I’m following this guide to connect a github project (which I’m using to learn GitLab), but I have been having difficulty getting the pipeline to work, so I deleted the project and I’m trying to import it again.
However, after entering my personal access token to see a list of my GitHub repositories, the one I deleted - mfearby/sfg-pet-clinic-deleted-38512966 - still shows as status Complete (in green) and instead of a Connect button it only shows a Go to project button. When I click the Go to project button, it goes to the “deleted” gitlab project URL and shows a 404.
I found a “pending deletion” section in the menu but there are no projects listed in there, so I can’t un-delete it either.
The Connect Manually instructions also appear to be out of date. At step 3 it says to go to Settings > Integrations then tick the Active checkbox, but this doesn’t exist. Also, there are no text boxes for my personal access token and HTTPS repository URL as mentioned in step 3c, so I’m kinda stuck
Assuming that 3c really means to go to Settings > Webhooks and paste the personal access token and github URL in there, I’ve done so and continued on with step 4, 5 and 6.
The error messages are unhelpful here because I now believe this is most likely because github integration is a premium feature only, and not a free/eval one.
It’s a bit annoying that anyone evaluating Gitlab (or trying to learn it) can’t even use the free job runners with github.
Well you could learn it by turning on the Gitlab trial features. You cannot expect every feature to be available for free forever, since that is how Gitlab is supposed to make money. If you previously enabled the trial and the trial finished, and you didn’t test during that time, then that is unfortunate, but the trial time should have been adequate for you to test any advanced features.
If you haven’t enabled the trial yet, then perhaps enable it and use the premium functionality? The Gitlab documentation does state clearly next to the documentation title that it is premium functionality. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
I only signed up a few weeks ago so I would have thought there might be some grace period during which I could try all of the features evidently available to me. If a feature is locked behind a premium wall, then the menus relating to it should be hidden/disabled until I upgrade. As it is now, it looks like I should be able to do github integration but it just doesn’t work (which isn’t a good look).
When you sign up you are a free user until you enable the trial. Why? Because maybe when you initially join you are not ready to automatically test all features. Which means you can enable the trial whenever you want to get the maximum out of it.
If it was enabled automatically and you didnt use your account during the first few days or week then you would have lost valuable trial time.
I have probably had my gitlab.com account for a year or two, and have the ability still now to enable an ultimate trial, which is great because when I first started using it I wasn’t ready to be overwhelmed with functionality I might not even need to use. But when I know the product better, I can enable and take full advantage of it. It’s a one-time trial, so if I enable and don’t use it, then it’s lost and I wasted it.
the screenshot above shows how you can start the ultimate trial.
Seems a bit odd to expose premium features in the interface and hope people figure out that any errors messages they get really mean “you have to enable the premium trial or subscribe to it for this feature to work”. If something was only supposed to work if I was on premium then I would normally expect it to be disabled or otherwise show a clear warning that “hey, this isn’t gonna work until you pay for it, buddy” instead of leaving users to diagnose error messages and find out the hard way.
