Import your project from Bitbucket Server (FREE)

Introduced in GitLab 11.2.

NOTE: This process is different than importing from Bitbucket Cloud.

From Bitbucket Server, you can import:

Repository description
Git repository data
Pull requests
Pull request comments

When importing, repository public access is retained. If a repository is private in Bitbucket, it's created as private in GitLab as well.

Import your Bitbucket repositories

Prerequisites:

An administrator must have enabled the Bitbucket Server in Admin > Settings > General > Visibility and access controls > Import sources.
Review the importer's limitations.

To import your Bitbucket repositories:

Sign in to GitLab.
On the top bar, select New ({plus}).
Select New project/repository.
Select Import project.
Select Bitbucket Server.
Log in to Bitbucket and grant GitLab access to your Bitbucket account.
Select the projects to import, or import all projects. You can filter projects by name and select the namespace for which to import each project.

Limitations

GitLab doesn't allow comments on arbitrary lines of code. Any out-of-bounds Bitbucket comments are inserted as comments in the merge request.
Bitbucket Server allows multiple threading levels. The importer collapses this into one thread and quotes part of the original comment.
Declined pull requests have unreachable commits. This prevents the importer from generating a proper diff. These pull requests show up as empty changes.
Project filtering doesn't support fuzzy search. Only starts with or full match strings are supported.

The following aren't imported:

Pull request approvals
Attachments in Markdown
Task lists
Emoji reactions

User assignment

When issues and pull requests are importing, the importer tries to find the author's email address with a confirmed email address in the GitLab user database. If no such user is available, the project creator is set as the author. The importer appends a note in the comment to mark the original creator.

The importer creates any new namespaces (groups) if they don't exist. If the namespace is taken, the repository imports under the namespace of the user who started the import process.

User assignment by username

Introduced in GitLab 13.4 with a flag named bitbucket_server_user_mapping_by_username. Disabled by default.

Not recommended for production use.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab and GitLab.com, by default this feature is not available. To make it available, ask an administrator to enable the feature flag named bitbucket_server_user_mapping_by_username. This feature is not ready for production use.

With this feature enabled, the importer tries to find a user in the GitLab user database with the author's:

username
slug
displayName

If no user matches these properties, the project creator is set as the author.

Troubleshooting

General

If the GUI-based import tool does not work, you can try to:

Use the GitLab Import API Bitbucket Server endpoint.
Set up repository mirroring. It provides verbose error output.

See the troubleshooting section for Bitbucket Cloud.

LFS objects not imported

If the project import completes but LFS objects can't be downloaded or cloned, you may be using a password or personal access token containing special characters. For more information, see this issue.