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F=http how to setup gitolite to use smart http mode

Note: "smart http" refers to the feature that came with git 1.6.6, late 2009 or so. The base documentation for this is man git-http-backend. Do NOT read Documentation/howto/setup-git-server-over-http.txt and think that is the same or even relevant -- that is from 2006 and is quite different (and arguably obsolete).

WARNINGS, plus stuff I need help with

I have NOT converted the test suite to use this mode. Volunteers to convert it to http access are welcome :-)
I have no idea how to handle the password issue other than creating a ~/.netrc file and making it chmod 600. Anyway, http based access is inherently less secure than pubkeys so not much point worrying about it.
I have not tested any of the ancillary standalone programs (like gl-admin-push) in this mode. They're most likely going to crash and burn because $HOME is not defined or in the wrong place; manually set HOME=$GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME and hope for the best. Luckily most of them have to do with sshkeys so this may not matter. YMMV.
tested on stock Fedora 14; if you test on other environments please let me know how it worked out and if we need to adjust this document
tested https with dummy certs and GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY; no reason why it shouldn't work on a proper setup with everything in place
have not tried making repos available to both ssh and http mode clients; (I'd guess it ought to work fine if the "apache" user was made login-able and given a proper $HOME and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and all that). If anyone has the energy to try that please let me know how that went.

additional requirements

requires GIT_PROJECT_ROOT (see "man git-http-backend" for what this is) set explicitly (i.e., it is no longer optional). Please set it to some place outside apache's DOCUMENT_ROOT.

detailed instructions

I assume you've installed apache 2.x and git on the server.

I assume your httpd runs under the "apache" userid; adjust instructions below if it does not. Similarly for "/var/www" and other file names/locations.

I assume you have read the "[please read this first][insttrouble]" section of the main install document to get an idea of the general concepts and terminology (just ignore anything that is specific to ssh).

install gitolite under "apache"

Follow the "non-root" method, but since you can't even "su - apache", make the following variations when doing this as root:

cd ~apache first; this is /var/www on Fedora 14

do this in the shell

mkdir gitolite-home
export GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME
GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME=/var/www/gitolite-home
PATH=$PATH:$GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME/bin

now run the following commands. These are really the first 3 steps of the "non-root" install (clone, mkdir, and gl-system-install), except you substitute GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME in place of HOME. Note that you do NOT run the gl-setup step yet.

cd gitolite-home
git clone /tmp/gitolite.git gitolite-source
    # or wherever your local clone is, or directly from git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite

cd gitolite-source
GHH=$GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME     # just for convenience in next 2 commands
mkdir -p              $GHH/bin $GHH/share/gitolite/conf $GHH/share/gitolite/hooks
src/gl-system-install $GHH/bin $GHH/share/gitolite/conf $GHH/share/gitolite/hooks

after the gl-system-install step, add these to the top of /var/www/gitolite-home/share/gitolite/conf/example.gitolite.rc

$ENV{GIT_HTTP_BACKEND} = "/usr/libexec/git-core/git-http-backend";
    # or wherever you have that file; note: NO trailing slash
$ENV{PATH} .= ":$ENV{GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME}/bin";
    # note the ".=" here, not "="

run gl-setup with the name of your admin user
```
gl-setup sitaram
```

IMPORTANT: fix up ownerships

chown -R apache.apache $GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME

setup apache

You will need to setup certain values in the httpd conf, as given in man git-http-backend. You can put all them into, for instance, /etc/httpd/conf.d/gitolite.conf and apache [at least on Fedora 14] will pick it up. These are the values to use; note that these are somewhat different from those in the manpage cited above, plus we have one extra variable:

SetEnv GIT_PROJECT_ROOT /var/www/gitolite-home/repositories
SetEnv GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL
    # please see notes below on ssh+http access
ScriptAlias /git/ /var/www/gitolite-home/bin/gl-auth-command/
    # note trailing slash

SetEnv GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME /var/www/gitolite-home

<Location /git>
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Private Git Access"
    Require valid-user
    AuthUserFile /path/to/some/passwdfile
</Location>

Now create/update the password file in /path/to/some/passwdfile using the htpasswd command, and you're all done for the setup!

usage

Git URLs look like http://user:password@server/git/reponame.git.

The custom commands, like "info", "expand" should be handled as follows. The command name will come just after the /git/, followed by a ?, followed by the arguments, with + representing a space. Here are some examples:

# ssh git@server info
curl http://user:password@server/git/info
# ssh git@server info repopatt
curl http://user:password@server/git/info?repopatt
# ssh git@server info repopatt user1 user2
curl http://user:password@server/git/info?repopatt+user1+user2

It gets even more interesting for the setperms command, which expects STDIN. I didn't want to get too much into the code here, so I found that the following works and I'm leaving it at that:

(echo R user1 user2; echo RW user3 user4) |
    curl --data-binary @- http://user:password@server/git/setperms?reponame.git

With a few nice shell aliases, you won't even notice the horrible convolutions here ;-)

allowing anonymous access

Like [mob branches][mob] with ssh, you can allow completely un-authenticated users to still have some rights specified in gitolite. Briefly, here's how:

specify a ScriptAlias in apache config for unauthenticated access also. I prefer something like
```
ScriptAlias /gitmob/ /var/www/gitolite-home/bin/gl-auth-command/
```
set $GL_HTTP_ANON_USER to some name, like 'mob' or 'anon' in the rc file
give rights to this user ('mob' or 'anon' or whatever you used) in the gitolite config file and push the change

URLs (in this example) will then look like http://server/gitmob/reponame.git -- we lose the userid:passwd part and change 'git' to 'gitmob'.

ssh + http access and the `GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL` variable

This document only talks about setting up access to a set of git repositories purely via smart http. The GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL variable must be set for such environments.

However, it is possible to allow both ssh as well as http access, perhaps using suexec to make the CGI run under the 'git' user [detailed documentation patches welcome!] For those environments, this variable is not mandatory.

If you omit that variable, you can decide which repo is accessible via http by setting R = daemon just for those repos.

Please note that there is no way to use "deny" rules for read access. Do not try:

    repo gitolite-admin
        -   =   daemon

    repo @all
        R   =   daemon

to achieve the (possibly common) need for disallowing http access to the admin repo.

Enjoy!

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