git + = gitlab

Lab wraps Git or Hub, making it simple to clone, fork, and interact with repositories on GitLab, including seamless workflows for creating merge requests, issues and snippets.

$ lab clone gitlab-com/infrastructure

# expands to:
$ git clone [email protected]:gitlab-com/infrastructure

hub + = hublab??

lab will look for hub and uses that as your git binary when available so you don't have to give up hub to use lab

$ lab version
git version 2.11.0
hub version 2.3.0-pre9
lab version 0.19.0

Inspiration

The hub tool made my life significantly easier and still does! lab is heavily inspired by hub and attempts to provide a similar feel.

Installation

Dependencies

• git or hub

Homebrew

brew install lab

NixOS

nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA gitAndTools.lab

Scoop

scoop bucket add zaquestion https://github.com/zaquestion/scoop-bucket.git
scoop install lab

Alpine

apk add lab

Bash

Installs lab into /usr/local/bin/

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zaquestion/lab/master/install.sh | sudo bash

NOTE: Please take care when executing scripts in this fashion. Make sure you trust the developer providing the script and consider peeking at the install script itself (ours is pretty simple ;)

PreBuilt Binaries

Head to the releases page and download your preferred release

Source

Required

• Go 1.15+

git clone [email protected]:zaquestion/lab
cd lab
go install -ldflags "-X \"main.version=$(git  rev-parse --short=10 HEAD)\"" .

or

make install

Tests

See the contribution guide.

Configuration

lab needs your GitLab information in order to interact with to your GitLab instance. There are several ways to provide this information to lab:

1. environment variables: LAB_CORE_HOST, LAB_CORE_TOKEN;
   • If these variables are set, the config files will not be updated.
2. environment variables: CI_PROJECT_URL, CI_JOB_TOKEN;
   • Note: these are meant for when lab is running within a GitLab CI pipeline
   • If these variables are set, the config files will not be updated.
3. local configuration file in Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language (TOML): ./lab.toml;
   • No other config files will be used as overrides if a local configuration file is specified
4. user-specific configuration file in TOML: ~/.config/lab/lab.toml.
5. work-tree configuration file in TOML: .git/lab/lab.toml. The values in this file will override any values set in the user-specific configuration file.

If no suitable config values are found, lab will prompt for your GitLab information and save it into ~/.config/lab/lab.toml. For example:

$ lab
Enter default GitLab host (default: https://gitlab.com):
Enter default GitLab token:

Command-specific flags can be set in the config files.

[mr_show]
  comments = true # sets --comments on 'mr show' commands

Completions

lab provides completions for Bash, Elvish, Fish, Powershell, Xonsh and Zsh. Scripts can be directly sourced (though using pre-generated versions is recommended to avoid shell startup delay):

# bash (~/.bashrc)
source <(lab completion)

# elvish (~/.elvish/rc.elv)
eval (lab completion|slurp)

# fish (~/.config/fish/config.fish)
lab completion | source

# powershell (~/.config/powershell/Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1)
Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function MenuComplete
lab completion | Out-String | Invoke-Expression

# xonsh (~/.config/xonsh/rc.xsh)
COMPLETIONS_CONFIRM=True
exec($(lab completion xonsh))

# zsh (~/.zshrc)
source <(lab completion zsh)

Aliasing

Like hub, lab feels best when aliased as git, however it's perfectly reasonable to use as a standalone tool. In your .bashrc or .bash_profile:

alias git=lab

NOTE: before aliasing, if you use git in your shell prompt command, be sure lab works by it's own first:

What about GLab?

Both glab and lab are open-source tools with the same goal of bringing GitLab to your command line and simplifying the developer workflower. In many ways lab is to hub, what glab is to gh.

lab aims to feel familiar to a git user and leverages git to power many of it's commands. glab will feel more familiar to gh users and in turn is more interactive and likely more beginner friendly for that reason.

$ lab
Enter GitLab host (default: https://gitlab.com):

To the extent possible under law, Zaq? Wiedmann has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Lab. This work is published from: United States.