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Last active May 26, 2025 06:55
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Cloning GitLab Group

When working with a distributed system made of many code repositories, it is tedious to clone each repository manually.

Below is how you could clone an entire GitLab group of repositories in one go.

  1. Install GitLab CLI glab following installation steps in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cli/#installation.

  2. Create a personal access token

  3. If the GitLab instance has self-signed certificate, set to skip TLS or install the necessary certificates.

glab config set skip_tls_verify true --host gitlab.wltheng.com
  1. Authenticate via glab auth login. Below is a sample.
$ glab auth login
? What GitLab instance do you want to sign in to? GitLab Self-Managed or GitLab Dedicated instance
? GitLab hostname: gitlab.wltheng.com
? API hostname: gitlab.wltheng.com
- Signing into gitlab.wltheng.com
? How would you like to sign in? Token
Tip: generate a personal access token at https://gitlab.wltheng.com/-/user_settings/personal_access_tokens?scopes=api,write_repository.
The minimum required scopes are 'api' and 'write_repository'.
? Paste your authentication token: **************************
? Choose default Git protocol: SSH
? Choose host API protocol: HTTPS
- glab config set -h gitlab.wltheng.com git_protocol ssh
✓ Configured Git protocol.
- glab config set -h gitlab.wltheng.com api_protocol https
✓ Configured API protocol.
✓ Logged in as johndoe
✓ Configuration saved to /Users/johndoe/.config/glab-cli/config.yml
  1. Use glab repo clone -g <group> --paginate to clone a group.
# This clones all repositories under https://gitlab.wltheng.com/foo
GITLAB_HOST=gitlab.wltheng.com glab repo clone -g foo --paginate
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