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GitLab Packages & Container Registry

Unified registries for packages and container images alongside code and CI/CD. Publish, store, control access, and manage the lifecycle of artifacts.

GitLab Packages & Container Registry solves the problem of storing and distributing development artifacts in one place with repositories and pipelines. This is important for delivery stability: dependencies, builds, and container images must be available predictably, with clear access rights and publication history.

Package Registry allows you to use GitLab as a private or public registry for different types of packages and artifacts so that teams and services can pull dependencies from a controlled source. Container Registry provides storage for container images used to deploy, test, and run applications. Built-in lifecycle management mechanisms (such as cleaning up obsolete tags and immutability rules) help control storage and reduce costs.

Registries are most often used in conjunction with GitLab CI/CD: the pipeline automatically collects, tags, and publishes packages and images, while security is enhanced through GitLab Security & Compliance.

Key features

  • Package Registry: publish and use packages as dependencies in other projects.
  • Support for different formats: work with common types of packages and artifacts.
  • Generic packages: store binaries and release files that do not fit into standard formats.
  • Container Registry: store container images alongside source code and pipelines.
  • Access control: read/publish permissions, unified GitLab access model.
  • Cleanup policies: automatic management of obsolete tags and storage reduction.
  • Immutability: protection of important tags from being overwritten or deleted.
  • Traceability: understand which artifact was built from which code and by which pipeline.