Support secondary offline instances
Problem to solve
There are scenarios where there is a central GitLab instance, but it should be available to developers that are "offline" for some time. In these scenarios, developers should continue to use the central instance as usual, but "offline" developers should be able to work on the secondary one. When the "offline" instance can go online again, it should be able to "merge" changes into the central one in the most painless way.
The process could be described as follows:
- a project is available on the primary instance
- a secondary instance is updated/cloned/created based on the primary one
- the secondary instance is put offline for an arbitrary period of time
- the project is modified on both the primary and the secondary instance, independently
- the secondary instance is back online
- the project on the secondary instance is "merged" into the project on the primary instance
- the secondary instance can be dismissed
A sync for the git repo (via branches and merge requests) can be addressed with standard git flows, but other GitLab features (e.g., issues) are not easy to handle.
Further details
A typical scenario could be an oil company with developers on-site offshore. Developers should be able to work even when on the platform, but sync back their work after the offshore shift is over.
Proposal
Improve import/export, forking or other existing related features to support this flow, trying to keep the manual work (prone to errors) to the minimum.