Sun 17 Jan 2021 02:33:20 PM -03

Git research and development.

Barebones shared git repositories

No gitolite, gitosis, gitlab or whatever involded. Only OpenSSH and git is needed.

Basic config

If needed, create a host instance for your git server at your ~/.ssh/config:

Host git.project.org gitserver
  HostName git.project.org

Now make sure you can log into the server using key-based auth.

Server config

sudo apt install git
sudo adduser git --home /var/git
sudo mkdir              /var/git/repositories
sudo chown git.         /var/git/repositories
sudo chmod 775          /var/git/repositories
sudo usermod -a -G git `whoami` # add yourself into the git group

Creating a repository

At your computer:

repo="name-your-project-here"
mkdir $repo
cd $repo
git init
git remote add origin ssh://gitserver/var/git/repositories/$repo.git

Then do your regular stuff: create files, commit stuff, etc:

touch test
git add .
git commit -m "Initial import"

Copy a bare git repo to the server

cd ..
git clone --bare \(repo \)repo.git
scp -r \(repo.git gitserver:/var/git/repositories/\)repo.git

Making the repository shareable

In the server:

sudo chgrp -R git /var/git/repositories/$repo.git
sudo chmod 775    /var/git/repositories/$repo.git

find /var/git/repositories/$repo.git/ -type f -exec sudo chmod 664 {} \;
find /var/git/repositories/$repo.git/ -type d -exec sudo chmod 775 {} \;

Now make sure that the repository configuration has the following option at the core section:

sharedRepository = group

You can edit /var/git/repositories/$repo.git/config to add this config or just run the following commands:

git -C /var/git/repositories/$repo.git config core.sharedRepository group

Daily workflow

From now on, you can work at your computer's local $repo as usual:

cd $repo
git pull
touch another-test
git add .
git commit -m "Adds another-test"
git push # this sends changes back to your git server

Adding more users into the game

You can add existing users to edit the repository given that:

  • They have accounts in the system.
  • They are added into the git group.

If they also use key-based auth they can seamlessly contribute to your repository as if you were using a more complex repository manager like gitolite or a service like gitlab.

You can even try to implement some more complex access control by using different groups for each project so you're not bound to the git group.

References