gitolite/doc/mob-branches.mkd

## mob branches in gitolite

WARNING: This is hairy stuff.  But what's life without a little danger?

WARNING 2: girocco does mob branches quite differently; the controls on what a
mob branch can do are much more fundamental.  Here we just trick gitolite into
accepting anonymous ssh connections and pretending they're from a mythical
user called "mob".  **This means all the access control is -- as you might
expect -- in the gitolite.conf file, so make sure you don't give the `mob`
user too many rights!**

(tested on Fedora 14; assumes your gitolite server userid is "gitolite" and
install was "non-root" method; adjust according to your environment.  If you
need more than this, you should not be enabling mob branches anyway ;-)

[hah!  Easy way out of being badgered with questions!]

  * create a file called `/tmp/mobshell` (put it somewhere more permanent if
    you wish).  This file should be `chmod +x` and contain

        #!/bin/sh
        shift
        export SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND
        SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND="$*"

        /home/gitolite/bin/gl-auth-command mob
            # see one of the lines in ~gitolite/.ssh/authorized_keys for the
            # precise location of the gl-auth-command script

  * create a user called mob.  Give it the same UID number and `$HOME` as your
    gitolite server userid, and set the login shell to be the script you just
    created.  Also delete the password.

        id -u gitolite
        # returns 503 or something...
        useradd -d /home/gitolite -s /tmp/mobshell -u 503 -o mob
        passwd -d mob

  * make sure you have a recent enough sshd and put these lines at the bottom,
    then restart sshd

            Match user mob
                PermitEmptyPasswords yes

That's it.  Now you can add stuff to your gitolite.conf file.  Here's some
examples:

  * This allows the mob user to do anything to the "mob" branch:

        repo foo
            RW+         =   alice bob
            R           =   eve
            RW+ mob$    =   mob
            # only the mob branch, nothing more

  * This is the same, except it can be any branch under "mob/" so you get some
    flexibility:

            RW+ mob/    =   mob

  * Girocco allows pushing to the mob branch only if it already exists (that
    is, the mob user cannot *create* the mob branch, but if it already exists
    he can push to it).  Here's how you'd do that in gitolite:

        repo foo
            RW+C        =   alice bob
            R           =   eve
            RW+ mob$    =   mob

  * This gives *every* repo a mob branch (be careful!)

        repo @all
            RW+ mob$    =   mob

How do mob users access it?  The URLs just look like: `mob@server:repo`
instead of `gitolite@server:repo` That's it!