Make it possible to define custom gitlab.rb files

In order to enable different parts of GitLab (e.g. Mattermost, LDAP, etc), we need to be able to customize /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb. There are two ways I thought we might be able to do this:

1. Mount the /etc/gitlab directory as a volume
2. Make it possible to append entries to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and run reconfigure

The second way seemed simpler, but it's a bit slow because you have to run reconfigure twice. I attempted to do the first way via:

diff --git a/lib/gitlab/qa/scenario/test/instance/image.rb b/lib/gitlab/qa/scenario/test/instance/image.rb
index d377b3b..041baa2 100644
--- a/lib/gitlab/qa/scenario/test/instance/image.rb
+++ b/lib/gitlab/qa/scenario/test/instance/image.rb
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ module Gitlab
 
             def initialize
               @volumes = {}
+
+              volumes[ENV['ETC_GITLAB_DIR']] = '/etc/gitlab' if ENV['ETC_GITLAB_DIR']
             end
 
             def perform(release)

That did what I wanted, but the tricky part is that external_url needs to be set the Docker hostname (e.g. http://gitlab-qa-XXX). This is done by default on a new Docker install, but it isn't if we are providing a gitlab.rb already.

Do we need to consider providing a gitlab.rb.erb template that can be filled in by GitLab QA, or should we just go with approach 2 above?

/cc: @grzesiek, @rspeicher

@stanhu Isn't this already possible by using GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG, also by passing this variable to a Docker container?

My initial idea was to use GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG in gitlab-qa environment-level scenarios. Not sure if this going to resolve all use cases, testing against GDK is one of the problems, as per https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-qa/issues/71.

The question is - do we want to test that level of integration with GDK? Should we test things like LDAP / Mattermost only against GitLab instance that was configured by Omnibus?

Ah, that's great. Let's use GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG then. :)

The question is - do we want to test that level of integration with GDK? Should we test things like LDAP / Mattermost only against GitLab instance that was configured by Omnibus?

We may want both, but I think it's more important to make sure our packages are tested with LDAP and Mattermost.

mentioned in merge request !76 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !77

added 1 design

started a discussion on gitlab-logo-100.png