Package Registry (FREE)

Moved from GitLab Premium to GitLab Free in 13.3.

With the GitLab Package Registry, you can use GitLab as a private or public registry for a variety of supported package managers. You can publish and share packages, which can be consumed as a dependency in downstream projects.

Package workflows

Learn how to use the GitLab Package Registry to build your own custom package workflow:

View packages

You can view packages for your project or group.

  1. Go to the project or group.
  2. Go to Packages and registries > Package Registry.

You can search, sort, and filter packages on this page. You can share your search results by copying and pasting the URL from your browser.

You can also find helpful code snippets for configuring your package manager or installing a given package.

When you view packages in a group:

  • All projects published to the group and its projects are displayed.
  • Only the projects you can access are displayed.
  • If a project is private, or you are not a member of the project, it is not displayed.

For information on how to create and upload a package, view the GitLab documentation for your package type.

Authenticate with the registry

Authentication depends on the package manager being used. For more information, see the docs on the specific package format you want to use.

For most package types, the following credential types are valid:

  • Personal access token: authenticates with your user permissions. Good for personal and local use of the package registry.
  • Project deploy token: allows access to all packages in a project. Good for granting and revoking project access to many users.
  • Group deploy token: allows access to all packages in a group and its subgroups. Good for granting and revoking access to a large number of packages to sets of users.
  • Job token: allows access to packages in the project running the job for the users running the pipeline. Access to other external projects can be configured.

NOTE: If you have not activated the "Packages" feature for your project at Settings > General > Project features, you will receive a 403 Forbidden response. Accessing package registry via deploy token is not available when external authorization is enabled.

Use GitLab CI/CD to build packages

You can use GitLab CI/CD to build packages. For Maven, NuGet, npm, Conan, Helm, and PyPI packages, and Composer dependencies, you can authenticate with GitLab by using the CI_JOB_TOKEN.

CI/CD templates, which you can use to get started, are in this repository.

Learn more about using the GitLab Package Registry with CI/CD:

If you use CI/CD to build a package, extended activity information is displayed when you view the package details:

Package CI/CD activity

You can view which pipeline published the package, and the commit and user who triggered it. However, the history is limited to five updates of a given package.

Reduce storage usage

For information on reducing your storage use for the Package Registry, see Reduce Package Registry storage use.

Disable the Package Registry

The Package Registry is automatically enabled.

If you are using a self-managed instance of GitLab, your administrator can remove the menu item, Packages and registries, from the GitLab sidebar. For more information, see the administration documentation.

You can also remove the Package Registry for your project specifically:

  1. In your project, go to Settings > General.
  2. Expand the Visibility, project features, permissions section and disable the Packages feature.
  3. Select Save changes.

The Packages and registries > Package Registry entry is removed from the sidebar.

Package Registry visibility permissions

Project-level permissions determine actions such as downloading, pushing, or deleting packages.

The visibility of the Package Registry is independent of the repository and can't be controlled from your project's settings. For example, if you have a public project and set the repository visibility to Only Project Members, the Package Registry is then public. However, disabling the Package Registry disables all Package Registry operations.

GitLab-#329253 proposes adding the ability to control Package Registry visibility from the UI.

Anonymous
(everyone on internet)
Guest Reporter, Developer, Maintainer, Owner
Public project with Package Registry enabled View Package Registry
and pull packages
Yes Yes Yes
Internal project with Package Registry enabled View Package Registry
and pull packages
No Yes Yes
Private project with Package Registry enabled View Package Registry
and pull packages
No No Yes
Any project with Package Registry disabled All operations on Package Registry No No No

Supported package managers

WARNING: Not all package manager formats are ready for production use. To view each format's status, see the table's Status column.

The Package Registry supports the following formats:

Package type GitLab version Status
Maven 11.3+ GA
npm 11.7+ GA
NuGet 12.8+ GA
PyPI 12.10+ GA
Generic packages 13.5+ GA
Composer 13.2+ Beta
Conan 12.6+ Beta
Helm 14.1+ Beta
Debian 14.2+ Alpha
Go 13.1+ Alpha
Ruby gems 13.10+ Alpha

Status:

  • Alpha: behind a feature flag and not officially supported.
  • Beta: several known issues that may prevent expected use.
  • GA (Generally Available): ready for production use at any scale.

You can also use the API to administer the Package Registry.

Accepting contributions

This table lists unsupported package manager formats that we are accepting contributions for. Consider contributing to GitLab. This development documentation guides you through the process.

Format Status
Chef #36889
CocoaPods #36890
Conda #36891
CRAN #36892
Opkg #36894
P2 #36895
Puppet #36897
RPM #5932
SBT #36898
Swift #12233
Vagrant #36899