Import an existing git project into GitLab?

Add the new gitlab remote to your existing repository and push:

git remote add gitlab url-to-gitlab-repo
git push gitlab master

To keep ALL TAGS AND BRANCHES

Just simply run this command in an existing Git repository

cd existing_repo
git remote rename origin previous-hosts
git remote add gitlab [email protected]:hutber/kindred.com.git
git push -u gitlab --all
git push -u gitlab --tags

I was able to fully export my project along with all commits, branches and tags to gitlab via following commands run locally on my computer:

To illustrate my example, I will be using https://github.com/raveren/kint as the source repository that I want to import into gitlab. I created an empty project named Kint (under namespace raveren) in gitlab beforehand and it told me the http git url of the newly created project there is http://gitlab.example.com/raveren/kint.git

The commands are OS agnostic.

In a new directory:

git clone --mirror https://github.com/raveren/kint
cd kint.git
git remote add gitlab http://gitlab.example.com/raveren/kint.git
git push gitlab --mirror

Now if you have a locally cloned repository that you want to keep using with the new remote, just run the following commands* there:

git remote remove origin
git remote add origin http://gitlab.example.com/raveren/kint.git
git fetch --all

^{*This assumes that you did not rename your remote master from origin, otherwise, change the first two lines to reflect it.}

This is a basic move one repo to new location. I use this sequence all te time. With --bare no source files will be seen.

Open Git Bash.
Create a bare clone of the repository.

git clone --bare https://github.com/exampleuser/old-repository.git

Mirror-push to the new repository.

cd old-repository.git

git push --mirror https://gitlab.com/exampleuser/new-repository.git

Remove the temporary local repository you created in step 1.

cd ../
rm -rf old-repository.git

Why mirror? See documentation of git: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push

--all Push all branches (i.e. refs under refs/heads/); cannot be used with other .

--mirror Instead of naming each ref to push, specifies that all refs under refs/ (which includes but is not limited to refs/heads/, refs/remotes/, and refs/tags/) be mirrored to the remote repository. Newly created local refs will be pushed to the remote end, locally updated refs will be force updated on the remote end, and deleted refs will be removed from the remote end. This is the default if the configuration option remote..mirror is set.