Doc for "pushing to remote repos" is not accurate for setting up a mirror on Github
This report is about the documentation for pushing to a remote repository and its embedded parts in Gitlab.
Use case: I was trying to set up a mirror to have Gitlab.com as the primary repos and an automatic mirror on Github. I followed the instructions given in https://gitlab.com/matt.faure/Lamma2t/settings/repository, with section Push to a remote repository expanded.
It is written that:
If your HTTP repository is not publicly accessible, add authentication information to the URL:
https://username:password@gitlab.company.com/group/project.git
.
...which leads to confusion in two ways:
- whether the repos is public or not, it seems to me the user has to give the credentials to write to a remote repos
- a user could understand this is his/her Github password that has to be typed in (which does not work and brings an authentication error).
Instead, the user has to:
- Create a Github personal access token with the
public_repo
box checked - Fill in the
Git repository URL
with the personal access token replacing the passwordhttps://GithubUsername:GithubPersonalAccessToken@github.com/group/project.git
- Save
- And either wait or trigger the "force update" button.
As having a mirror from Gitlab.com to Github seems (to me) to be a common use case, it would be interesting to enhance this part of the doc (for example by providing an example on how to setup a Github mirror).
(this would be related in a distant way with gitlab-org/gitlab-ce#35116)