Drupal.org Begins GitLab Issue Migration with Opt-In Phase and Site Changes

Fran Garcia-Linares has shared an update on the official Drupal.org blog detailing the first steps in the long-term transition from the Drupal.org issue queues to GitLab. The move, announced during DrupalCon Vienna, begins with an opt-in phase for project maintainers who wish to migrate their modules to GitLab issues.

Mixed Issue Systems During Transition

As projects begin to adopt GitLab, Drupal.org will operate with two issue systems in parallel. This means that some projects will continue using the legacy issue queues, while others will have their issues managed on GitLab.

To reflect this, Drupal.org project pages are being updated:

• The "Issue cockpit" block-which currently displays a project's open issues-will be removed.
• A simple "Issues" link will replace it, directing users to the appropriate issue tracker (Drupal.org or GitLab), depending on where that project's issues are hosted.

Issue Linking Changes

Another change is how issues are linked. Previously, related and parent issues used entity reference fields pointing to internal Drupal.org issues. These fields are being replaced with full URLs, allowing maintainers to link across both platforms. Rendered links will continue to display useful metadata like title and status.

Migration Roadmap

The migration will happen in stages:

1. Migrate projects that opt in
2. Make GitLab the default for new projects
3. Migrate low-risk, low-usage, and sandbox projects
4. Migrate remaining projects, excluding a few high-risk, high-volume ones
5. Migrate the rest, including Drupal core (which has over 115,000 issues)

In total, nearly 200 projects have more than 1,000 issues, and about 2,000 projects have over 100.

Maintainers Encouraged to Participate

Project maintainers are invited to opt in via Issue #3409678 and to provide feedback throughout the migration process. The Drupal Association emphasises that the transition is iterative, with improvements and fixes applied at each step based on community input.

This migration is a significant move toward modernising Drupal's development workflow and aligning it more closely with widely used tooling.