Github to Gitlab mirror repository in PHP

The idea here is to mirror the repository using crontab every minute.

• As you all know about Free Gitlab Mirror Support Ended on March 22 for external Repositories.
• Now in new premium update gitlab had stopped the mirroring of external repository making it's a premium feature, so this is a replication of that feature.

Installation

Just make sure you have self hosted server or local linux environment.

Also make sure you have Github and Gitlab ssh installed.

• Set crontab -e

* * * * * sh /path/to/mirror.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

• Edit mirror.php and set appropriate git ssh config for repository on line number 19 and 22

• Now everything is in place, but because gitlab keeps it's own "special" branches in place, you might get these kinds of errors:

 ! [remote rejected] refs/keep-around/09c68d4f76f68041438040e3bb4316d5ca1d5135 -> refs/keep-around/09c68d4f76f68041438040e3bb4316d5ca1d5135 (deny updating a hidden ref)

• We need to filter those out of the branches we do want to mirror. In order to do that we edit the config file again.

• We should replace fetch = +refs/*:refs/* which basically says, everything, and just select tags, branches and head

[remote "mirror"]
    url = git@gitlab.external:reponame.git
    push = +refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*
    push = +refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*
    mirror = true

Any cause of failure on self-hosted server:

• The public ssh key of www-data should have read and write access to source repository.
• If the SSH server is not trusted the connection will fail.
• To avoid non trusted connection to server, run ssh -T git@gitlab.com and ssh -T git@github.com at least once to get its fingerprint into the local SSH configuration or hosted server ssh configuration.

• More info on duplicating the repository Duplicating Repository

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT