GitLab VSCode Extension

This extension integrates GitLab to VSCode by adding a new GitLab sidebar where you can find issues and merge requests created by you or assigned to you. It also extends VSCode command palette and status bar to provide more information about your project.

Screencast

Features

• See your issues and MRs on a dedicated panel in the VSCode sidebar. Read more
• See pipeline status, open MR and closing issue links in the status bar. Read more.
• Automatically updates pipeline status on the status bar so you don't need to open GitLab to see your pipeline status.
• Advanced pipeline actions allow you to view pipeline on GitLab, create a new pipeline, retry or cancel current pipeline. Read more.
• Issue and MR search including simple and advanced search. Read more.
• View MR and closing issue on GitLab with a single click from your status bar.
• Create public, internal or private snippet from entire file or selection. Read more.
• Compare your branch with master and view changes on GitLab. Read more.
• View active file on GitLab with highlighting active line number and selected text block. Read more.
• Validate GitLab CI configuration file .gitlab-ci.yml. Read more.
• Open MR of current branch on GitLab.
• Open issues assigned to you on GitLab.
• Open MRs assigned to you on GitLab.
• Open pipeline on GitLab.
• Open project on GitLab.
• Open issue page to create a new issue.
• Open the merge request page to create a merge request.
• Set and remove your GitLab Personal Access Token. Required step, see Setup section below.
• Supports multiple GitLab instances Read more.

Experimental Features

Experimental features are behind a feature flag. To enable them, you can set gitlab.enableExperimentalFeatures to true in your VSCode settings.

View issue details and comments in VSCode

GitLab Workflow allows you to view issue details and comments right in the VSCode. Click an issue link from the sidebar and VSCode will open a new tab to show the issue details. You can also comment to the issue from VSCode. Currently, replying to discussions are not supported.

Updating assignees and labels are also not implemented. However, you can use GitLab Slash Commands to perform actions directly from VSCode. For example, to assign an issue to @fatihacet, simply add a comment /assign @fatihacet inside VSCode.

Setup

To use this extension, you need to create a GitLab Personal Access Token and give it to the extension.

Step 1: Create your Personal Access Token

• If you are using
  • GitLab.com click to open Personal Access Tokens page.
  • Self-hosted GitLab instance go to "Settings" and click "Access Tokens" on the left navigation menu
• On "Add a personal access token" form
  • Give a name to your token.
  • Select and expiry date.
  • Select "api" and "read_user" permissions.
  • Hit "Create personal access token" button.
• Copy the token. Remember you won't be able to see the value of this token ever again for security reasons.

Step 2: Add token to GitLab Workflow Extension

• Open up Command Palette by pressing Cmd+Shift+P.
• Search for "GitLab: Set GitLab Personal Access Token" and hit Enter.
• Enter the URL to the Gitlab instance the PAT should apply to and hit Enter.
• Extension will ask for your PAT. Paste your PAT and hit Enter. It won't be visible and accessible to others.
• If you want to connect to GitLab hosted on a custom domain, additionally set gitlab.instanceUrl in your user or workspace settings, otherwise the extension will try to connect to gitlab.com. See Configuration Options for more information.

That's it. 🏁

You can start using this extension right away. If your project has a pipeline for last commit and a MR from your current branch, you should see them on VSCode status bar. 🎉

Multiple Gitlab instances

If you want to use multiple GitLab instances you may want to configure each workspace separately. See gitlab.instanceUrl config option in Configuration Options section.

Configuration options

gitlab.instanceUrl (required: false, default: "https://gitlab.com")

If you are using GitLab on a custom domain, you must add this to your user settings file. Example: "gitlab.instanceUrl": "https://my-gitlab-domain.com"

To enable Gitlab Workflow extension to work with different Gitlab instances, each token is assigned to a Gitlab instance URL. For the extension to selected the correct token for a specific workspace, the option gitlab.instanceUrl can be used. This option can be set in the current workspace's .vscode/settings.json file.

gitlab.showStatusBarLinks (required: false, default: true)

If you don't want to see GitLab related links on the status bar, you can set this option to false. If you are using version 1.0.0 or above you can also find the same links in sidebar. You should restart your VSCode after updating this option.

gitlab.showIssueLinkOnStatusBar (required: false, default: true)

If you are not using GitLab's issue tracker, you can set this option to false to remove related issue link on the status bar. You should restart your VSCode after updating this option.

gitlab.showMrStatusOnStatusBar (required: false, default: true)

You can toggle visibility of MR link in your sidebar. You can always find MR link in GitLab Workflow sidebar. You should restart your VSCode after updating this option.

gitlab.ca (required: false, default: null)

If your self-hosted GitLab instance has a self-signed SSL certificate you would probably need to set this option in to point your certificate file. More discussion can be found in this issue.

gitlab.cert (required: false, default: null)

If your self-hosted GitLab instance requires a custom cert/key pair you would probably need to set this option in to point your certificate file. Please also see gitlab.certKey option. More information here.

gitlab.certKey (required: false, default: null)

If your self-hosted GitLab instance requires a custom cert/key pair you would probably need to set this option in to point your certificate key file. Please also see gitlab.cert option. More information here.

gitlab.ignoreCertificateErrors (required: false, default: false)

If you are using a self-hosted GitLab instance with no SSL certificate or having certificate issues and unable to use the extension you may want to set this option to true to ignore certificate errors. More information can be found here.

