Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

GitLab errors hide glab's stderr behind a generic "GitLab CLI command failed"

Open Beginner friendly
  • Is something wrong?
#22,342 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
73/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
gitlab, typescript
Domain
backend, developer-experience

Research direction

Read packages/source-control-gitlab/src/server/GitLabCli.ts and compare its error handling with the git stderr change in #5620. Trace how VcsProcessExitError reaches GitLabCliCommandError.detail, including the not-found mapping in fromVcsError. Done means glab's useful stderr appears in the surfaced error while auth, rate limit, and spawn errors retain their handling.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

What happened

In the desktop app, a self-hosted GitLab repo keeps showing Source control provider gitlab failed in listChangeRequests: GitLab CLI command failed. The app also can't create merge requests. Nothing in the UI says what glab actually returned, so the user can't tell whether this is a T3 Code problem, a glab problem or a GitLab server problem.

Diagnosis

The real cause was outside T3 Code. The company nginx reverse proxy in front of GitLab decodes %2F in API paths. So GET /api/v4/projects/<group>%2F<project> returns 404 for every project, while GET /api/v4/projects/<id> works. glab mr list in the repo fails with 404 Not Found.

T3 Code shows none of that. In packages/source-control-gitlab/src/server/GitLabCli.ts, GitLabCliCommandError.detail is a fixed string ("GitLab CLI command failed."). The VcsProcessExitError cause, which holds glab's stderr, only appears in the server trace. fromVcsError also maps failureKind: "not-found" to the same generic error. The ThreadSettlementServiceV2.sweep / ThreadPullRequestServiceV2.synchronize branch-MR lookup calls this again and again (about 4,100 failures in roughly 1.5 h in the trace), and every failure looks the same.

Suggestion: put a trimmed first line of glab's stderr into GitLabCliCommandError.detail/message, as #5620 did for git (fix(vcs): surface git's stderr on GitCommandError). For example: GitLab CLI command failed: 404 Not Found.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Use a self-hosted GitLab behind a reverse proxy that decodes %2F (e.g. nginx proxy_pass http://backend/;). Any glab failure that isn't auth, rate limit or spawn works too.
  2. glab auth login to that host (glab auth status shows the host as logged in).
  3. Open a repo with an https://<host>/<group>/<project>.git remote in the T3 Code desktop app.
  4. Watch the source control / MR area: GitLab CLI command failed. with no detail. Run glab mr list in the repo: 404 Not Found.
Version

0.1.0 (desktop app; local server reports serverVersion 0.1.0). Also checked against main at 23b550dd: same code.

Environment

Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200 x64, Node v26.8.2, glab 1.123.0, self-hosted GitLab behind nginx

Evidence
SourceControlProviderError: Source control provider gitlab failed in listChangeRequests: GitLab CLI command failed.
  at findLatestPrForHeadContext ... lookupBranchPullRequest ... branchPullRequest
  at ThreadSettlementServiceV2.pullRequestFor ... ThreadSettlementServiceV2.sweep
  [cause]: GitLabCliCommandError: GitLab CLI failed in execute: GitLab CLI command failed.
    [cause]: VcsProcessExitError: VCS process failed in GitLabCli.execute: glab (<repo>) exited with 1 - Merge request not found.

$ glab mr list --source-branch main
ERROR  404 Not Found.

$ glab api "projects/<group>%2F<project>"   -> HTTP 404
$ glab api "projects/<id>"                  -> 200 OK
Related issues

#15660 (closed; generic "GitLab CLI command failed" on old GitLab, where the cause was also hidden). #5620 (same fix for git). #20226 and #7849 are about building GitLab project paths. None of them asks to show glab's stderr.

Fix applied or workaround

None in T3 Code. The GitLab admin was asked to fix the nginx proxy_pass so %2F isn't decoded.

Filed by

Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5) via t3 triage

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
24.8k
Forks
6.4k
Avg merge
10h 8m
Merged PRs (30d)
323

Getting set up

Open in Codespaces

Starts the project's dev container in your browser, under your own GitHub account.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from pingdotgg/t3code

All issues in pingdotgg/t3code

Similar issues

More TypeScript issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.