://gitlab.torproject.org/profile/account)

 3. register your 2FA app and save the recovery codes somewhere. if
    you need to enter a URL by hand, you can scan the qrcode with your
    phone or create one by following this format:

        otpauth://totp/$ACCOUNT?secret=$KEY&issuer=gitlab.torproject.org

    where...

      * `$ACCOUNT` is the `Account` field in the 2FA form
      * `$KEY` is the `Key` field in the 2FA form, without spaces

 4. register the 2FA hardware token if available

GitLab requires a 2FA "app" even if you intend to use a hardware
token. The 2FA "app" must implement the TOTP protocol, for example the
[Google Authenticator](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.authenticator2) or a free alternative (for example [free OTP
plus](https://github.com/helloworld1/FreeOTPPlus/), see also this [list from the Nextcloud project](https://github.com/nextcloud/twofactor_totp#readme)). The
hardware token must implement the U2F protocol, which is supported by
security tokens like the [YubiKey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YubiKey), [Nitrokey](https://www.nitrokey.com/), or similar.

## Pager playbook

<!-- information about common errors from the monitoring system and -->
<!-- how to deal with them. this should be easy to follow: think of -->
<!-- your future self, in a stressful situation, tired and hungry. -->

 * Grafana Dashboards:
   * [GitLab overview](https://grafana.torproject.org/d/QrDJktiMz/gitlab-omnibus)
   * [Gitaly](https://grafana.torproject.org/d/x6Z50y-iz/gitlab-gitaly)

## Disaster recovery

In case the entire GitLab machine is destroyed, a new server should be
provisionned in the [howto/ganeti](howto/ganeti) cluster (or elsewhere) and backups
should be restored using the below procedure.

### Running an emergency backup

A full backup can be ran as root with:

    /usr/bin/gitlab-rake gitlab:backup:create

Backups are stored as a tar file in `/srv/gitlab-backup` and do *not*
include secrets, which are backed up separately, for example with:

    umask 0077 && tar -C /var/opt/gitlab -czf /srv/gitlab-backup/config_backup$(date +"\%Y\%m\%dT\%H\%M").tar.gz

See `/etc/cron.d/gitlab-config-backup`, and the `gitlab::backup` and
`profile::gitlab::app` classes for the actual jobs that runs nightly.

### baremetal recovery

Untested procedure extracted from the [upstream docs](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/raketasks/backup_restore.html#restore-for-omnibus-gitlab-installations):

 1. reinstall the same version you are restoring from

 2. restore the secrets backup:
 
        tar -C /opt/gitlab/etc/ -x -v -z -f config_backup20200627T0200.tar.gz

 2. configure and start gitlab:
 
        sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
        sudo gitlab-ctl start

 3. restore the file:

        sudo cp 11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce_gitlab_backup.tar /var/opt/gitlab/backups
        sudo chown git.git /var/opt/gitlab/backups/11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce_gitlab_backup.tar
        sudo gitlab-ctl stop unicorn
        sudo gitlab-ctl stop puma
        sudo gitlab-ctl stop sidekiq
        # Verify
        sudo gitlab-ctl status
        sudo gitlab-backup restore BACKUP=11493107454_2018_04_25_10.6.4-ce

# Reference

## Installation

The current GitLab server was setup in the [howto/ganeti](howto/ganeti) cluster in a
regular virtual machine. It was configured with [howto/puppet](howto/puppet) with the
`roles::gitlab`. That, in turn, relies on a series of `profile`
elements which configure:

 * `profile::gitlab::web`: nginx vhost and TLS cert, depends on
   `profile::nginx` built for the [howto/cache](howto/cache) service and relying on the
   [puppet/nginx](https://forge.puppet.com/puppet/nginx) module from the Forge
 * `profile::gitlab::mail`: dovecot and postfix configuration, for
   email replies
 * `profile::gitlab::database`: postgresql configuration, possibly not
   used by the Omnibus package, see [issue 20](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/20)
 * `profile::gitlab::app`: the core of the configuration of gitlab
   itself, uses the [puppet/gitlab](https://forge.puppet.com/puppet/gitlab) module from the Forge, with
   Prometheus, Grafana, and Nginx support disabled, but Redis,
   PostgreSQL, and Prometheus exporters enabled

