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Background * I needed to have the documentation under CC-BY-NC-SA (something happened to force me to choose) * Distros don't like the NC part. They'd rather drop the documentation entirely instead * I don't like that; it bothers me that even a clueful guy won't be able to do a basic install with what comes in the package. * Meanwhile, I have always had the occasional "TL;DR" complaint about my docs Taking all this into account, it seemed like the best way was: * Create a brand new README.txt that is crisp enough for someone to glance through and quickly get started. At more then 300 lines, it covers enough ground that probably 60% of sites don't need more. Put this under the CC-BY-SA license, which is on the "good" list for Fedora (and also Debian, I am told). * Move the current documents to a new "gitolite-doc" repo that distros can simply ignore, but anyone who has trouble can go to. Make sure the online pages have the same content at the same URLs as they do now, getting it instead from this new repo. Link to the main URL in the new README.txt |
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README.txt |
Github-users: click the 'wiki' link before sending me anything via github. Existing users: this is gitolite v3.x. If you are upgrading from v2.x this file will not suffice; you *must* check the online docs (see below for URL). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DOCUMENTATION FOR GITOLITE ========================== This file contains basic documentation for a fresh, ssh-based, installation of gitolite and basic usage of its most important features. If you need more details on any of the topics covered here, or help with some troubleshooting, or just wish to read about the advanced features not covered here, please check the gitolite online documentation at: http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/master-toc.html This file contains the following sections: INSTALLATION AND SETUP ADDING USERS AND REPOS HELP FOR YOUR USERS BASIC SYNTAX ACCESS RULES GROUPS COMMANDS THE 'rc' FILE GIT-CONFIG GIT-DAEMON GITWEB CONTACT LICENSE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INSTALLATION AND SETUP ---------------------- Server requirements: * any unix system * sh * git 1.6.6+ * perl 5.8.8+ * openssh 5.0+ * a dedicated userid to host the repos (in this document, we assume it is 'git'), with shell access ONLY by 'su - git' from some other userid on the same server. Steps to install: * login as 'git' as described above * make sure ~/.ssh/authorized_keys is empty or non-existent * make sure your ssh public key from your workstation is available at $HOME/YourName.pub * run the following commands: git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite mkdir -p $HOME/bin gitolite/install -to $HOME/bin gitolite setup -pk YourName.pub If the last command doesn't run perhaps 'bin' in not in your 'PATH'. You can either add it, or just run: $HOME/bin/gitolite setup -pk YourName.pub ADDING USERS AND REPOS ---------------------- Do NOT add new repos or users manually on the server. Gitolite users, repos, and access rules are maintained by making changes to a special repo called 'gitolite-admin' and pushing those changes to the server. ---- To administer your gitolite installation, start by doing this on your workstation (if you have not already done so): git clone git@host:gitolite-admin **NOTE**: if you are asked for a password, something has gone wrong. Now if you 'cd gitolite-admin', you will see two subdirectories in it: 'conf' and 'keydir'. To add new users alice, bob, and carol, obtain their public keys and add them to 'keydir' as alice.pub, bob.pub, and carol.pub respectively. To add a new repo 'foo' and give different levels of access to these users, edit the file 'conf/gitolite.conf' and add lines like this: repo foo RW+ = alice RW = bob R = carol See the 'ACCESS RULES' section later for more details. Once you have made these changes, do something like this: git add conf git add keydir git commit -m 'added foo, gave access to alice, bob, carol' git push When the push completes, gitolite will add the new users to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server, as well as create a new, empty, repo called 'foo'. HELP FOR YOUR USERS ------------------- Once a user has sent you their public key and you have added them as specified above and given them access, you have to tell them what URL to access their repos at. This is usually 'git clone git@host:reponame'; see man git-clone for other forms. **NOTE**: again, if they are asked for a password, something is wrong. If they need to know what repos they have access to, they just have to run 'ssh git@host info'; see 'COMMANDS' section later for more on this. BASIC SYNTAX ------------ The basic syntax of the conf file is very simple. * Everything is space separated; there are no commas, semicolons, etc., in the syntax. * Comments are in the usual perl/shell style. * User and repo names are as simple as possible; they must start with an alphanumeric, but after that they can also contain '.', '_', or '-'. Usernames can optionally be followed by an '@' and a domainname containing at least one '.'; this allows you to use an email address as someone's username. Reponames can contain '/' characters; this