Install glab with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• glab

Project history

GLab began as a community project by Clement Sam. GitLab's adoption announcement says he started work more than two years before December 2022 to make his workflow easier and avoid switching among browser tabs, IDE, and terminal.

The original profclems/glab GitHub repository was created in 2020 and gathered a community before GitLab adopted it. GitLab's announcement says more than 80 contributors had built on the tool before adoption, adding commands for merge requests, issues, pipelines, and more.

GitLab adopted the project in 2022 and moved it into gitlab-org/cli as the foundation of GitLab's native CLI experience. The transition included migrating project infrastructure, adapting GitHub Actions work to GitLab CI, reviewing security, and updating distribution methods to point to the new repository.

Adoption history

GLab's adoption is tied directly to GitLab's broader editor and terminal strategy. GitLab's announcement frames the CLI as another way to integrate GitLab with tools developers already use, following its earlier adoption of GitLab Workflow for VS Code.

The official README documents support for GitLab.com, GitLab Dedicated, and GitLab Self-Managed, with multiple authenticated GitLab instances and automatic host detection from Git remotes. Package metadata in this batch shows GLab in Homebrew, Chocolatey, Debian, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, Scoop, Ubuntu, Winget, openSUSE, and Alpine.

How it is used

Practitioners use glab to stay in the terminal while listing and creating issues, opening and reviewing merge requests, checking pipelines, retrying jobs, creating releases and changelogs, managing labels and milestones, calling the GitLab API, and configuring authentication.

The README shows a command structure of glab command subcommand flags and examples such as listing merge requests assigned to the user, approving a merge request, and creating an issue with milestone, title, and label. Authentication can use OAuth, personal access tokens, CI job tokens, and host-specific configuration.

Why package nerds care

GLab matters to package maintainers because it is the GitLab-side counterpart to the habit of doing forge work from a shell. It turns GitLab from a browser destination into a scriptable CLI surface for local development and CI contexts.

Its history also shows a common open-source lifecycle: a community tool proved demand, then the platform vendor adopted it, moved distribution, and expanded support for enterprise and self-managed installations.

Timeline

• 2020: The original profclems/glab repository is created on GitHub.
• 2022: GitLab adopts glab and announces it as the foundation of GitLab's native CLI experience.
• 2022: GitLab moves the project toward gitlab-org/cli and updates distribution methods.
• 2023: GitLab CLI v1.29.1 appears in the GitLab releases feed after the adoption.
• 2026: The GitLab-hosted repository and docs describe broad command coverage for issues, merge requests, CI/CD, releases, APIs, authentication, and GitLab instances.

Related projects

• GitLab is the forge and DevSecOps platform targeted by GLab.
• Git provides the local repository context used for host detection and developer workflows.
• GitLab Workflow for VS Code is cited by GitLab as a related integration effort.
• 1Password Shell Plugins are documented by GitLab as an authentication integration.

Sources

• https://about.gitlab.com/blog/introducing-the-gitlab-cli/
• https://api.github.com/repos/profclems/glab
• https://docs.gitlab.com/cli
• https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/gitlab-org%2Fcli
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/digital-experience/about-gitlab-com/-/raw/main/content/en-us/blog/introducing-the-gitlab-cli.md
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cli
• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cli/-/raw/main/README.md