This installs the [GitLab Omnibus](https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/) distribution which duplicates a
lot of resources we would otherwise manage elsewhere in Puppet,
including (but possibly not limited to):

 * [howto/prometheus](howto/prometheus) exorters
 * [howto/postgresql](howto/postgresql)
 * redis

This therefore leads to a "particular" situation regarding monitoring
and PostgreSQL backups, in particular. See [issue 20](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/20) for details.

## SLA
<!-- this describes an acceptable level of service for this service -->

## Migration

GitLab was migrated from Trac in June 2020, after a few months of
testing. Tests were done first on a server called
`dip.torproject.org`, a reference to `salsa.debian.org`, the GitLab
server ran by the Debian project. We identified [some problems with
merge requests](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/32197) during the test so the server was reinstalled with
the "GitLab Omnibus" package on the current server, `gitlab-02` which
will enter production in the week of June 15th 2020.

### Why migrate?

We're hoping gitlab will be a good fit because:

 * Gitlab will allow us to collect our different engineering tools
   into a single application: Git repository handling, Wiki, Issue
   tracking, Code reviews, and project management tooling.
 * Gitlab is well-maintained, while Trac plugins are not well
   maintained and Trac itself hasn't seen a release for over a year
   (since 2019)
 * Gitlab will allow us to build a more modern approach to handling CI
   for our different projects. This is going to happen after the
   ticket and wiki migration.

(Note that we're only planning to install and use the freely licensed version
of gitlab.  There is an "enterprise" version with additional features, but we
prefer to use free software whenever possible.)

### Migrated content

The issues and wiki of the "Tor" project are migrated. There are no
other projects in Trac.

 * Trac wiki: <https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac>
 * Trac issues: <https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/issues>

Trac issues that remain are really legacy issues, others issues have
been "moved" to the respective projects. @ahf, who did the migration,
created a [copy of the mapping](component-tickets) for those
looking for their old stuff.

All the tickets that were *not* moved to their respective projects
have been closed in the first week of july.

### Not migrated

We are *not* migrating away from Gitolite and Jenkins just yet. This
means those services are still fully operational and their equivalent
features in GitLab are *not* supported (namely Git hosting and
CI). Those services *might* eventually be migrated to GitLab, but
that's not part of the current migration plan. See [issue 36][] for
the followup on that.

Again, the canonical copy for source code hosted by git is:

 * `git-rw.torproject` - writable git repositories over SSH
 * <https://git.torproject.org/> - readonly clones
 * <https://gitweb.torproject.org/> - web interface

We also do not host "GitLab pages", the static site hosting provided
by GitLab.

The priority of those features would be:

 1. gitolite replacement and migration
 2. CI deployment, with people migrating their own job from Jenkinks
    and TPA shutting down Jenkins on a flag date
 3. GitLab pages replacement and migration from the current static
    site hosting system

Those are each large projects and will be undertaken at a later stage,
progressively.

