Configure default settings for allowing/disallowing forks on instance level
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Problem to solve
I recently created a new project in our on-premise GitLab instance and noticed during configuration that I can finally disable Forks (which wasn't an option before).
As a result, I wanted to update our /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb to include this by default, only to find out that there is no such setting (yet?)
Intended users
User experience goal
Most (if not all) projects on our instance should have a similar configuration, which includes (but is not limited to) the ability to not create forks (as we generally tend to use GitLab as central repository that has all feature branches in it; without the need to maintain and update forks).
Having most of it preconfigured makes it easier to have a consistent developer experience across projects (since everything looks and feels the same) and relieves some burden from the project manager (who doesn't have to remember out-of-place settings that should have a value different to their default value).
Proposal
Just like the existing settings for gitlab_default_projects_features_* (such as gitlab_default_projects_features_issues or gitlab_default_projects_features_wiki), a new setting gitlab_default_projects_features_forks is provided in gitlab.rb to enable/disable forking by default; which can still be configured to a different value afterwards using the project configuration.
Further details
Permissions and Security
Documentation
Availability & Testing
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
What is the type of buyer?
Is this a cross-stage feature?
Links / references
This might be closely related to #23300 which describes the other settings being moved to the admin dashboard. However, on our installation (which is running 13.0 at this point) I couldn't find any related settings that would allow me to set this on the UI (without requiring a gitlab-ctl reconfigure afterwards).
Also, the mentioned URL /admin/application_settings doesn't work for me, so it is either locked behing higher subscription tiers or not part of the releases yet.