"push to admin" in gitolite

Gitosis's default mode of admin is by cloning and pushing the gitosis-admin repo. I call this "push to admin". It's a very cool/cute feature, and I loved it at first.

But it's a support nightmare. Half the gitosis angst on #git is because of this feature. Gitolite does not use or endorse this method for people new to git, or ssh or (worse) both.

However, if you know git and ssh really, really, well and you know what you're doing, this is a pretty nice thing to have -- does make life easier, I admit. So, here is how to make PTA (hey nice acronym, just missing an "I") work on gitolite as well.

Note:

unlike the rest of gitolite, I can't help you with this unless you convince me very quickly it's not a layer 8 problem :-)
here's a test to see if you should use this feature: after reading this document, think about how you would switch back and forth between the normal method and push-to-admin. If you can't immediately see what you would need to do, please don't use it :-)

The instructions are presented as shell commands; they should be fairly obvious. All paths are from the default ~/.gitolite.rc; if you changed any, make the same changes below.

WARNING: the "compilation" runs via a post-update hook. Which, by definition, runs after the push has successfully completed. As a result, a compilation error will be visible to the admin doing the git push but will not otherwise look like an error to client-side git (in terms of return codes, scripting, etc., or even the "git gui" if you happen to use that for pushing). So be sure to watch out for compile error messages on push when you do this.

First, on the server, log on to the git userid, add a new repo called gitolite-admin to the config file, give yourself RW or RW+ rights to it, and "compile":

cd ~/.gitolite
vim conf/gitolite.conf      # add gitolite-admin repo, etc
src/gl-compile-conf

Now, if you look at the "compile" script, it has an automatic local commit inside, just for safety, which kicks in every time you compile. This only works if it finds a ".git" directory, and it was designed as an "automatic backup/safety net" type of thing, in case I accidentally deleted the whole config file or something.

We need to disable this, because now we have a better repo, one that is manually pushed, and presumably has proper commit messages!

mv .git .disable.git        # yeah it's a hack, sue me

Now the compile command created an empty, bare, "gitolite-admin" repo, so we seed it with the current contents of the config and keys. (A note on the GIT_WORK_TREE variable: I avoid setting these variables in the normal way because I always forget to unset them later, and then when I cd to other repos they play havoc with my git commands, so this is how I do it)

cd ~/repositories/gitolite-admin.git
GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/git/.gitolite git add conf/gitolite.conf keydir
GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/git/.gitolite git commit -am start

Now we have to setup the post-update hook for push-to-admin to work. The hook should (1) make a forced checkout in the "live" config directory (which is ~/.gitolite), and (2) run the compile script. So we create a hook with the appropriate code in it, and then make it executable

cat <<EOFPU > hooks/post-update
#!/bin/sh

GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/git/.gitolite git checkout -f

cd /home/git/.gitolite
src/gl-compile-conf
EOFPU

chmod +x hooks/post-update

Now get to your workstation, and

git clone git@server:gitolite-admin.git

That's it, we're done. You're in gitosis land as far as this is concerned now. So knock yourself out. Or lock yourself out... :-)

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"push to admin" in gitolite

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