In this document:
Please make sure you understand the following points first.
gitolite runs as a single user on a server, and is invoked via ssh. Thus, every user on the server is a potential "gitolite host".
gitolite depends heavily on ssh pubkey (passwordless) access. Do not assume you know all about ssh -- most people don't. If in doubt, use a dedicated userid on both client and server for installation and administration of gitolite.
To make matters worse, ssh problems in gitolite don't always look like ssh problems. See doc/ssh-troubleshooting.mkd for help.
gitolite does NOT like it when people with shell access to the server fiddle with files and directories it controls.
Apparently this was not obvious to some people.
A gitolite setup has:
It is possible to have the server and the client be the same machine, and even
the admin user be also the hosting user, (i.e., sitaram@server can install
and administer a gitolite setup running under sitaram@server, a situation
that is common with some hosting services). It's actually fairly easy and
safe to do, as long as you have password access to the server for
emergency use. However, I will not be documenting it because (a) if you know
ssh you'll know how to extrapolate my instructions to do this and (b) if you
don't know ssh it'll be a nightmare to support you.
Throughout the documentation, we use "YourName" as the admin user, and his workstation is called "client". The hosting user is "git", and the server is called "server". Please substitute your values as needed.
Also, we often say "the rc file". This means ~/.gitolite.rc on the server.
And when we say the "access control rules", or "conf file", or "config file",
we mean conf/gitolite.conf on your gitolite-admin clone.
$GIT_PATH variable in the "rc" fileauthorized_keys file formatif you're installing gitolite, you're a "system admin", like it or not. Ssh is therefore a necessary skill. Please take the time to learn at least enough to get passwordless access working.
you also need to be somewhat familiar with git itself. You cannot administer a whole bunch of git repositories if you don't know the basics of git.
some familiarity with Unix and shells is probably required
regular expressions are a big part of gitolite in many places but familiarity is not necessary to do basic access control.
Gitolite has 4 install methods:
Here's how you install using these 3 methods. Future upgrades are equally easy -- the steps required for upgrading are marked "(U)".
from your workstation, copy your ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the server.
Put it in /tmp/YourName.pub.
(U) on the server, as root, do the install (urpmi, yum, apt-get, etc.).
on the server, "su - git", then as "git" user, run gl-setup
/tmp/YourName.pub.
on the client, run cd; git clone git@server:gitolite-admin
from your workstation, copy your ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the server.
Put it in /tmp/YourName.pub.
(U) on the server, as root, do the following:
cd $HOME
git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite gitolite-source
cd gitolite-source
# now checkout whatever branch you want; for early adopters I suggest
# "pu", as in "git checkout -t origin/pu" for recent gits
mkdir -p /usr/local/share/gitolite/conf /usr/local/share/gitolite/hooks
src/gl-system-install /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share/gitolite/conf /usr/local/share/gitolite/hooks
on the server, "su - git", then as "git" user, run gl-setup
/tmp/YourName.pub.
on the client, run cd; git clone git@server:gitolite-admin
WARNING: if you use this method you'd better know enough about ssh to be able to keep your keys straight, and you'd also better have password access to the server so that if you screw up the keys you can still get on, or be able to "su - git" from some other user on the server.
from your workstation, copy your ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the server.
Put it in /tmp/YourName.pub.
if $HOME/bin is not on the default PATH, fiddle with your .bashrc or
.bash_profile or similar files and add it somehow.
(U) on the server, as "git", do the following:
cd $HOME
git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite gitolite-source
# now checkout whatever branch you want; for early adopters I suggest
# "pu", as in "git checkout -t origin/pu" for recent gits
cd gitolite-source
mkdir -p $HOME/bin $HOME/share/gitolite/conf $HOME/share/gitolite/hooks
src/gl-system-install $HOME/bin $HOME/share/gitolite/conf $HOME/share/gitolite/hooks
on the server, still as "git", run gl-setup /tmp/YourName.pub.
on the client, run cd; git clone git@server:gitolite-admin
The advantage of this method is that it forces you to solve the ssh pubkey problem before attempting to install. It works best if you have dedicated userids, one on the server for installing gitolite, and one on the client for administering it.
The disadvantage is that the admin user ends up with two keys -- one for shell access (that he started with) and one for gitolite access (which the script creates if needed).
This in turn forces the admin to use a different URL to access gitolite repos than normal users, which seems to confuse a heck of a lot of people who don't read the prominently displayed messages and/or the documentation.
This method is verbosely documented in this transcript, including outputs of the commands concerned.
The URL for normal users (i.e., users other than the admin) is always of the
form "git@server:reponame". So, for instance, git clone git@server:testing
gets any valid user a copy of the "testing" repo.
In the first 3 install methods, the admin user will also use the same URL
format, like git clone git@server:gitolite-admin.
However, in the fourth ("from-client") method, the admin user needs a
different URL (gitolite:reponame) to gain access to the gitolite
repositories. Check here for why.
With the first two methods of installation, it's trivial to create multiple gitolite instances (say one for each department, on some mega company-wide server). You can even do this without giving shell access to the admins. Here's an example with just two "departments", and their admins Alice and Bob:
webbrowser_repos and webserver_repossu - webbrowser_repos, then gl-setup alice.pubwebserver_repos and bob.pub, and so on for others)That's it. The URL for all web browser projects is now something like
webbrowser_repos@server:reponame, and similarly for the others.
Notice that you only have to do this once for each "department", and it's really just one command after creating the userid. None of these admins need to have a command line on the server, so don't give them the passwords if you don't need to -- the pubkey will allow them to be gitolite admins on their domain, and that's quite enough for normal operations.
Thanks to Matt Perzel, the easy-install command now takes an optional 4th
parameter, which is the "nickname" of the gitolite server. It gets defined in
~/.ssh/config, and if not used it defaults to "gitolite".
So if you used the following command to install gitolite to 2 different servers:
./src/gl-easy-install -q git my.1st.git.server admin_user1 gitolite_server_1
./src/gl-easy-install -q git my.2nd.git.server admin_user1 gitolite_server_2
you will find that ~/gitolite_server_1-admin and ~/gitolite_server_2-admin
have been created as respective clones. Or you can re-clone elsewhere:
cd ~/admin1; git clone gitolite_server_1:gitolite-admin.git
cd ~/admin2; git clone gitolite_server_2:gitolite-admin.git
Upgrading gitolite is easy. In each method above, just re-do the step that is
marked "(U)". Also, if you're using either of the two methods that use the
src/gl-system-install command, please make sure you give it the same
arguments!
If you've added any new hooks, please also run the next step (gl-setup)
also.
Also, remember that some new features may require additional settings in your
~/.gitolite.rc file.
When people have trouble installing gitolite, they often try to change a bunch of things manually on the server. This usually makes things worse ;-) so here's how to clean the slate.
~/.ssh/config and delete the paragraph starting with host
gitolite, if present.~/gitolite-admin~/.ssh/authorized_keys and delete all lines between # gitolite
start and # gitolite end inclusive.~/.gitolite, ~/.gitolite.rc and
~/repositories/gitolite-admin.gitThere's some duplication between this and the previous section, but uninstalling gitolite is described in great detail in doc/uninstall.mkd