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Customize pipeline configuration

DETAILS: Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate Offering: SaaS, self-managed

You can customize how pipelines run for your project.

For an overview of pipelines, watch the video GitLab CI Pipeline, Artifacts, and Environments. Watch also GitLab CI pipeline tutorial for beginners.

Change which users can view your pipelines

For public and internal projects, you can change who can see your:

To change the visibility of your pipelines and related features:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.

  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.

  3. Expand General pipelines.

  4. Select or clear the Public pipelines checkbox. When it is selected, pipelines and related features are visible:

    • For Public projects, to everyone.
    • For Internal projects, to all authenticated users except external users.
    • For Private projects, to all project members (Guest or higher).

    When it is cleared:

    • For Public projects, job logs, job artifacts, the pipeline security dashboard, and the CI/CD menu items are visible only to project members (Reporter or higher). Other users, including guest users, can only view the status of pipelines and jobs, and only when viewing merge requests or commits.
    • For Internal projects, pipelines are visible to all authenticated users except external users. Related features are visible only to project members (Reporter or higher).
    • For Private projects, pipelines and related features are visible to project members (Reporter or higher) only.

Change pipeline visibility for non-project members in public projects

You can control the visibility of pipelines for non-project members in public projects.

This setting has no effect when:

To change the pipeline visibility for non-project members:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > General.
  3. Expand Visibility, project features, permissions.
  4. For CI/CD, choose:
    • Only project members: Only project members can view pipelines.
    • Everyone With Access: Non-project members can also view pipelines.
  5. Select Save changes.

The CI/CD permissions table lists the pipeline features non-project members can access when Everyone With Access is selected.

Auto-cancel redundant pipelines

You can set pending or running pipelines to cancel automatically when a pipeline for new changes runs on the same branch. You can enable this in the project settings:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General Pipelines.
  4. Select the Auto-cancel redundant pipelines checkbox.
  5. Select Save changes.

Use the interruptible keyword to indicate if a running job can be cancelled before it completes. After a job with interruptible: false starts, the entire pipeline is no longer considered interruptible.

Prevent outdated deployment jobs

  • Introduced in GitLab 12.9.
  • In GitLab 15.5, the behavior was changed to prevent outdated job runs.

Your project may have multiple concurrent deployment jobs that are scheduled to run in the same time frame.

This can lead to a situation where an older deployment job runs after a newer one, which may not be what you want.

To avoid this scenario:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. Select the Prevent outdated deployment jobs checkbox.
  5. Optional. Clear the Allow job retries for rollback deployments checkbox.
  6. Select Save changes.

For more information, see Deployment safety.

Restrict roles that can cancel pipelines or jobs

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: SaaS, self-managed

You can customize which roles have permission to cancel pipelines or jobs.

By default, users with at least the Developer role can cancel pipelines or jobs. You can restrict cancellation permission to only users with at least the Maintainer role, or completely prevent cancellation of any pipelines or jobs.

To change the permissions to cancel pipelines or jobs:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. Select an option from Minimum role required to cancel a pipeline or job.
  5. Select Save changes.

Specify a custom CI/CD configuration file

  • Support for external .gitlab-ci.yml locations introduced in GitLab 12.6.

GitLab expects to find the CI/CD configuration file (.gitlab-ci.yml) in the project's root directory. However, you can specify an alternate filename path, including locations outside the project.

To customize the path:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. In the CI/CD configuration file field, enter the filename. If the file:
    • Is not in the root directory, include the path.
    • Is in a different project, include the group and project name.
    • Is on an external site, enter the full URL.
  5. Select Save changes.

NOTE: You cannot use your project's pipeline editor to edit CI/CD configuration files in other projects or on an external site.

Custom CI/CD configuration file examples

If the CI/CD configuration file is not in the root directory, the path must be relative to it. For example:

  • my/path/.gitlab-ci.yml
  • my/path/.my-custom-file.yml

If the CI/CD configuration file is on an external site, the URL must end with .yml:

  • http://example.com/generate/ci/config.yml

If the CI/CD configuration file is in a different project:

  • The file must exist on its default branch, or specify the branch as refname.
  • The path must be relative to the root directory in the other project.
  • The path must be followed by an @ symbol and the full group and project path.

For example:

  • .gitlab-ci.yml@namespace/another-project
  • my/path/.my-custom-file.yml@namespace/sub-group/another-project
  • my/path/.my-custom-file.yml@namespace/sub-group1/sub-group2/another-project:refname

If the configuration file is in a separate project, you can set more granular permissions. For example:

  • Create a public project to host the configuration file.
  • Give write permissions on the project only to users who are allowed to edit the file.

Then other users and projects can access the configuration file without being able to edit it.

Choose the default Git strategy

You can choose how your repository is fetched from GitLab when a job runs.

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. Under Git strategy, select an option:
    • git clone is slower because it clones the repository from scratch for every job. However, the local working copy is always pristine.
    • git fetch is faster because it re-uses the local working copy (and falls back to clone if it doesn't exist). This is recommended, especially for large repositories.

The configured Git strategy can be overridden by the GIT_STRATEGY variable in the .gitlab-ci.yml file.

Limit the number of changes fetched during clone

You can limit the number of changes that GitLab CI/CD fetches when it clones a repository.

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. Under Git strategy, under Git shallow clone, enter a value. The maximum value is 1000. To disable shallow clone and make GitLab CI/CD fetch all branches and tags each time, keep the value empty or set to 0.

In GitLab versions 14.7 and later, newly created projects have a default git depth value of 20. GitLab versions 14.6 and earlier have a default git depth value of 50.

This value can be overridden by the GIT_DEPTH variable in the .gitlab-ci.yml file.

Set a limit for how long jobs can run

You can define how long a job can run before it times out.

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > CI/CD.
  3. Expand General pipelines.
  4. In the Timeout field, enter the number of minutes, or a human-readable value like 2 hours. Must be 10 minutes or more, and less than one month. Default is 60 minutes. Pending jobs are dropped after 24 hours of inactivity.

Jobs that exceed the timeout are marked as failed.

You can override this value for individual runners.

Pipeline badges

You can use pipeline badges to indicate the pipeline status and test coverage of your projects. These badges are determined by the latest successful pipeline.

Disable GitLab CI/CD pipelines

GitLab CI/CD pipelines are enabled by default on all new projects. If you use an external CI/CD server like Jenkins or Drone CI, you can disable GitLab CI/CD to avoid conflicts with the commits status API.

You can disable GitLab CI/CD per project or for all new projects on an instance.

When you disable GitLab CI/CD:

  • The CI/CD item in the left sidebar is removed.
  • The /pipelines and /jobs pages are no longer available.
  • Existing jobs and pipelines are hidden, not removed.

To disable GitLab CI/CD in your project:

  1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
  2. Select Settings > General.
  3. Expand Visibility, project features, permissions.
  4. In the Repository section, turn off CI/CD.
  5. Select Save changes.

These changes do not apply to projects in an external integration.