### Feature equivalence

| Feature              | Trac           | GitLab                 | Comments                                                                        |
| -------              | ----           | ------                 | --------                                                                        |
| Ticket relations     | parent/child   | checklists             | checklists show up as "X of Y tasks completed"¹                                 |
| Milestones           | yes            | yes                    |                                                                                 |
| Estimates            | points/actual  | estimation/spending    | requires conversion from days to hours                                          |
| Private issues       | no             | yes                    |                                                                                 |
| Issue subscription   | RSS, email, ML | email                  | Trac sends email to trac-bugs                                                   |
| User projects        | no             | yes                    | if users can create projects                                                    |
| User registration    | optional       | disabled               | ²                                                                               |
| Search               | advanced       | basic                  | no support for custom queries in GitLab³                                        |
| Markup               | WikiCreole     | Markdown, GitHub-like  | ⁴                                                                               |
| IRC bot              | yes            | yes                    | zwiebelbot has to be patched, other bots to be deployed for notifications⁵      |
| Git hosting          | no, gitolite   | yes, builtin           | concerns about trusting GitLab with our code                                    |
| CI                   | no, Jenkins    | yes, builtin           | maybe in the future                                                             |
| Upstream maintenance | slow           | fast                   | Trac does not seem well maintained                                              |
| Wikis                | one big wiki   | per-project            | ⁶                                                                               |
| API                  | XML-RPC        | REST, multiple clients |                                                                                 |
| Javascript           | optional       | required               | Drag-and-drop boards seem not to work but the list of issues still can be used. |

Notes:

 1. Trac parent/child issue relationships have been converted into a
    simple comment at the beginnning of the ticket linking to the
    child/parent tickets. It was originally hoped to use the
    "checklists" features but this was not implemented for lack of time.

 2. User registration is perfectly possible in GitLab but since GitLab
    instances are frequently attacked by spammers, it is disabled
    until we find an alternative. See missing features below for
    details).

 3. GitLab, in particular, does not support inline searches, see
    Missing features below for details.

 4. The wiki and issue formatting markup is different. Whereas Trac
    uses [wiki formatting](https://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/WikiFormatting) inspired by old wikis like
    [MoinMoin](https://moinmo.in/), a subset of the somewhat standard [Wikicreole](http://www.wikicreole.org/)
    markup, GitLab uses [Markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown), specifically their own [GitLab
    version of markdown](https://gitlab.com/help/user/markdown) inspired by GitHub's markdown
    extensions. The wiki and issues were automatically converted to
    Markdown, but when you file new issues, you will need to use
    Markdown, not Creole.

 5. specifically, zwiebelbot now knows about `foo#N` pointing to issue
    N in project `foo` in GitLab. We need to update (or replace) the
    `nsa` bot in `#tor-bots` to broadcast announcements to
    projects. This could be done with the [KGB](https://salsa.debian.org/kgb-team/kgb/-/wikis/home) bot for which we
    now have a [Puppet module](https://gitlab.com/shared-puppet-modules-group/kgb) so it could easily be deployed here

 6. because Trac does not allow users to create projects, we have
    historically used one gigantic project for everything, which means
    we had only one wiki. technically, Trac also supports one wiki per
    project, but because project creation requires an admin
    intervention, this never concretized.

### Ticket fields equivalence

| Trac            | GitLab                    | Comments                                                        |
| ----            | ------                    | --------                                                        |
| id              | id                        | keep the ticket id in legacy project, starts at 40000 in GitLab |
| Summary         | ?                         | unused?                                                         |
| Reporter        | Reporter                  |                                                                 |
| Description     | Body                      |                                                                 |
| Type            | Label                     | use templates to make sure those are filled                     |
| Milestone       | Milestone, Label          |                                                                 |
| Version         | Label                     |                                                                 |
| Keywords        | Label                     |                                                                 |
| Points, in days | /estimate, in hours       | requires conversion                                             |
| Actual points   | /spending                 |                                                                 |
| Sponsor         | Label                     |                                                                 |
| Priority        | Board, Label              | boards can sort issues instead of assigning arbitrary keywords  |
| Component       | Subproject, Label         |                                                                 |
| Severity        | Label                     | mark only blocker issues to resolve                             |
| Cc              | @people                   | paid plans also have multiple assignees                         |
| Parent issue    | #reference                | issue mentions and checklists                                   |
| Reviewer        | Label                     |                                                                 |
| Attachements    | Attachements, per comment |                                                                 |
| Status          | Label                     | Kanban boards panels                                            |

Notice how the `Label` field is used as a fallback when no equivalent
field exists.

### Missing features

GitLab does not provide one-to-one feature parity with Trac, but it
comes pretty close. It has issue tracking, wikis, milestones,
keywords, time estimates, and much more.

