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Docs: Document that fork visibility cannot exceed upstream project
What does this MR do?
Documents the fork visibility constraints that are enforced in code but not mentioned in the documentation:
- At fork creation, the fork's visibility is capped to the minimum of the source project's visibility, the target namespace's visibility, and the requested visibility (
app/services/projects/fork_service.rbtarget_visibility_level). In the UI, the fork form disables less restrictive options so they can't be selected. Via the API, requesting a more permissive level does not error; GitLab silently uses the most permissive allowed level. - After creation, a model validation prevents changing a fork's visibility to a level greater than the upstream project's visibility (
app/models/project.rbvisibility_level_allowed_as_fork?). This validation runs only when the fork's own visibility changes, so an existing fork is not downgraded if the upstream project later becomes more restrictive (seespec/services/projects/fork_service_spec.rb, "when the forked project has higher visibility than the root project").
Neither constraint was documented anywhere. This MR adds the missing information to three pages:
doc/user/project/repository/forking_workflow.md- adds a note to the Visibility level step in Create a fork.doc/api/project_forks.md- extends thevisibilityattribute description in the Create a fork of a project table.doc/user/public_access.md- extends the Project visibility dropdown step in Change project visibility to mention the fork constraint.
Related issues
None. This documents existing enforced behavior.
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Edited by Ben Bodenmiller