gitolite/doc/migrate.mkd

migrating from gitosis to gitolite

[TODO: make the migration tool fix up gitweb and daemon control also...]

Migrating from gitosis to gitolite is pretty easy, because the basic design is the same.

Here's how we migrated my work repos:

1. login as the git user on the server, and get a bash shell prompt

2. disable gitosis by renaming /usr/bin/gitosis-serve to something else. This will prevent users from pushing anything while you do the backup, migration, etc.

3. edit ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and carefully remove all the lines containing "gitosis-serve", as well as the marker line that says "auto-generated by gitosis, DO NOT REMOVE", then save the file. If the file did not have any other keys and is now empty, don't worry -- save it anyway because gitolite expects the file to be present (even if it is empty).

4. For added safety, delete the post-update hook that gitosis-admin installed

   rm ~/repositories/gitosis-admin.git/hooks/post-update
   

   or at least rename it to .sample like all the other hooks hanging around, or edit it and comment out the line that calls gitosis-run-hook post-update.

   If you do not do this, an accidental push to the gitosis-admin repo will mess up your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file

5. take a backup of the ~/repositories directory

Now, log off the server and get back to the client:

1. follow instructions to install gitolite; see the install document. Make sure that you don't change the default path for $REPO_BASE if you edit the config file!

   This will give you a gitolite config that has the required entries for the "gitolite-admin" repo.

2. convert your gitosis config file and append it to your gitolite config file. Substitute the path for your gitosis-admin clone in $GSAC below, and similarly the path for your gitolite-admin clone in $GLAC

   src/gl-conf-convert < $GSAC/gitosis.conf >> $GLAC/gitolite.conf
   

   Be sure to check the file to make sure it converted correctly

3. copy the keys from gitosis's keydir (same meanings for GSAC and GLAC)

   cp $GSAC/keydir/* $GLAC/keydir
   

4. Important: expand any multi-key files you may have. Here's an explanation of what multi-keys are, how gitosis does them and how gitolite does it differently.

   You can split the keys manually, or use the following code (just copy-paste it into your xterm after "cd"-ing to your gitolite-admin repo clone):

   wc -l keydir/*.pub | grep -v total | grep -v -w 1 | while read a b
   do
       i=1
       cat $b|while read l
       do
           echo "$l" > ${b%.pub}@$i.pub
           (( i++ ))
       done
       mv $b $b.done
   done
   

   This will split each multi-key file (say "sitaram.pub") into individual files called "sitaram@1.pub", "sitaram@2.pub", etc., and rename the original to "sitaram.pub.done" so gitolite won't pick it up.

   At this point you can rename the split parts more appropriately, like "sitaram@laptop.pub" and "sitaram@desktop.pub" or whatever. Please check the files to make sure this worked properly

5. Check all your changes to your gitolite-admin clone, commit, and push