gitolite/doc/0-INSTALL.mkd

installing gitolite

pre-requisites

If you managed to install git, you might already have what gitolite needs:

• git itself, the more recent the better
• perl, typically installed with git, since git sort of needs it; any version that includes Data::Dumper[1] will do.
• one user account on the server, with password access [2]

A major objective is to allow use by people without root access, permissions to create other userids, etc. Even if you have root, please add a user just for gitolite and do all this from that user.

getting a tar file from a clone

You can clone the repo from github, then execute a make command to extract a tar file of the branch you want. Please use the make command, not a plain "git archive". The comments in the Makefile will explain why.

git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite.git
make master.tar
# or maybe "make rebel.tar" or "make pu.tar"

quick install from tar file

• make a temp directory somewhere, cd to it, and unpack the tar file
• run src/install.pl and follow the prompts

When you are told to edit some file, please read the comments in the file. And if you can make some time to read the documentation, please do. Especially if you have problems.

Notes:

• At present the location of ~/.gitolite.rc is fixed (maybe later I'll change it to a "git config" variable but I don't see much need right now)

  If you edit it and change any paths, be sure to keep the perl syntax -- you don't have to know perl to do so, it's fairly easy to guess in this limited case. And of course, make sure you adjust the commands shown above to suit the new locations

• the config file is (by default) at ~/.gitolite/conf/gitolite.conf, though you can change its location in the "rc" file. Edit the file as you wish. The comments in the file ought to be clear enough but let me know if not

• if you want to bring in existing (bare, server) repos into gitolite, this should work (refer to ~/.gitolite.rc for your values of the pathnames below):

  • backup the repo, then move it to $BASE_REPO
  • copy $GL_ADMINDIR/src/update-hook.pl to [reponame].git/hooks/update -- if you don't do this, per branch restrictions will not work
  • then update the keys and the config file and "compile" (see "admin" document)

Footnotes:

[1] Actually, due to the way gitolite is architected, you can manage without Data::Dumper on the server if you have no choice. Only gl-compile-conf needs it, so just run that on some other machine and copy the two output files across. Cumbersome but doable... the advantage of separating all the hard work into a manually-run piece :)

[2] If you have only pubkey access, and no password access, then your pubkey is already in the server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you also need to access git as a developer (clone, push, etc), do not submit this same pubkey to gitolite -- it won't work.

Instead, create a different keypair for your "developer" role (by, e.g., ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/gitdev), then give ~/.ssh/gitdev.pub to gitolite as "yourname.pub", just like you would do for any other user.

Then you create a suitable ~/.ssh/config to use the correct key automatically, something like this:

host gitadm
     hostname my.server
     user my_userid_on_server

host gitdev
     hostname my.server
     user my_userid_on_server
     identityfile ~/.ssh/gitdev

From now on, ssh gitadm will get you a command line on the server, to do gitolite admin and other work. And your repository URLs would look like gitdev:reponame.git. Very, very, simple...

And as with gitosis, there's more "ssh" magic than "git" magic here :-)

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gitolite is released under the GPL v2 license. See COPYING for details