You can open User Settings file by pressing Cmd+, on Mac OS or following Code > Preferences > User Settings. You can simply add extension configuration values to your User Settings file. This won't break or change anything on your VSCode.

gitlab.remoteName (required: false, default: null)

The name of the git remote link corresponding to the GitLab repositiory with your MR and issues. If no setting is provided, the extension will detect it. For example: origin.

gitlab.pipelineGitRemoteName (required: false, default: null)

The name of the git remote link corresponding to the GitLab repositiory with your pipelines. If no setting is provided, the extension will detect it. For example: origin.

gitlab.enableExperimentalFeatures (required: false, default: false)

To enable experimental features set this flag to true. List of experiemental features and details can be found here

Usage

• Open up Command Palette by pressing Cmd+Shift+P.
• Search for GitLab: and you will see all the commands provided by the extension.

Features in-depth

Sidebar

Extension will add a GitLab Workflow panel to sidebar of your VSCode. The dedicated panel will allow you to see the list of your issues and MRs. Also you will be able to see pipeline, MR and issue links for your current branch.

In the current version, clicking the links will open them on your default browser but the next version will allow you to interact with your issues and MRs right in your VSCode. With the upcoming versions, the extension will allow you to see the MR changes and discussions in VSCode.

Pipeline actions

One of the real power features of this extension is pipeline actions. This feature can be accessible from the status bar by clicking the pipeline status text or command palette and allows you to,

• View the latest pipeline on GitLab
• Create a new pipeline for your current branch
• Retry the last pipeline
• Cancel the last pipeline

Status bar

If your current project is a GitLab project, the extension will do the following things:

• Fetch pipeline of the last commit and show it on the status bar. Clicking this item will open the pipeline actions menu.
• Show open MR for current branch and show it on the status bar. Clicking this item will open MR on GitLab.
• Fetch closing issue of that MR and show it on the status bar. Clicking this item will open Issue on GitLab.

Advanced Search

GitLab Workflow extension provides you two types of search. Basic and advanced search. Basic search is quick however advanced search is more powerful which allows you to filter issues by author, assignee, milestone, title etc.

To use the basic search, in the search input, you can type your search term and hit Enter. This will search issues/MRs against their title and description fields. Example: Inconsistent line endings for HEX files or Pipelines should ignore retried builds.

You can perform advanced issue/MR search by using some predefined tokens. Full list below.

Token	Description	Example
title	Search issues/MRs against their title and description. You don't need to add quotes around multiple words. See Important notes section.	discussions refactor
labels	Comma separated label list for multiple labels.	labels: frontend, Discussion, performance
label	To search with a single label. You can also have multiple label tokens.	label: frontend or label:frontend label: Discussion
milestone	Milestone title without %.	milestone: 9.5
scope	Searches issues/MRs for the given scope. Values can be created-by-me, assigned-to-me or all. Defaults to created-by-me.	scope: created-by-me or scope: assigned-to-me or scope: all.
author	Username of the author without @.	author: fatihacet
assignee	Username of the assignee without @.	assignee: timzallmann

Examples

• title: new merge request widget author: fatihacet assignee: jschatz1 labels: frontend, performance milestone: 10.5
• title: multiple group page author: annabeldunstone assignee: timzallmann label: frontend

Important notes

• : after the token name is necessary. label : is not a valid token name and may return parsing error. Hence label: should be used. However, space after the token name is optional. Both label: frontend and label:frontend is valid. This rule is valid for all tokens above.
• You don't need to add quotes around multiple words for title token. title:"new merge request widget" may return parsing error. title: new merge request widget should be used.
• You can have labels and label tokens at the same time. labels: fronted discussion label: performance is a valid query and all labels will be included in your search query. It's equal with labels: fronted discussion performance. You can also have multiple label tokens. label: frontend label: discussion label: performance is valid and equals to labels: fronted discussion performance.

Create snippet

You can create a snippet from selection or entire file. You can also select visibility level of your snippet.

Compare with master

You can see changes in your branch by comparing with master and see them on GitLab.

Soon extension will support comparing your current branch with other branches.

Open active file

This command allows you to see active file on GitLab. Extension sends active line number and selected text block to GitLab UI so you can see them highlighted.

Validate GitLab CI Configuration

Using this command, you can quickly validate GitLab CI configuration.

Caveats and known issues

• The current version of the extension doesn't support multi-root workspaces. If you want to know more about limitations and read recent developments, please check multi-root-workspace labeled issues.

---

Contribution

This extension is open source and hosted on GitLab. Contributions are more than welcome. Feel free to fork and add new features or submit bug reports.

Here is the list of great people who contributed this project and make it even more awesome. Thank you all 🎉