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).

In this document:

WARNINGS, plus stuff I need help with
additional requirements
detailed instructions
- install gitolite under "apache"
- setup the http-backend
usage

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-dont-panic) 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 13; 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.

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 13
- 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 first 3 install steps for "non-root" method (clone, mkdir, and gl-system-install), but substitute GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME in place of HOME in the mkdir and gl-system-install steps.
  
  Do NOT run the gl-setup step yet.
- 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; not 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 the http-backend

when you setup the apache config according to "man git-http-backend", change these two as below (please note the trailing slash on the ScriptAlias line):
```
SetEnv GIT_PROJECT_ROOT /var/www/gitolite-home/repositories
ScriptAlias /git/ /var/www/gitolite-home/bin/gl-auth-command/
```
You also need this new variable:
```
SetEnv GITOLITE_HTTP_HOME /var/www/gitolite-home
```

And that's it... you're 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 ;-)

Enjoy!

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