Gitolite Essentials

Sitaram Chamarty

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783282371
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: System Administration
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

If you're responsible for securing a Git server where lots of developers work with lots of repositories, you have a problem on your hands. You probably want to implement security restrictions and authorization for certain repositories. You will love the simplicity and power of Gitolite's access control language and model. Gitolite allows you to set up Git hosting on a central server with very fine-grained access control and many powerful features.

You'll start with a brief introduction to Gitolite. The very first chapter tells you how to create a test setup so you can play with Gitolitesomething that is very important when learning about a powerful tool with lots of features. You'll go from there, at an easy pace, through the most important aspects of Gitolite.

Basic access control is easy and obvious. With this book, you will learn how to restrict access to critical files, allowing users to create their own repositories and manage their own access control, but within the limits you set. You will also learn how to extend Gitolite to do very useful things with very little code, and how to fall back on a mirror in case disaster strikes your main server. All this and more is packed within this concise and practical book with easy-to-follow, real-world examples.

Approach

The book is written to suit an easy-reading style, using typical problems in access control to illustrate the need for each Gitolite feature explained.

Who this book is for

This book is for system administrators and development managers who need to keep a lid on Git-based development workflows. Basic knowledge of Git as well as of the Unix shell will be helpful.

Gitolite Essentials

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Table of Contents

Gitolite Essentials

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Gitolite

Common Access Control needs

Access Control example with Gitolite

Sampling of Gitolite's power features

Creating groups

Personal branches

Personal repositories

Gitolite and the Git control flow

Trying out Gitolite

Preparing for the setup

Installing and setting up a test instance

Playing with Gitolite

Summary

2. Installing Gitolite

Gitolite users and the hosting user

Distinguishing users from each other

Preparing the server

Getting the Gitolite source

Installing the code

Setting up Gitolite

Creating an ssh key pair

Running the setup command

Checking over your new Gitolite server

Adding a user

Adding a repository

Summary

3. Your Users and Gitolite

Accessing Git repositories

Git servers, SSH, and HTTP

Accessing Gitolite repositories

SSH key pairs

Repository naming

Getting information from Gitolite

Gitolite commands

Getting help for commands

Troubleshooting SSH issues

Authorization, not authentication

Duplicate public keys

Diagnosing public key problems

SSH best practice

Summary

4. Adding and Removing Users

Adding users

Behind the scenes

Users with multiple key pairs

Giving some users a shell

Managing keys outside Gitolite

Getting user group information from LDAP

Removing users

Summary

5. Managing Repositories

Adding repositories

Adding existing repositories

Common problems and troubleshooting

Ownership and permissions

Converting a non-bare repository to a bare repository

Gitolite and the update hook

Summary

6. Getting Started with Access Control

Basic access control examples

Basic branch level access control

Lexical syntax of the conf file

The syntax of access control rules

Branch level access control and refexes

Using deny rules

The permission field

Defining user and repo groups

Working with large groups

The special @all group

The include statement

Rule accumulation and delegation

Summary

7. Advanced Access Control and Configuration

Making changes to the rc file

Giving users their own branches

Types of write operations

Allowing Gitweb and Git-daemon access

Locating the projects list file

Unix permissions and the umask

Specifying Git config values and Gitolite options

Deleting a git-config key

Substituting the repository name

Overriding config values

Gitolite options

Applying deny rules to read access

Understanding VREFs

Summary

8. Allowing Users to Create Repos

Putting repositories in Sub-directories

Repository wildcards

Creating a wildcard repository

Giving access to other users

Generalizing the ruleset

Explaining wild repos to your users

Managing with just wild repos

Deleting wild repositories

Summary

9. Customizing Gitolite

Core and non-core Gitolite

Types of non-core code and examples

Commands

Syntactic sugar

Triggers

Virtual refs

Writing your own non-core code

Summary

10. Understanding VREFs

Migrating update hooks

Passing arguments to the VREF code

Using the permission field

Maintaining the update hook function

Default is success

Example VREFs and their usage

Writing your own VREF

Summary

11. Mirroring

Terminology and basic concepts

Repository level mirroring

The gitolite-admin repository

Setting up mirroring

Example setup

Bootstrapping the mirroring process

Mirroring other repositories

Local repositories and hostname substitution

Redirecting pushes

Manual synchronization

Switching to a different master

Summary

Index

Gitolite Essentials

Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: April 2014

Production Reference: 1040414

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78328-237-1

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Mohamed Raoof (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Authors

Sitaram Chamarty

Reviewers

Javier Domingo Cansino

milki

Vinh Quốc Nguyễn

Hiren Patel

Giovanni Toraldo

Acquisition Editors

Owen Roberts

Erol Staveley

Content Development Editor

Poonam Jain

Technical Editor

Manal Pednekar

Copy Editors

Roshni Banerjee

Gladson Monteiro

Project Coordinator

Jomin Varghese

Proofreader

Ameesha Green

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Ronak Dhruv

Yuvraj Mannari

Production Coordinator

Kyle Albuquerque

Cover Work

Kyle Albuquerque

About the Author

Sitaram Chamarty has been in the software industry for a number of years. He is a Linux and open source evangelist who has sometimes been called an "open source bigot", which he takes as a compliment. He loves Perl enough to believe, or at least insist, that xkcd 224 is actual fact.

His day job is with Tata Consultancy Services, and he lives and works in Hyderabad, India. His job does not explicitly include evangelizing open source in general and Git i...

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• Gitolite Essentials