hey! just started using infisical and was exploring secrets syncs. I noticed that for some of the secret syncs, I am able to import secrets into Infisical prior to creating the sync. Is this standard across all of the syncs? I didn’t see this option when creating a sync to gitlab.
Good thing to clarify, because the naming makes it look more symmetric than it is. Syncs themselves are one directional. Infisical is the source of truth and pushes to the destination on a schedule or on change. What you ran into is a separate one time import action, not continuous two-way sync.
Import is available per destination, and the deciding factor is whether the provider’s API will actually hand values back to us. Where it’s supported you get the two import options at setup time, prioritize Infisical or prioritize the destination, which just decides who wins on key collisions during that initial pull. After that first import, the flow is one way again.
GitLab is one of the destinations where import isn’t available, which is why you didn’t see the option. CI/CD variables can be masked or hidden, and once they are, the API won’t return the values, so a partial import would silently drop exactly the secrets you’d care most about. We’d rather not offer it than offer something that half works. GitHub, Fly.io, and Octopus Deploy are in the same boat for the same reason, and Vercel can’t read sensitive values back either.
If you’re migrating existing GitLab variables in, the practical path is a one time bulk create into Infisical (CLI or API) and then point the sync at the group or project so Infisical owns them going forward.