Installing gitolite

Setup

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  ssh root@apple.willschenk.com
  adduser gitolite

From your laptop, copy your public key

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  scp ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub root@apple.willschenk.com/home/gitolite/admin.pub

The back on the server:

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  chown gitolite ~gitolite/admin.pub
  sudo -u gitolite bash
  cd

Then checkout and install

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  git clone https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite
  mkdir -p $HOME/bin
  gitolite/install -to $HOME/bin
  $HOME/bin/gitolite setup -pk admin.pub

Add a new server

OK, back on your laptop pull out the gitolite-admin repo:

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  git clone gitolite@apple.willschenk.com:gitolite-admin

Then add a new repo inside of conf/gitolite.conf

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repo gitolite-admin
    RW+     =   Will

repo summarize
    RW+     = @all

And check it in to create the new repo

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  git commit -a -m "Adding new repository"
  git push origin master
  Enumerating objects: 7, done.
  Counting objects: 100% (7/7), done.
  Delta compression using up to 8 threads
  Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
  Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 384 bytes | 384.00 KiB/s, done.
  Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
  remote: Initialized empty Git repository in /home/gitolite/repositories/summarize.git/
  To apple.willschenk.com:gitolite-admin
     6666923..d5562f8  master -> master

It's created the new repo. So, lets see if we can make it work. Clone repo, and then add a remote and push:

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  git remote add test gitolite@apple.willschenk.com:summarize
  git push test
  Enumerating objects: 104, done.
  Counting objects: 100% (104/104), done.
  Delta compression using up to 8 threads
  Compressing objects: 100% (100/100), done.
  Writing objects: 100% (104/104), 59.90 KiB | 5.99 MiB/s, done.
  Total 104 (delta 41), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
  remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (41/41), done.
  To apple.willschenk.com:summarize
   ,* [new branch]      main -> main

How does it work

When you first run setup, you pass it in a public key. This gets put into .ssh/authorized_keys, with the following options:

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  command="/home/gitolite/bin/gitolite-shell Will",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty

This means that everytime your user connects the server, it calls gitolite-shell with your user, that it can find via the ssh key.

If you try to connect directly, it will show you the repositories that you have access to

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  ssh gitolite@apple.willschenk.com

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hello Will, this is gitolite@apple running gitolite3 v3.6.12-5-g9987ee5 on git 2.39.2

 R W	gitolite-admin
 R W	summarize
 R W	super

Create new repositories by checking out the gitolite-admin repository, changing the config file, and then an update hook will run gitolite compile and the new repository will be created.

On the server, you can look at the logs in ~/.gitolite/logs which will give you a sense of what it is doing.

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  ssh	ARGV=Will	SOC=git-receive-pack 'gitolite-admin'	FROM=68.114.83.119
  pre_git	gitolite-admin	Will	W	any	refs/.*
      system,git,shell,-c,git-receive-pack '/home/gitolite/repositories/gitolite-admin.git'
  update	gitolite-admin	Will	W	refs/heads/master	66669231fa5da0435c48532004d9e1b45454d...
      system,gitolite compile
      system,git init --bare >&2
      system,gitolite compile-template-data
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/commands/compile-template-data
      system,gitolite trigger POST_COMPILE
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/triggers/post-compile/ssh-authkeys,POST_COMPILE
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/triggers/post-compile/update-git-configs,POST_COMPILE
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/triggers/post-compile/update-gitweb-access-list,POST_COMPILE
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/commands/access,%,gitweb,R,any
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/commands/git-config,-r,%,gitweb\.
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/triggers/post-compile/update-git-daemon-access-list,POST_COMPILE
      system,/home/gitolite/bin/commands/access,%,daemon,R,any
  END

The gitolite-shell command is responsible for figuring out who you are, what you are trying to do, and then it delgates things to the native git commands, which will be one of git-upload-pack, git-receive-pack, or git-upload-archive.

References

https://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite