Tickbox for signed-off-by wiki commits

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Problem to solve

I am the maintainer of a libre licensed project with both code and wiki repositories hosted on a GitLab CE instance. I require DCO-style signed-off-by lines for commits (git commit -s). I want users to sign-off their wiki contributions as well, so that I get DCO benefits for the project wiki as well.

(Similarly for a wiki-only project.)

Further details

This is a project-level requirement, so I imagine should be an option for the project owner to set/unset.

Perhaps users would like to enable this at an account level - i.e. perform a sign-off action for all wikis they contribute to -- but that's a separate issue.

Proposal

  • Under project settings, an option to "Add signed-off-by text to wiki contributions"
  • If disabled, creating / editing a wiki page is as normal
  • If enabled, when creating / editing a wiki page:
    • Under the commit message box, above the Submit button, a checkbox appears labelled "Sign-off contribution"
    • The submit button does not work unless the user has checked the checkbox.

Note that this intentionally requires a manual action to perform the sign-off.

What does success look like, and how can we measure that?

The following steps should work as described:

  • Maintainer opens project settings
  • Maintainer ticks "Add signed-off-by text to wiki contributions"
  • User creates/edits a wiki page
  • User fails to check "Sign-off contribution"
  • User cannot submit changes
  • User checks "Sign-off contribution"
  • User submits changes successfully
  • Git log confirms that the wiki commit has a "signed-off-by" line
  • Maintainer opens project settings
  • Maintainer unticks "Add signed-off-by text to wiki contributions"
  • User creates/edits a wiki page
  • "Sign-off contribution" checkbox does not appear
  • User submits changes successfully

Additional confirmation (might be worth a separate ticket):

  • Maintainer ticks "Add signed-off-by text to wiki contributions"
  • User downloads wiki via Git
  • User makes a commit without -s
  • User attempts to push changes back
  • Push fails because sign-off is missing
  • User fixes commits so that they are signed-off
  • User attempts to push changes back
  • Push succeeds

Links / references

-s --signoff Add Signed-off-by line by the committer at the end of the commit log message. The meaning of a signoff depends on the project, but it typically certifies that committer has the rights to submit this work under the same license and agrees to a Developer Certificate of Origin (see http://developercertificate.org/ for more information).

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#git-commit--s

Edited Aug 25, 2025 by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖
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