[Bug][Gitlab Connection] GitLab data collection is incomplete

[albusshirazi]

Search before asking

• I had searched in the issues and found no similar issues.

What happened

I am using devlake with version 1.0.3-beta10. I connected it to an on-premise Gitlab endpoint with access token. I have multiple active project within my team group in gitlab (PRs, issues, runners pipeline, etc.), but I don't see my commits in my DORA metrics dashboard. I suspect it is because I didn't configure FullSync=true, but their is no option to do so from the ui (or to schedule Full Refresh Job).

What do you expect to happen

All my commits will appear and collected for DORA metrics.

How to reproduce

As described in issues #8818 & #8434

Anything else

No response

Version

1.0.3-beta10

Are you willing to submit PR?

• Yes I am willing to submit a PR!

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[dosubot]

This is a known behavior that was discussed in detail in issue #8818 [1]. Here's a summary:

Why commits are missing: In incremental (normal) collection mode, the gitextractor plugin performs a shallow git clone (git fetch --shallow-since=<timeAfter>). Commits whose parent commits fall outside the timeAfter window are intentionally skipped to avoid writing incorrect diff statistics. This causes boundary commits to be dropped entirely from repo_commits and commit_parents tables [1].

Why Full Refresh works: With FullSync = true, DevLake performs a complete git clone --bare with no time boundary, so all commits are captured [1].

How to trigger Full Refresh: You're right that there's no persistent UI option for this. The FullSync flag is a trigger-time override only, not a blueprint setting. Your options are:

1. Trigger via API with an external cron job:

   POST /api/blueprints/{blueprintId}/trigger
   {"skipCollectors": false, "fullSync": true}
   

2. Extend timeAfter generously — set it far enough in the past that parent commits of all relevant commits fall within the window.

3. Periodically update timeAfter via the UI to keep the collection window wide enough.

Additional note: There's also a separate bug (#8742) where the GitLab plugin fails to create repos entries in project_mapping when scope entities are empty, which independently breaks DORA metrics. This was fixed in PR #8743 [2] — worth checking if your version includes that fix.

⚠️ Also avoid setting timeAfter to null via the PATCH API — there's a bug (#8516) where it gets stored as 0001-01-01 instead [1].

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[albusshirazi]

OK, #8818 issue is a question , I'm reporting the same issue as a bug since I'm experiencing it too without any way to solve it by myself and it requires a fix in this product ability to connect to Gitlab.