3.1.2 Creating a GitLab account and setting up SSH

First of all, since the patch review happens on GitLab, you need to create an account there if you do not already have one. Visit https://gitlab.com and register.

Second, you have to configure SSH keys for your GitLab account. The GitLab documentation has a dedicated page explaining the full steps. (Although this initial setup may look a little tedious, it ensures that you will not need to log in with your GitLab credentials every time you need to create or modify a merge request.)

Note that on the first Git operation you perform that involves connecting with GitLab (namely git clone if you follow the rest of this section in order), SSH will issue the following warning:

The authenticity of host 'gitlab.com' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:HbW3g8zUjNSksFbqTiUWPWg2Bq1x8xdGUrliXFzSnUw.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?

When you see this, make sure the key fingerprint displayed matches the one above or one of the others published by GitLab. If it doesn’t, respond “no” and check that you configured Git properly in the previous step. If it does match, respond “yes”. SSH should then issue another warning:

Warning: Permanently added 'gitlab.com' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.

The list of known hosts is stored in the file ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

You might see error messages like these:

Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

If you get the above error, you may have made a mistake when registering your SSH key – for example, a common problem is to inadvertently add a final newline while copying and pasting the long key string. If the key is properly registered and it still doesn’t work after an hour, ask for help on the mailing list.

If you would like to work on LilyPond from several machines, you may simply copy the .ssh folder contents from one to the other.