Syntax Highlighting

GitLab provides syntax highlighting on all files through the Rouge Ruby gem. It will try to guess what language to use based on the file extension, which most of the time is sufficient.

If GitLab is guessing wrong, you can override its choice of language using the gitlab-language attribute in .gitattributes. For example, if you are working in a Prolog project and using the .pl file extension (which would normally be highlighted as Perl), you can add the following to your .gitattributes file:

*.pl gitlab-language=prolog

When you check in and push that change, all *.pl files in your project will be highlighted as Prolog.

The paths here are simply Git’s built-in .gitattributes interface. So, if you were to invent a file format called a Nicefile at the root of your project that used Ruby syntax, all you need is:

/Nicefile gitlab-language=ruby

To disable highlighting entirely, use gitlab-language=text. Lots more fun shenanigans are available through CGI options, such as:

# json with erb in it
/my-cool-file gitlab-language=erb?parent=json

# an entire file of highlighting errors!
/other-file gitlab-language=text?token=Error

Please note that these configurations will only take effect when the .gitattributes file is in your default branch (usually master).