Developing Gitlab: Setting up a development environment with Vagrant

FYI, I abandoned the Vagrant approach in favor of a VirtualBox machine with Ubuntu.

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Versions in use:

• Vagrant 2.2.4
• VirtualBox 6.0.8-130520
• gitlab-development-kit revision e519656ac3101770622d9451f500a6c2a08c5250

Set up GDK for the first time

1. open a CMD with "Run as Administrator" (aka. "elevated") in the gitlab-development-kit directory
2. follow instructions for Vagrant installation:

   vagrant up --provider=virtualbox --provision

   
   Troubleshooting
• needed to install vagrant-disksize plugin (provisioning failed with the error: Unknown configuration section 'disksize'.)
• needed to install vagrant-vbguest plugin (provisioning failed with an error for synching directories with rsync)
3. when ready:

   vagrant ssh

4. cd gitlab-development-kit

5. follow instructions from gdk install: Option 1 develop in fork

   gdk install gitlab_repo=https://gitlab.com/MY-FORK/gitlab-ce.git

   
   Troubleshooting
• fix line endings (because the repo was cloned on a Windows host with windows line endings, but is used on linux)
1. set the git line endings to retrieve any updates unix style for the gdk repo

   git config core.autocrlf input

2. install dos2unix on the virtual machine

   sudo apt-get install dos2unix

3. change the line endings in the support and bin directories

   cd support
   find ./ -type f -exec dos2unix {} \;
   cd ..
   cd bin
   find ./ -type f -exec dos2unix {} \;
   cd ..

6. Set up tracking of original upstream repo

   support/set-gitlab-upstream

7. run the server

   gdk run

   
   Troubleshooting
• if the run command fails, stop node manually before trying again

  pkill -f node
  gdk run
  

8. reach it from the Host on localhost:3000 and use the given credentials

There's also a Troubleshooting page, if it is needed.
Here are some more hints:

• A possible fix for recipe for target 'postgresql/data' failed
• Another possible solution: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/issues/313
• And this one: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/issues/354

Everyday commands

• vagrant up: starts the virtual machine
• vagrant ssh: connects the virtual machine
• cd gitlab-development-kit
• gdk run: starts the server
• Ctrl+C: exits the server
• Ctrl+D: exits the virtual machine
• vagrant halt: stops the virtual machine
• How to put a process into background

Restart the whole thing because something went amiss

• clean your git repos from untracked and ignored files and directories
• use git clean -ndx to see what would be deleted
• use git clean -fdx to actually do the deletion
• don't worry, repositories within a repository are not cleaned by git clean.
  there are 3 repositories in gitlab-development-kit:
• gitlab-development-kit/gitlab
• gitlab-development-kit/gitlab-workhorse/src/gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-workhorse
• gitlab-development-kit/go-gitlab-shell/src/gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell
• delete these directories too:
• gitlab-development-kit/gitlab-workhorse/src
• gitlab-development-kit/go-gitlab-shell
• do the "Set up GDK for the first time" part again