But one feature it is missing is the **advanced ticket query**
features of Trac. It's not possible to create "reports" in GitLab to
have pre-cooked issue listings. And it's especially not possible to
embed special searches in wiki pages the same way it is done in Trac.

We suggest people use the "dashboard" feature of GitLab instead. This
featuers follows the [Kanban][] development strategy which is
implemented in GitLab as [issue boards](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/issue_board.html). It is also, of course,
possible to link so specific searches from the wiki, but not embed
those tickets in the output.

[Kanban]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)

We do *not* have a **anonymous account** (AKA `cypherpunks`) for
now. GitLab will be in **closed registration** for now, with users
needing to request approval on a per-person basis for now. Eventually,
we're going to consider other options to work around this (human)
bottleneck.

### Interesting new features

 1. Using pull requests to your project repositories, and assigning
    reviewers on pull requests, rather than using `reviewer` and
    `needs_review` labels on issues. Issues can refer to pull requests
    and vice versa.

 2. Your team can work on using Gitlab boards for handling the
    different stages of issue handling. All the way from selection to
    finalization with code in a PR. You can have as many boards as you
    like: per subproject, per sponsor, per week, all of this is
    something we can experiment with.

 3. You can now use time estimation in Gitlab simply by adding a specially
    formatted comment in your issues/pull requests instead of using `points` and
    `actual_points`. See the [time tracking documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/time_tracking.html) for details

 4. Familiarize yourself with new interfaces such as the ["to do"
    dashboard](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/todos.html) where you can see what needs your input since last
    visit

 5. Create email filters for tickets: Gitlab adds a lot more [email
    headers to each notification](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/profile/notifications.html#filtering-email) you receive (if you want it via
    email), which for example allows you split notifications in your
    mail program into different directories.

    Bonus info: You will be able to reply via email to the notifications you
    receive from Gitlab, and Gitlab will put your responses into the system as
    notes on issues :-)

### bugs.torproject.org redirections

The <https://bugs.torproject.org> redirection now points at
GitLab. The following rules apply:

 1. **legacy tickets**: `bugs.torproject.org/N` redirects to
    `gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/issues/N`
 2. **new issues**: `bugs.tpo/PROJECT/N` redirects to
    `gitlab.tpo/PROJECT/-/issues/N`
 3. **merge requests**: `bugs.tpo/PROJECT!N` redirects to
    `gitlab.tpo/PROJECT/-/merge_requests/N`
 4. **catch all**: `bugs.tpo/FOO` redirects to `gitlab.tpo/FOO`
 5. **ticket list**: a bare `bugs.tpo` redirects to
    `https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/-/issues`

It used to be that `bugs.tpo/N` would redirect to issue `N` the Trac
"tor" project. But unfortunately, there's no global "number space" for
issues in GitLab (or at least not a user-visible one), so `N` is not
distinct across projects. We therefore need the prefix to
disambiguate. 

We considered enforcing the `tpo` prefix there to shorten links, but
we decided against it because it would forbid pointers to
user-specific projects and would make it extremely hard to switch away
from the global `tpo` group if we ever decide to do that.

### Content organisation


Projects are all stored under the over-arching `tpo` group. This is
done this way to allow project managers to have an overview of all
projects going on at TPO. It also allows us to host other
organisations on our GitLab in a different namespace.

Under the `tpo` group, each team has its own subgroup and they have
autonomy under that group to manage accesses and projects.

### Permissions

Given the above Team/Group organization, users will be members in
gitlab for the groups/teams they belong to. 

Any projects that need to be shared between multiple groups should be
shared using the “Share Project” functionality.

There should be a limited number of members in the Tor Project group,
as these will have access to all subgroups and their
projects. Currently this is limited to Project Managers and Services
and Sysadmins.

