95 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
95 lines
3.8 KiB
Markdown
# gitolite
|
|
|
|
Gitolite is the bare essentials of gitosis, with a completely different
|
|
config file that allows (at last!) access control down to the branch level,
|
|
including specifying who can and cannot *rewind* a given branch. It is
|
|
released under GPL v2. See COPYING for details.
|
|
|
|
In this document:
|
|
|
|
* why
|
|
* what's gone
|
|
* what's new
|
|
* the workflow
|
|
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
### why
|
|
|
|
I have been using gitosis for a while, and have learnt a lot from it. But in
|
|
a typical $DAYJOB setting, there are some issues:
|
|
|
|
* it's not always Linux; you can't just "urpmi gitosis" (or yum or apt-get)
|
|
and be done
|
|
* often, "python-setuptools" isn't installed (and on a Solaris9 I was trying
|
|
to help remotely, we never did manage to install it eventually)
|
|
* the most requested feature (see "what's extra?") had to be written anyway
|
|
|
|
### what's gone
|
|
|
|
While I was pondering the need to finally learn python[1] , I also realised
|
|
that:
|
|
|
|
* no one in $DAYJOB type environments will use or approve access methods
|
|
that work without any authentication, so I didn't need gitweb/daemon
|
|
support in the tool or in the config file
|
|
* the idea that you admin it by pushing to a special repo is nice, but not
|
|
really necessary because of how rarely these changes are made, especially
|
|
considering how much code is involved in that piece
|
|
|
|
All of this pointed to a rewrite. In perl, naturally :-)
|
|
|
|
### what's extra?
|
|
|
|
Per-branch permissions. You will not believe how often I am asked this at
|
|
$DAYJOB. This is almost the single reason I started *thinking* about rolling
|
|
my own gitosis in the first place.
|
|
|
|
Take a look at the example config file in the repo to see how I do this. I
|
|
copied the basic idea from `update-hook-example.txt` (it's one of the "howto"s
|
|
that come with the git source tree). This includes not just who can push to
|
|
what branch, but also whether they are allowed to rewind it or not (non-ff
|
|
push).
|
|
|
|
However, please note the difference in the size and complexity of the
|
|
*operational code* between the update hook in that example, and in mine :-)
|
|
The reason is in the next section.
|
|
|
|
### the workflow
|
|
|
|
In order to get per-branch access, you *must* use an update hook. However,
|
|
that only gets invoked on a push; "read" access still has to be controlled
|
|
right at the beginning, before git even enters the scene (just the way gitosis
|
|
currently works).
|
|
|
|
So: either split the access control into two config files, or have two
|
|
completely different programs *both* parse the same one and pick what they
|
|
want. Crap... I definitely don't want the hook doing any parsing, (and it
|
|
would be nice if the auth-control program didn't have to either).
|
|
|
|
So I changed the workflow completely:
|
|
|
|
* all admin changes happen *on the server*, in a special directory that
|
|
contains the config and the users' pubkeys. But there's no commit and
|
|
push afterward. Nothing prevents you from version-controlling that
|
|
directory if you wish to, but it's not *required*
|
|
* instead, after making changes, you "compile" the configuration. This
|
|
refreshes `~/.ssh/authorized_keys`, as well as puts a parsed form of the
|
|
access list in a file for the other two pieces to use.
|
|
|
|
The pre-parsed form is basically a huge perl variable. It's human readable
|
|
too (never mind what the python guys say!)
|
|
|
|
Advantages: all the complexity of parsing and error checking the parse is done
|
|
away from the two places where the actual access control happens, which are:
|
|
|
|
* the program that is run via `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` (I call it
|
|
`gl-auth-command`, equivalent to `gitosis-serve`); this decides whether
|
|
git should even be allowed to run (basic R/W/no access)
|
|
* the update-hook on each repo, which decides the per-branch permissions
|
|
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
[1] I hate whitespace to mean anything significant except for text; this is a
|
|
personal opinion *only*, so pythonistas please back off :-)
|