gitconductor 0.4.0

Manage nested git repositories in Gitlab seemlessly(ish)

gitconductor

gitconductor is a command-line tool and Python library for managing git operations over nested GitLab groups using the official GitLab Python API. It makes it easier to traverse complex group/sub-group hierarchies, perform recursive git operations, without the need for submodule interdependencies, accessing only the sub-groups/projects for which the user has access.

Documentation.

Features

• Recursive group traversal — operate on entire GitLab group trees, not just individual projects
• Git operations across nested groups (clone, pull, status, etc.)
• Unified CLI and Python API
• Built on top of the official GitLab Python API
• Designed for automation, scripting, and bulk maintenance

Installation

pip install gitconductor

Gitlab Access

Access to Gitlab is controlled via Personal Access Tokens. To generate:

1. Login to Gitlab.
2. Click to user icon.
3. Click preferences in the drop down.
4. Click "Personal access tokens" on the left side bar.
5. Click the "Add new token" button in the top right.
6. Select "legacy".
7. Give it a helpful name.
8. Set the expiry date - for closed systems the longest permissable time of 1 year is easiest.
9. Click the tick box for:
   • read_user
   • read_repository
   • read_api
   • write_repository
10. Click the "Generate token" button below.
11. Copy the new token (noting it can't be viewed again after).

Configuration

Configuration file

Gitconductor can store settings in a file. By default, this is at "~/.config/gitconductor/gitconductor.toml". The location can be changed via the GITCONDUCTOR_CONFIG environment variable. Alternatively, a path can be passed via the top-level --cfg CLI argument.

Environment Variables

• GITCONDUCTOR_CONFIG: Gitconductor configuration YAML file location.
• GITCONDUCTOR_GITLAB_API_KEY: Gitlab Private Access Token.
• GITCONDUCTOR_GITLAB_URL: Gitlab main URL.

GitLab API Keys

Keys can be set up in two ways:

1. Via an environment variable: export GITCONDUCTOR_GITLAB_API_KEY=<my-private-key>
2. Via the "gitconductor.toml" file in the gitconductor_gitlab_api_key variable.

Usage (CLI)

Clone

To clone a Gitlab project at, for example, https://gitlab.com/ejb90-group.

gitconductor clone ejb90-group

Branch

gitconductor branch <name>

Checkout

gitconductor checkout <name>

Pull

...

Visualisation

Tree

To visualise the hierarchy of Groups/Projects as a Run, run:

gitconductor viz tree

Results in:

ejb90-group
└── models
    ├── model-a
    ├── model-b
    ├── model-c
    └── subgroup-1
        ├── model-a
        └── model-b

Table

To visualise the hierarchy of Groups/Projects as a Table, run:

gitconductor viz table

Results in:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name          ┃ Tree                                  ┃ Branch ┃ Path                                  ┃ Remote                                                              ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ model-a       │ ejb90-group/models/model-a            │ main   │ ejb90-group/models/model-a            │ [e-mail]:ejb90-group/models/model-a.git                       │
│ model-b       │ ejb90-group/models/model-b            │ main   │ ejb90-group/models/model-b            │ [e-mail]:ejb90-group/models/model-b.git                       │
│ model-c       │ ejb90-group/models/model-c            │ main   │ ejb90-group/models/model-c            │ [e-mail]:ejb90-group/models/model-c.git                       │
│ model-a       │ ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/model-a │ main   │ ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/model-a │ [e-mail]:ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/subgroup-1-model-a.git │
│ model-b       │ ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/model-b │ main   │ ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/model-b │ [e-mail]:ejb90-group/models/subgroup-1/subgroup-1-model-b.git │
└───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Access

To see who has access to a given hierarchy of Groups/Projects, run:

gitconductor viz access

Results in:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Group/Project      ┃ User  ┃ Access Level ┃ Public Email ┃ Expiry ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ ejb90-group        │ Ellis │ Owner        │              │        │
│ ejb90-group/models │ mobot │ Reporter     │              │        │
└────────────────────┴───────┴──────────────┴──────────────┴────────┘

Python

Gitconductor can also inspect and maniupulate cloned repositories as Python packages. A repository is treated as a Python package when it contains either pyproject.toml or setup.py. Python commands run recursively from the current Gitconductor group, subgroup, or project, so you can work across a whole clone or narrow the operation by changing into a subgroup directory first.

Generate Requirements

Generate a requirements.txt file containing direct references to each Python package in the repository tree:

gitconductor py-requirements

By default, Gitconductor writes to requirements.txt and will not overwrite an existing file unless --force is passed:

gitconductor py-requirements --force

To choose a different output file:

gitconductor py-requirements --fname model-requirements.txt

A pyproject.toml-style dependences snippet is also possible with the --pyproject argument:

gitconductor py-requirements --pyproject

Install Python Packages

Install every Python package in the current Gitlab Group tree into the active Python environment:

gitconductor py-installer

By default this runs uv pip install <path> for each Python package it finds. To install packages in editable mode:

gitconductor py-installer --editable

You can pass a different package-manager command with --package-manager:

gitconductor py-installer --package-manager "python -m pip"

To install from a specific package index:

gitconductor py-installer --index https://example.com/simple

Usage (Python API)

group = gitlab.GitlabGroup(
    gitlab_url=ctx.obj["url"],
    gitlab_key=ctx.obj["key"],
    name=name,
    root=directory,
)
group.recursive_command("clone")

Development & Contributing

Contributions welcome — feel free to open issues or submit PRs. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT License • © 2026