A reminder of the GitLab [permission system](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/permissions.html) and [types of users](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/#permissions-in-gitlab):

 * Guests: anybody that may need to report issues on a project and/or
   make comments on an issue.
 * Reporter: they can also manage labels 
 * Developer: they can create branches, manage merge requests, force
   push to non-protected branches
 * Maintainer: edit projects, manage runners, edit comments, delete
   wiki pages.
 * Owner: we are setting this role for every member in the TPO
   team. They can also transfer projects to other name spaces, switch
   visilbity level, delete issues.

### Labels

At group level we have sponsor labels and state labels. The ones that
are used by the whole organization are in the `tpo` group. Each team
can decide which other labels they add for their projects.

 * Kanban columns
   * Icebox
   * Backlog
   * Next
   * Doing
   * Needs Review
 * Types of Issue
   * Defect
   * Enhancement
   * Task
 * Related to a project
   * Scalability
   * UX
 * Sponsors
   * Sponsor X
 * Keywords
   * Other possible keywords needed at group level.

Note that those labels are being worked on [ticket 4](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/4). We also have
a lot more label than we would like ([ticket 3](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/3)) which makes GitLab
hard to use. Because there are thousands of labels in some projects,
loading the label list can take a second or more on slower links, and
it's really hard to find the label you're looking for, which affects
usability -- and especially discoverability -- quite a bit.

ahf performed a major label cleanup operation on 2020-06-27, following
the specification in the [label cleanup](https://gitlab.torproject.org/ahf/label-cleanup/-/tree/main/) repository. It rewrote and
deleted labels in one batch in all projects. When the job was done,
[empty labels](https://gitlab.torproject.org/ahf/label-cleanup/-/blob/main/tpo/core/tor-delete.txt) were removed as well.

A [dump of the previous state](https://gitlab.torproject.org/ahf/label-cleanup/-/raw/main/tpo/core/tor-history.yaml) is available for historical
purposes.

### Project organisation

It is recommended that each team sets up a `team` project which can
welcome issues from outside contributors who might not otherwise know
where to file an issue.

That project is also where each team can have their own wiki. The Trac
wiki was migrated into the [legacy/trac](https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac) project but that content
will have to be manually migrated to the respective teams.

This organisation is still being discussed, see [issue 28](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/28).

### Git repository migration

Git repository migration is still being discussed, in [ticket 36](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/36).

### Remaining work

As of June 17th:

 4. Begin handing out some of the accounts to community members that
    we have created in their name(s).

 5. Begin figuring out how to solve the account creation and anonymous
    users in the longer run.

See also the [list of known issues][search].

### What will break, and when will you fix it?

Most notably, we're going to have an interruption in the ability to open new
accounts and new tickets.  We _did not_ want to migrate without a solution
here; we'll try to have at least a stop-gap solution in place soon, and
something better in the future.  For now, we're planning for people that want
to get a new account please send a mail to <gitlab-admin@torproject.org>. We
hope to have something else in place once the migration is succesful.

We're not going to migrate long-unused accounts.

Some wiki pages that contained automated listings of tickets will stop
containing those lists: that's a trac feature that gitlab doesn't have. We'll
have to adjust our workflows to work around this. In some cases, we can use
gitlab milestone pages or projects that do not need a wiki page as a work
around.

### Trac Archival

A copy of all Trac web pages were stored in the [Internet
Archive](http://archive.org/)'s [Wayback machine](http://web.archive.org/), thanks to [ArchiveBot](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveBot), a tool
developed by [ArchiveTeam](https://www.archiveteam.org/), of which anarcat is somewhat a part of.

First, a list of tickets was created:

    seq 1 40000 | sed 's#^#https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/#'

This was uploaded to anarcat's pastebin (using [pubpaste](https://gitlab.com/anarcat/pubpaste)) and fed
into archivebot with:

    !ao < https://paste.anarc.at/publish/2020-06-17/trac.torproject.org-tickets-1-40000-final.txt
    !ao https://paste.anarc.at/publish/2020-06-17/trac.torproject.org-tickets-1-40000-final.txt

This tells ArchiveBot to crawl each ticket individually, and then
archive the list itself as well.

