Gitlab should be able to federate different instances
Created by: duritong
While gitlab lets us host our own cool git hosting service, we cannot participate in a truly distributed/federated (read git-like) manner.
If a project A ist hosted on gitlab.example1.com a user can only open issues by having an account on gitlab.example1.com, although this user might have an own gitlab instance on gitlab.example2.com.
The same goes for pull requests, forking and so on. It's all only possible within a single gitlab instance and while a user is not anymore depending on a single hoster, she might still not be able to host her code (read her forks) on her own server.
Also if gitlab becomes more widespread contributing to different FOSS-projects might become cumbersome, as users will need a seperate account on all the different installations.
Therefore gitlab should look for ways to federate different installation. That would mean (not a complete list):
- A user can login with a gitlab account on gitlab.example2.com also on gitlab.example1.com, she would enter her credentials only on gitlab.example2.com.
- A user can open issues/comment/edit the wiki/... on gitlab.example1.com with her account on gitlab.example2.com
- A user should be able to fork repositories onto her own gitlab installation
- A user should be able to send pull requests from her own gitlab installation
This would allow a collaboration over the web in a truly git-manner.