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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →GNOME completed its move to GitLab in May 2018, replacing its separate cgit and git.gnome.org repository hosting and Bugzilla-centered issue workflow with a shared home for repositories, issues, communication, and continuous integration (CI). The change covered more than 400 projects and nearly 900 annual contributors, according to GitLab’s 2018 announcement. Historical Bugzilla reports were retained, even as new reports moved to GitLab.
Why GNOME moved to GitLab
GNOME said it assessed multiple tools and chose GitLab to make contributing simpler, make project decisions more transparent and accessible, and improve software stability and delivery. The practical appeal was consolidation: repository hosting, issue tracking, team communication, and development infrastructure could be handled through one interface rather than a collection of separate services.
That mattered both for contributors and project teams. Newcomers could find active issues and participate in merge requests without signing up for as many separate tools. GNOME also said its Engagement and Design teams could collaborate more directly with software project teams.
What changed for contributors and maintainers
| Area | Before the migration | After the migration |
|---|---|---|
| Source repositories | Repositories were hosted through cgit and git.gnome.org. | Projects used GitLab repositories. |
| Issue workflow | Bug reports were handled through Bugzilla. | New issues were handled in GitLab; historical Bugzilla records remained available. |
| Review and collaboration | Work was spread across separate tools and services. | Issues and merge requests appeared alongside repositories in GitLab. |
| Continuous integration | The earlier fragmented workflow did not provide the same unified access to CI described by GNOME. | Project teams could use GitLab CI to run checks as part of development. |
GNOME Games maintainer Adrien Plazas said GitLab made CI readily accessible to the team, helping it detect early regressions in the Libretro cores it packaged with Flatpak and look for unstable API changes. GJS maintainer Philip Chimento reported noticing more contributions from people he had not met before, and attributed the easier starting point to GitLab lowering the threshold for participation.
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These are maintainer observations, not controlled measurements. GNOME’s contemporaneous announcements describe qualitative benefits but do not establish a quantified before-and-after increase in contributions, CI reliability, or long-term maintenance outcomes.
When the migration happened
- Late 2017: Planning and staged pilots began. An early migration record described moving the Engagement team and targeting six projects by the end of November, with larger core projects to follow in stages.
- 20 March 2018: Carlos Soriano reported that more than 60 projects had already moved. GNOME planned to migrate bugs from 1 to 15 June, stop accepting new Bugzilla reports from 1 June, and complete the broader transition by GUADEC 2018.
- 20 May 2018: GNOME reported successful test migrations for projects including Evince, GLib, and gdk-pixbuf, and brought the execution schedule forward.
- 29 May 2018: Soriano announced that cgit and git.gnome.org were officially gone. New bugs and repositories were to use GitLab, while old Bugzilla bugs remained manageable.
- 31 May 2018: The GNOME Foundation publicly announced that the migration was complete, after roughly a year and a half of work.
- Year-end 2018: GNOME’s retrospective described GitLab as a more usable issue tracker than Bugzilla and highlighted the availability of CI for projects.
What happened to Bugzilla, cgit, and git.gnome.org?
GNOME did not simply erase its old bug history. During the June 2018 cutover, new Bugzilla reports were redirected to GitLab, while existing Bugzilla records remained available and manageable. The repository services cgit and git.gnome.org, by contrast, were retired as GNOME’s projects moved to GitLab repositories.
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The migration was therefore a change in where active development took place, not a claim that all historical records vanished. The transition notices distinguish the new GitLab workflow from the retained Bugzilla history.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How large was the transition?
GitLab’s 2018 account put the migration at more than 400 software projects and nearly 900 annual contributors. Those figures describe the scale of the community covered; they do not measure how many people became new contributors because of GitLab. Soriano’s March update separately said more than 60 projects had moved before the mass-migration phase.
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GitLab sponsored GUADEC 2018 and said it would cover continuous-integration costs for GNOME projects as part of the partnership announced at the time. Those are historical terms reported in 2018, not evidence of current commercial or sponsorship arrangements.
Sources
- GNOME Foundation: GNOME completes migration to GitLab
- Carlos Soriano’s March 2018 migration update
- Carlos Soriano’s May 2018 completion announcement
- GitLab’s 2018 account of GNOME’s move
- GNOME Foundation’s 2018 year-end update
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