Simultaneously, a full crawl of the entire site (and first level
outgoing links) was started, with:

    !a https://trac.torproject.org --explain "migrated to gitlab, readonly" --delay 500

A list of excludes was added to ignore traps and infinite loops:

    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/query.*[?&]order=(?!priority)
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/query.*[&?]desc=1
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://gitweb\.torproject\.org/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/timeline\?
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/query\?status=!closed&keywords=
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/query\?status=!closed&(version|reporter|owner|cc)=
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/query\?(.*&)?(reporter|priority|component|severity|cc|owner|version)=
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://cdn\.media\.ccc\.de/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://www\.redditstatic\.com/desktop2x/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://trac\.torproject\.org/projects/tor/report/\d+.*[?&]sort=
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://support\.stripe\.com/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k  ^https?://cdn\.cms-twdigitalassets\.com/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k  ^https?://cypherpunks\:writecode@trac\.torproject\.org/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://login\.blockchain\.com/
    !ig bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k ^https?://dnsprivacy\.org/

The crawl was slowed down with a 500-1000ms delay to avoid hammering the server:

    !d bpu6j3ucrv87g4aix1zdrhb6k 500 1000

The results will be accessible in the wayback machine a few days after
the crawl. Another crawl was performed back in 2019, so the known full
archives of Trac are as follows:

 * [june 2019 ticket crawl](https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/5vytc): 6h30, 29892 files, 1.9 GiB
 * [june 2020 ticket crawl](https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/c4xu3): 4h30, 33582 files, 1.9GiB
 * [june 2019 and 2020 full crawls](https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/bpu6j): 5 days, 7h30, 732488 files,
   105.4 GiB; 5 days, 16h10, 837100 files, 137.6 GiB.

This information can be extracted back again from the `*-meta.warc.gz`
(text) files in the above URLs. This was done as part of [ticket
40003](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/40003). There has also been other, independent, crawls of Trac,
which are partly visible [in the viewer](https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/?q=trac.torproject.org).

### History

 * lost in the mists of time: migration from Bugzilla to Flyspray (40
   tickets)
 * 2010-04-23: [migration from Flyspray to Trac completed](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2010-April/000183.html) (last
   Flyspray ticket is [1393](https://bugs.torproject.org/1393), first Trac ticket is [2000](https://bugs.torproject.org/2000))
 * 2016-11-29: [first request to setup a GitLab server](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/20821)
 * ~2017: oniongit.eu (warning: squatted domain) deployed to test
   GitLab with the network team, considered as gitlab.torproject.net
   but ultimately [abandoned](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/21840)
 * 2019-02-28: `gitlab-01` AKA dip.torproject.org test server setup
   ([issue 29400](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/29400)), following the [Brussels meeting](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2019BrusselsAdminTeamMinutes)
 * 2019-07-17: GitLab discussed again at the [Stockholm meeting](https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/org/meetings/2019Stockholm/Notes/InternalTooling)
 * 2019-07-29: Formal proposal to deploy GitLab [sent to
   tor-project](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-July/002407.html), no objection
 * 2020-03-05: GitLab migrated from `gitlab-01` (AKA "dip") to
   `gitlab-02` using the Omnibus package
 * 2020-04-27: `gitlab-01` retired
 * 2020-06-13 19:00UTC: [Trac readonly](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2020-June/002872.html)
 * 2020-06-13 02:25UTC: Trac tickets migrated (32401 tickets, last
   ticket id is [34451](https://bugs.torproject.org/34451), first GitLab legacy project ticket id is
   40000)
 * 2020-06-14 21:22UTC: Trac wiki migrated
 * 2020-06-15 18:30UTC: bugs.torproject.org redirects to gitlab
 * 2020-06-16 02:15UTC: GitLab launch announced to tor-internal
 * 2020-06-17 12:33UTC: Archivebot starts crawling all tickets of, and
   the entire Trac website
 * 2020-06-23: Archivebot completes the full Trac crawl, Trac is fully
   archived on the Internet Archive

