Backup private repository from Gitlab which is not owned by me

[lbdr]

I'd like to include a backup of a private repository from Gitlab where I am only a maintainer but not the owner of said repository using a token.

As far as I understand this following MWE should backup all repositories from Gitlab including the repositories not owned by me.

source:
  gitlab:
    - token: foobar

I tested this for GitHub (with a other token of course) and all worked fine.
It seems like gickup can't list repositories not owned by the user directly.

Thank you all for your help. @cooperspencer keep up the good work!

[cooperspencer]

You are correct. I'll investigate on how to backup projects were you are not the owner but are a maintainer.
In the meantime you could try to create a backup like this:

source:
  gitlab:
    - token: foobar
      user: owner-of-the-project
      include: ["your-project"]
    

[cooperspencer]

Actually I have to correct myself. I Just created a repository in Gitlab with a different user and gave my main user maintainer permissions. I just ran a backup for Gitlab and it cloned said repository too.

[lbdr]

Thanks for your quick response! Unfortunately I cannot confirm that.

For the overview and to recap, the starting point is the following.

For the token I accepted all scopes.

source:
  gitlab:
    - token: foobar
destination:
  local:
    - path: ~/testing
      structured: true
      zip: false
      bare: true

Log:

$ ./gickup 
2024-08-28T12:10:01+02:00 INF Reading conf.yml file=conf.yml
2024-08-28T12:10:01+02:00 INF Configuration loaded destinations=1 pairs=1 sources=1
2024-08-28T12:10:01+02:00 INF Backup run starting
2024-08-28T12:10:01+02:00 INF grabbing repositories from xyz stage=gitlab url=https://gitlab.com
2024-08-28T12:10:03+02:00 INF starting backup for https://gitlab.com/xyz/testing.git stage=backup
2024-08-28T12:10:03+02:00 INF cloning gitlab.com/xyz/testing.git path=/home/foo/testing stage=locally
2024-08-28T12:10:04+02:00 INF Backup run complete duration=3.154463547s

Result:

$ tree -L 3 ~/testing 
/home/foo/testing
└── gitlab.com
    └── xyz
        └── testing.git

The repository o... is missing.

Then I changed the conf as you suggested above.

source:
  gitlab:
    - token: foobar
    - token: foobar
      user: owner-of-the-project
      include: ["o..."]
destination:
  local:
    - path: ~/testing
      structured: true
      zip: false
      bare: true

Again the log:

$ ./gickup --debug
2024-08-28T12:25:20+02:00 INF Reading conf.yml file=conf.yml
2024-08-28T12:25:20+02:00 INF Configuration loaded destinations=1 pairs=2 sources=2
2024-08-28T12:25:20+02:00 INF Backup run starting
2024-08-28T12:25:20+02:00 INF grabbing repositories from xyz stage=gitlab url=https://gitlab.com
2024-08-28T12:25:21+02:00 INF grabbing repositories from owner-of-the-project stage=gitlab url=https://gitlab.com
2024-08-28T12:25:22+02:00 INF starting backup for https://gitlab.com/xyz/testing.git stage=backup
2024-08-28T12:25:22+02:00 INF cloning gitlab.com/xyz/testing.git path=/home/foo/testing stage=locally
2024-08-28T12:25:24+02:00 INF Backup run complete duration=4.335697946s

As you can see there is no second cloning in the log. Tree looks as above.
Is there a way to get more debug information? Is there a way to forbid cloning over API on Gitlab or anything I've overseen?
Thanks for your help!

[cooperspencer]

I just tested it again and for me it works fine. I created a token with the read_api permissions.

I'll just paste everything I did down below:

As you can see, I am just a mainainer in the second repo.

The token only has the read_api permission and nothing else.

It just cloned the two repos.

It seems that I forgot to add a whole lot of debug outputs to gitlab. I'll add that and post the build pipeline for you, so we can get to the bottom of this issue.

[cooperspencer]

after the build is done, you can download the artifacts.
https://github.com/cooperspencer/gickup/actions/runs/10595514411
This will actually output which repositories are found and if they are user or group repositories.

[lbdr]

In the meantime I created a second user on Gitlab for testing and I found out why.
Only repositories which belong to a group are cloned if the user is invited to the repository.

Repositories in Gitlab can be owned by a user under the namespace of the user.
In addition, repositories can be owned by a group under the namespace of the group.

The repository which I described above is owned by a user and not by a group and I'm a maintainer as well.
As said these repositories are not cloned by gickup.

I invited you on Gitlab to two testing repos so maybe you can confirm this behavoir.

[cooperspencer]

You are correct.

[cooperspencer]

I found the issue. I know how to fix it, I just need a bit of time.

[lbdr]

No worries. Thanks!

[cooperspencer]

It should be fixed with this build.
Can you download the artifact, test it and get back to me?

[lbdr]

I tested the build and it works perfectly fine now!

[cooperspencer]

Perfect, thanks for testing. I just pushed a new release with the latest changes.