Push Rules (STARTER)

Gain additional control over what can and can't be pushed to your repository by using regular expressions to reject pushes based on commit contents, branch names or file details.

Overview

GitLab already offers protected branches, but there are cases when you need some specific rules like preventing Git tag removal or enforcing a special format for commit messages.

Push rules are essentially pre-receive Git hooks that are easy to enable in a user-friendly interface. They are defined globally if you are an admin or per project so you can have different rules applied to different projects depending on your needs.

Use cases

Every push rule could have its own use case, but let's consider some examples.

Commit messages with a specific reference

Let's assume you have the following requirements for your workflow:

every commit should reference a Jira issue, for example: Refactored css. Fixes JIRA-123.
users should not be able to remove Git tags with git push

All you need to do is write a simple regular expression that requires the mention of a Jira issue in the commit message, like JIRA\-\d+.

Now when a user tries to push a commit with a message Bugfix, their push will be declined. Only pushing commits with messages like Bugfix according to JIRA-123 will be accepted.

Restrict branch names

Let's assume there's a strict policy for branch names in your company, and you want the branches to start with a certain name because you have different GitLab CI/CD jobs (feature, hotfix, docker, android, etc.) that rely on the branch name.

Your developers, however, don't always remember that policy, so they might push to various branches, and CI pipelines might not work as expected. By restricting the branch names globally in Push Rules, such mistakes are prevented. Any branch name that doesn't match your push rule will get rejected.

Note that the name of your default branch is always allowed, regardless of the branch naming regular expression (regex) specified. GitLab is configured this way because merges typically have the default branch as their target. If you have other target branches, include them in your regex. (See Enabling push rules).

The default branch also defaults to being a protected branch, which already limits users from pushing directly.

Default restricted branch names

Introduced in GitLab 12.10.

By default, GitLab restricts certain formats of branch names for security purposes. Currently 40-character hexadecimal names, similar to Git commit hashes, are prohibited.

Custom Push Rules (CORE ONLY)

It's possible to create custom push rules rather than the push rules available in Admin Area > Push Rules by using more advanced server hooks.

See server hooks for more information.

Enabling push rules

NOTE: GitLab administrators can set push rules globally under Admin Area > Push Rules that all new projects will inherit. You can later override them in a project's settings. They can be also set on a group level.

Navigate to your project's Settings > Repository and expand Push Rules
Set the rule you want
Click Save Push Rules for the changes to take effect

The following options are available:

Push rule	Description
Removal of tags with `git push`	Forbid users to remove Git tags with `git push`. Tags will still be able to be deleted through the web UI.
Check whether author is a GitLab user	Restrict commits by author (email) to existing GitLab users.
Committer restriction (PREMIUM)	GitLab will reject any commit that was not committed by the current authenticated user.
Check whether commit is signed through GPG (PREMIUM)	Reject commit when it is not signed through GPG. Read signing commits with GPG.
Prevent committing secrets to Git	GitLab will reject any files that are likely to contain secrets. Read what files are forbidden.
Restrict by commit message	Only commit messages that match this regular expression are allowed to be pushed. Leave empty to allow any commit message. Uses multiline mode, which can be disabled using `(?-m)`.
Restrict by commit message (negative match)	Only commit messages that do not match this regular expression are allowed to be pushed. Leave empty to allow any commit message. Uses multiline mode, which can be disabled using `(?-m)`.
Restrict by branch name	Only branch names that match this regular expression are allowed to be pushed. Leave empty to allow any branch name.
Restrict by commit author's email	Only commit author's email that match this regular expression are allowed to be pushed. Leave empty to allow any email.
Prohibited file names	Any committed filenames that match this regular expression and do not already exist in the repository are not allowed to be pushed. Leave empty to allow any filenames. See common examples.
Maximum file size	Pushes that contain added or updated files that exceed this file size (in MB) are rejected. Set to 0 to allow files of any size. Files tracked by Git LFS are exempted.

NOTE: GitLab uses RE2 syntax for regular expressions in push rules, and you can test them at the regex101 regex tester.

Prevent pushing secrets to the repository

Introduced in GitLab Starter 8.12.

Secrets such as credential files, SSH private keys, and other files containing secrets should never be committed to source control. GitLab allows you to turn on a predefined denylist of files which won't be allowed to be pushed to a repository, stopping those commits from reaching the remote repository.

By selecting the checkbox Prevent committing secrets to Git, GitLab prevents pushes to the repository when a file matches a regular expression as read from files_denylist.yml (make sure you are at the right branch as your GitLab version when viewing this file).

NOTE: Files already committed won't get restricted by this push rule.

Below is an example list of what will be rejected by these regular expressions:

#####################
# AWS CLI credential blobs
#####################
.aws/credentials
aws/credentials
homefolder/aws/credentials

#####################
# Private RSA SSH keys
#####################
/ssh/id_rsa
/.ssh/personal_rsa
/config/server_rsa
id_rsa
.id_rsa

#####################
# Private DSA SSH keys
#####################
/ssh/id_dsa
/.ssh/personal_dsa
/config/server_dsa
id_dsa
.id_dsa

#####################
# Private ed25519 SSH keys
#####################
/ssh/id_ed25519
/.ssh/personal_ed25519
/config/server_ed25519
id_ed25519
.id_ed25519

#####################
# Private ECDSA SSH keys
#####################
/ssh/id_ecdsa
/.ssh/personal_ecdsa
/config/server_ecdsa
id_ecdsa
.id_ecdsa

#####################
# Any file with .pem or .key extensions
#####################
*.pem
*.key

#####################
# Any file ending with _history or .history extension
#####################
*.history
*_history

Prohibited file names

Introduced in GitLab Starter 7.10.

Each filename contained in a Git push is compared to the regular expression in this field. Filenames in Git consist of both the file's name and any directory that may precede it. A singular regular expression can contain multiple independent matches used as exclusions. File names can be broadly matched to any location in the repository, or restricted to specific locations. Filenames can also be partial matches used to exclude file types by extension.

The following examples make use of regex string boundary characters which match the beginning of a string (^), and the end ($). They also include instances where either the directory path or the filename can include . or /. Both of these special regex characters have to be escaped with a backslash \\ to be used as normal characters in a match condition.

Example: prevent pushing any .exe files to any location in the repository. This is an example of a partial match, which can match any filename that contains .exe at the end:

\.exe$

Example: prevent a specific configuration file in the repository root from being pushed:

^config\.yml$

Example: prevent a specific configuration file in a known directory from being pushed:

^directory-name\/config\.yml$

Example: prevent the specific file named install.exe from being pushed to any location in the repository. Note that the parenthesized expression (^|\/) will match either a file following a directory separator or a file in the root directory of the repository:

(^|\/)install\.exe$

Example: combining all of the above in a single expression. Note that all of the preceding expressions rely on the end of string character $, so we can move that part of each expression to the end of the grouped collection of match conditions where it will be appended to all matches:

(\.exe|^config\.yml|^directory-name\/config\.yml|(^|\/)install\.exe)$