## Design
<!-- how this is built -->
<!-- should reuse and expand on the "proposed solution", it's a -->
<!-- "as-built" documented, whereas the "Proposed solution" is an -->
<!-- "architectural" document, which the final result might differ -->
<!-- from, sometimes significantly -->

<!-- a good guide to "audit" an existing project's design: -->
<!-- https://bluesock.org/~willkg/blog/dev/auditing_projects.html -->

GitLab is a fairly large program with multiple components. The
[upstream documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/architecture.html) has a good details of the architecture but
this section aims at providing a shorter summary. Here's an overview
diagram, first:

![GitLab's architecture diagram](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/img/architecture_simplified.png)

The web frontend is Nginx (which we incidentally also use in our
[howto/cache](howto/cache) system) but GitLab wrote their own reverse proxy called
[GitLab Workhorse](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-workhorse/) which in turn talks to the underlying GitLab
Rails application, served by the [Unicorn](https://yhbt.net/unicorn/) application
server. The Rails app stores its data in a [howto/postgresql](howto/postgresql) database
(although not our own deployment, for now, [should be fixed](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/20)). GitLab also offloads
long-term background tasks to a tool called [sidekiq](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq).

Those all server HTTP(S) requests but GitLab is of course also
accessible over SSH to push/pull git repositories. This is handled by
a separate component called [gitlab-shell](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell) which acts as a shell
for the `git` user. 

Workhorse, Rails, sidekiq and gitlab-shell all talk with Redis to
store temporary information, caches and session information. They can
also communicate with the [Gitaly](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly) server which handles all
communication with the git repositories themselves.

Finally, Git)Lab also features GitLab Pages and Continuous Integration
("pages" and CI, neither of which we do not currently use). CI is
handled by [GitLab runners](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/) which can be deployed by anyone and
registered in the Rails app to pull CI jobs. [GitLab pages](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-pages) is "a
simple HTTP server written in Go, made to serve GitLab Pages with
CNAMEs and SNI using HTTP/HTTP2".

## Issues

There is no issue tracker specifically for this project, [File][] or
[search][] for issues in the [gitlab project][search].

 [File]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/new
 [search]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues

## Monitoring and testing

Monitoring right now is minimal: normal host-level metrics like disk
space, CPU usage, web port and TLS certificates are monitored by
Nagios with our normal infrastructure, as a black box.

Prometheus monitoring is built into the GitLab Omnibus package, so it
is *not* configured through our Puppet like other Prometheus
servers. It has still been (manually) integrated in our Prometheus
setup and Grafana dashboards (see [pager playbook](#Pager_playbook)) have been deployed.

More work is underway to improve monitoring in [issue 33921](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/33921).

## Backups

There is a cronjob configured via the gitlab puppet monitor that runs
every night at 2:00AM UTC. This will basically run `$ gitlab-backup `
and will create a tarball under `/srv/gitlab-backup/`.

There is also a config backup job (in
`/etc/cron.d/gitlab-config-backup`) that makes sure to backup the
content of `/var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/etc/` is backed up, because
that is not covered by the `gitlab-backup` command.

Another cron job purges backups older than two days, in
`/etc/cron.d/gitlab-rotate-backup`, so that we don't keep too many
copies on the server. It is assumed that the existing [howto/backup](howto/backup)
system will pick up those copies and store them for our normal
rotation periods.

# Discussion

## Overview

<!-- describe the overall project. should include a link to a ticket -->
<!-- that has a launch checklist -->

The GitLab project at Tor has been a long time coming. If you look at
the [history](#History) section above, you'll see it has been worked on since
at least 2016, at which point an external server was setup for the
"network team" to do code review. This server was ultimately retired.

The current server has been worked on since 2019, with the master
ticket, [issue 29400](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/services/-/issues/29400), created in the footsteps of the [2019
Brussels meeting](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2019BrusselsAdminTeamMinutes). The service launched some time in June 2020,
with a full migration of Trac tickets.

