Repository configuration vs forks
Problem to solve
We're in the process of evaluating Gitlab for a large(ish) organisation. We haven't decided yet on a branching model, so are exploring our options in some "leaf" repositories. In the one I'm currently testing Gitlab CI/CD in, I've opted for the "default" model of having contributors work in personal forks, and submit merge requests to the source repo. This brings me 2 problems, which are probably closely related:
- I've accidentally configured environment variables in my fork twice now. In our case, these are tokens for CI services (Percy)
- I'd like merge request based pipelines to run on the source, not the fork
I guess an initial question is; am I fundamentally misunderstanding or misconfiguring here, or is this any other case of user error?
Our branching model isn't fixed yet, and is internal to our organisation anyway so there's no hard requirement on using forks, we could also use a branching model that is internal to the source repository. If this is the way to set it up though, I'd like to see at the very least a visual indicator in the sidebar that always shows me whether I'm in a fork or source repo. Another solution I could imagine is locking down a fork's environment variables to its source's variables. I imagine this would be accompanied by some copy explaining that the project owner has disallowed configuring environment variables on forks.