Advanced Global Search (STARTER ONLY)
- Introduced in GitLab Starter 8.4.
- This is the user documentation. To install and configure Elasticsearch, visit the administrator documentation.
NOTE: Note Advanced Global Search (powered by Elasticsearch) is not yet available on GitLab.com. We are working on adding it. Follow this epic for the latest updates.
Leverage Elasticsearch for faster, more advanced code search across your entire GitLab instance.
Overview
The Advanced Global Search in GitLab is a powerful search service that saves you time. Instead of creating duplicate code and wasting time, you can now search for code within other teams that can help your own project.
GitLab leverages the search capabilities of Elasticsearch and enables it when searching in:
- GitLab application
- Projects
- Repositories
- Commits
- Issues
- Merge requests
- Milestones
- Notes (comments)
- Snippets
- Wiki
Use cases
The Advanced Global Search can be useful in various scenarios.
Faster searches
If you are dealing with huge amount of data and want to keep GitLab's search fast, the Advanced Global Search will help you achieve that.
Promote innersourcing
Your company may consist of many different developer teams each of which has their own group where the various projects are hosted. Some of your applications may be connected to each other, so your developers need to instantly search throughout the GitLab instance and find the code they search for.
Searching globally
Just use the search as before and GitLab will show you matching code from each project you have access to.
You can also use the Advanced Syntax Search which provides some useful queries.
Note: Elasticsearch has only data for the default branch. That means that if you go to the repository tree and switch the branch from the default to something else, then the "Code" tab in the search result page will be served by the regular search even if Elasticsearch is enabled.