19-0 Stable Bump Container Registry to v4.40.1-gitlab

Hayley Swimelarrequested to merge
bump-container-registry-v4-40-1-gitlab into 19-0-stable

What does this MR do?

4.40.1 (2026-05-22)

Bug Fixes

  • handlers: defer router init until metadata DB resolves prefer-fallback (9d2e6bd)

Fixes gitlab#600955 — GitLab 19.0 auto-flips database.enabled to "prefer" on upgrade, and the registry's router was initialized before the prefer-fallback detection ran, breaking all /gitlab/v1/... routes for installs that still had filesystem metadata.

MR acceptance checklist

  • This MR is backporting a bug fix, previously merged in the default branch (container-registry!2877 (merged)).
  • The original MR has been deployed to GitLab.com — not applicable: prefer-fallback only affects self-managed installs with legacy filesystem metadata; GitLab.com runs database-backed metadata.
  • This MR has a severity label assigned (defer to release manager — issue is severity 2 candidate: existing UI broken for any 19.0 upgrade from pre-18.6 with filesystem mode).

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