## Goals

### Must have

 * replacement of the Trac issue tracking server
 * rough equivalent of Trac features in GitLab

### Nice to have

 * identical representation of Trac issues in GitLab, including proper
   issue numbering

### Non-Goals

 * replacement of Gitolite (git hosting)
 * replacement of Gitweb (git hosting)
 * replacement of Jenkins (CI)
 * replacement of the static site hosting system

Those are not part of the first phase of the project, but it is
understood that if one of those features gets used more heavily in
GitLab, the original service MUST be eventually migrated into GitLab
and turned off. We do *not* want to run multiple similar services at
the same time (for example run both gitolite and gitaly on all git
repositories, or run Jenkins and GitLab runners).

## Approvals required

The GitLab migration was approved at the 2019 Brussels dev meeting.

## Proposed Solution

The solution to the "code review" and "project management" problems
are to deploy a GitLab instance which does *not* aim at managing all
source code, in the first stage.

## Cost

Staff not evaluated.

In terms of hardware, we start with a single virtual machine and agree
that, in the worst case, we can throw a full Hetzner PX62-NVMe node at
the problem (~70EUR/mth).

## Alternatives considered

GitLab is such a broad project that multiple alternatives exist for
different components:

 * GitHub
   * Pros:
     * widely used in the open source community
     * Good integration between ticketing system and code
   * Cons
     * It is hosted by a third party (Microsoft!)
     * Closed source
 * GitLab:
  * Pros:
    * Mostly free software
    * Feature-rich
  * Cons:
    * Complex software, high maintenance
    * "Opencore" - some interesting features are closed-source

### GitLab command line clients

If you want to do batch operations or integrations with GitLab, you
might want to use one of those tools, depending on your environment or
prefered programming language:

 * [bugwarrior](https://github.com/ralphbean/bugwarrior) ([Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/bugwarrior)) - support for GitLab, GitHub and
   other bugtrackers for the [taskwarrior](http://taskwarrior.org/) database
 * [git-lab](https://invent.kde.org/sdk/git-lab) - python commandline client, lists, pulls MR; creates
   snippets
 * [GitLab-API-v4](https://metacpan.org/release/GitLab-API-v4) ([Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libgitlab-api-v4-perl)) - perl library and [commandline
   client](https://manpages.debian.org/buster/libgitlab-api-v4-perl/gitlab-api-v4.1p.en.html)
 * [GitLabracadabra](https://gitlab.com/gitlabracadabra/gitlabracadabra) ([Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gitlabracadabra)) - *configure a GitLab instance
   from a YAML configuration, using the API*: project settings like
   labels, admins, etc
 * [python-gitlab](https://github.com/python-gitlab/python-gitlab) (also known as `gitlab-cli` in [Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/python-gitlab))
 * [ruby-gitlab](https://github.com/narkoz/gitlab) ([Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ruby-gitlab)), also includes a [commandline
   client](https://narkoz.github.io/gitlab/)
 * [salsa](https://manpages.debian.org/buster/devscripts/salsa.1.en.html) (in [Debian devscripts](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/devscripts)) is specifically built for
   salsa but might be coerced into talking to other GitLab servers

### Migration tools

ahf implemente the gitlab using his own home-made tools that talk to
the GitLab and Trac API. but there's also [tracboat](https://github.com/tracboat/tracboat) which is
designed to migrate from trac to GitLab.

We did not use Tracboat because it uses gitlab's DB directly and thus
only works with some very specific version. Each time the database
schema changes at GitLab, Tracboat needs to port to it. We prefered to
use something that talked with the GitLab API.

We also didn't like the output entirely, so we modified it but still
used some of its regular expressions and parser.

We also needed to implement the "ticket movement" hack (with the legacy
project) which wasn't implemented in Tracboat.

Finally, we didn't want to do complete user migration, but lazily
transfer only some users.