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Allow Disabling the Web IDE by Project

Release notes

Allows disabling the Web IDE per project

Problem to solve

As a project maintainer I would like the ability to disable the Web IDE for specific projects, so that I can more easily force developers to use GPG signing for all of their commits.

Intended users

User experience goal

The Project Manager/Maintainer should be able to use the project settings within the Gitlab Web Interface to disable the use of the Web IDE.

Proposal

Implement a checkbox within the project general settings for disabling the Web IDE for the project.

Further details

There was an older issue like this submitted 2 years ago and closed 6 months ago, however the consensus at that time was that there wasn't really a difference in functionality in forcing uses to use local development tools vs the Web IDE. However, I submit that the primary, and, I think significant, different is GPG signing commits. This is not possible in the Web IDE, and can't feasibly be possible without users turning over their private keys, and we all know, that isn't a good idea.

I am the administrator for several Self-Hosted instances of Gitlab and the project lead for several projects where I would like to disable the Web IDE to better force developers to use GPG signing. There is a repository option to only allow signed commits, however the Web IDE ignores this rule allowing users to commit without signing their commits.

Permissions and Security

Only project maintainers or owners should be allowed to modify this setting.

  • Add expected impact to members with no access (0)
  • Add expected impact to Guest (10) members
  • Add expected impact to Reporter (20) members
  • Add expected impact to Developer (30) members
  • Add expected impact to Maintainer (40) members
  • Add expected impact to Owner (50) members

Documentation

The Project Settings documentation would have to be updated to include a mention of this as a feature for Silver/Premium users.

Availability & Testing

There may be a small hit to the availability when it comes to quick changes to a repository, as a user would have to use a local git repo to make any changes at all. As opposed to now, they can commit a quick change through the Web UI without having a local clone.

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

The Usage ping could easily be adapted to track the number of project which have enabled this option. Probably best to include a metric for the number of project with GPG signing enforced as well as that is the only use case I can see for the Web IDE to be disabled.

What is the type of buyer?

Type of Buyer:

Pricing Tier:

Links / references

Original Issue (mentioned above): gitlab-foss#46503 (closed)