Instance template repository

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: Self-managed

• Improved to behave like group-level templates in GitLab 13.9.
• Feature flag removed in GitLab 14.0.

In hosted systems, enterprises often have a need to share their own templates across teams. This feature allows an administrator to pick a project to be the instance-wide collection of file templates. These templates are then exposed to all users through the Web Editor while the project remains secure.

Configuration

To select a project to serve as the custom template repository:

1. On the left sidebar, at the bottom, select Admin Area.
2. Select Settings > Templates.
3. Expand Templates
4. From the dropdown list, select the project to use as the template repository.
5. Select Save changes.
6. Add custom templates to the selected repository.

After you add templates, you can use them for the entire instance. They are available in the Web Editor and through the API settings.

These templates cannot be used as a value of the include:template key in .gitlab-ci.yml.

Supported file types and locations

Templates must be added to a specific subdirectory in the repository, corresponding to the kind of template. The following types of custom templates are supported:

Each template must go in its respective subdirectory, have the correct extension and not be empty. So, the hierarchy should look like this:

|-- README.md
|-- Dockerfile
    |-- custom_dockerfile.dockerfile
    |-- another_dockerfile.dockerfile
|-- gitignore
    |-- custom_gitignore.gitignore
    |-- another_gitignore.gitignore
|-- gitlab-ci
    |-- custom_gitlab-ci.yml
    |-- another_gitlab-ci.yml
|-- LICENSE
    |-- custom_license.txt
    |-- another_license.txt

Your custom templates are displayed on the dropdown list when a new file is added through the GitLab UI:

If this feature is disabled or no templates are present, no Custom section displays in the selection dropdown.