Custom group-level project templates

Introduced in GitLab 11.6.

When you create a project, you can choose from a list of templates. These templates, for things like GitLab Pages or Ruby, populate the new project with a copy of the files contained in the template. This information is identical to the information used by GitLab project import/export and can help you start a new project more quickly.

You can customize the list of available templates, so that all projects in your group have the same list. To do this, you populate a subgroup with the projects you want to use as templates.

You can also configure custom templates for the instance.

Set up group-level project templates

Prerequisite:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.

To set up custom project templates in a group, add the subgroup that contains the project templates to the group settings:

  1. In the group, create a subgroup.
  2. Add projects to the new subgroup as your templates.
  3. In the left menu for the group, select Settings > General.
  4. Expand Custom project templates and select the subgroup.

The next time a group member creates a project, they can select any of the projects in the subgroup.

Projects in nested subgroups are not included in the template list.

Which projects are available as templates

  • Public and internal projects can be selected by any authenticated user as a template for a new project, if all project features except for GitLab Pages and Security & Compliance are set to Everyone With Access.
  • Private projects can be selected only by users who are members of the projects.

Example structure

Here’s a sample group and project structure for project templates, for myorganization: 

# GitLab instance and group
gitlab.com/myorganization/
    # Subgroups
    internal
    tools
    # Subgroup for handling project templates
    websites
        templates
            # Project templates
            client-site-django
            client-site-gatsby
            client-site-html

        # Other projects
        client-site-a
        client-site-b
        client-site-c
        ...