allows you to put your repos in a tree-structure for convenience. * There are no continuation lines. ACCESS RULES ------------ This section is mostly 'by example'. Gitolite's access rules are very powerful. The simplest use was already shown above. Here is a slightly more detailed example: repo foo RW+ = alice - master = bob - refs/tags/v[0-9] = bob RW = bob RW refs/tags/v[0-9] = carol R = dave For clones and fetches, as long as the user is listed with an R, RW or RW+ in at least one rule, he is allowed to read the repo. For pushes, rules are processed in sequence until a rule is found where the user, the permission (see note 1), and the refex (note 2) *all* match. At that point, if the permission on the matched rule was '-', the push is denied, otherwise it is allowed. If no rule matches, the push is denied. Note 1: permission matching: * a permission of RW matches only a fast-forward push or create * a permission of RW+ matches any type of push * a permission or '-' matches any type of push Note 2: refex matching: (refex = optional regex to match the ref being pushed) * an empty refex is treated as 'refs/.*' * a refex that does not start with 'refs/' is prefixed with 'refs/heads/' * finally, a '^' is prefixed * the ref being pushed is matched against this resulting refex With all that background, here's what the example rules say: * alice can do anything to any branch or tag -- create, push, delete, rewind/overwrite etc. * bob can create or fast-forward push any branch whose name does not start with 'master' and create any tag whose name does not start with 'v'+digit. * carol can create tags whose names start with 'v'+digit. * dave can clone/fetch. GROUPS ------ Gitolite allows you to groups users or repos for convenience. Here's an example that creates two groups of users: @staff = alice bob carol @interns = ashok repo secret RW = @staff repo foss RW+ = @staff RW = @interns Group lists accumulate. The following two lines have the same effect as the earlier definition of @staff above: @staff = alice bob @staff = carol You can also use group names in other group names: @all-devs = @staff @interns Finally, @all is a special group name that is often convenient to use if you really mean 'all repos' or 'all users'. COMMANDS -------- Users can run certain commands remotely, using ssh. For example: ssh git@host help prints a list of available commands. The most commonly used command is 'info'. All commands respond to a single argument of '-h' with suitable information. If you have shell on the server, you have a lot more commands available to you; try running 'gitolite help'. THE 'rc' FILE -------------- Some of the instructions below may require you to edit the rc file (~/.gitolite.rc on the server). The rc file is perl code, but you do NOT need to know perl to edit it. Just mind the commas, use single quotes unless you know what you're doing, and make sure the brackets and braces stay matched up. GIT-CONFIG ---------- Gitolite lets you set git-config values for individual repos without having to log on to the server and run 'git config' commands: repo foo config hooks.mailinglist = foo-commits@example.tld config hooks.emailprefix = '[foo] ' config foo.bar = '' config foo.baz = **WARNING** The last syntax shown above is the *only* way to *delete* a config variable once you have added it. Merely removing it from the conf file will *not* delete it from the repo.git/config file. **SECURITY NOTE** Some git-config keys allow arbitrary code to be run on the server. If all of your gitolite admins already have shell access to the server account hosting it, you can edit the rc file (~/.gitolite.rc) on the server, and change the GIT_CONFIG_KEYS line to look like this: GIT_CONFIG_KEYS => '.*', Otherwise, give it a space-separated list of regular expressions that define what git-config keys are allowed. For example, this one allows only variables whose names start with 'gitweb' or with 'gc' to be defined: GIT_CONFIG_KEYS => 'gitweb\..* gc\..*', GIT-DAEMON ---------- Gitolite creates the 'git-daemon-export-ok' file for any repo that is readable by a special user called 'daemon', like so: repo foo R = daemon GITWEB ------ Any repo that is readable by a special user called 'gitweb' will be added to the projects.list file. repo foo R = gitweb Or you can set one or more of the following config variables instead: repo foo config gitweb.owner = some person's name config gitweb.description = some description config gitweb.category = some category **NOTE** You will probably need to change the UMASK in the rc file from the default (0077) to 0027 and add whatever user your gitweb is running as to the 'git' group. After that, you need to run a one-time 'chmod -R' on the already created files and directories. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTACT ------- Author: sitaramc@gmail.com, sitaram@atc.tcs.com Mailing list: gitolite@googlegroups.com List subscribe address : gitolite+subscribe@googlegroups.com IRC: #git and #gitolite on freenode. Note that I live in India (UTC+0530 time zone). LICENSE ------- The gitolite *code* is released under GPL v2. See COPYING for details. This documentation, which is part of the source code repository, is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License -- see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/