Git Server Like GitHub

Question

I am a long time Subversion user that is going to try Git   I have read some about it and understand the distributed nature - I can see a lot of the benefits     However  I do like the idea of a central server that can take on the role of backups  system of record  etc  while still using Git for my local branching and sharing   I am not doing an open source project  so I can t use Github  without paying   so my question really is  what is a best practice way to run a local git server   I realize this may be against the standard Git usage pattern  but it will be useful for my project   Any concerns that I may have overlooked are always welcome  however   Thanks

User · Accepted Answer

You can just set up an ssh server and run a central repository there. All developers then simply agree (as a matter of policy) to push to the server when they are done making commits. This is the usage pattern at my workplace. Very CVS and SVN-like.

Find somewhere to put the repository (/var/gitroot for example).
Create a new repo (mkdir project.git && cd project.git && git init --bare --shared=group).
Then on your client, clone the remote repo (git clone ssh://yourserver.com/var/gitroot/project.git && cd project)
add some files (git add README)
commit (git commit -m "Initial import"),
push (git push origin master)

This should set things up for you.

User · Answer

To add to what Chris has said  you can use gitosis  http   eagain net gitweb  p gitosis git  to control who can actually access the repo   Depending on your usage  you can also use hooks  in the  git hooks folder  so that your code will automatically be pulled into the server s filesystem when you push from your local machine  Here s a popular script for doing that  http   utsl gen nz git post-update  This won t be necessary in all cases though

User · Answer

If you just want your repository in a central place  this is quite easy with distributed version control like Git  You can just put your central repository in some shared folder on a central machine and everybody can clone it from there   If you want a  real  website on your local server  I know of the Git hosting website http   repo or cz  It seems to have less features than GitHub  but unlike GitHub  you can get the source code and host it on your own local server   Disclaimer  I only read about repo or cz  I never tried it myself

User · Answer

for simple setups  you can provide ssh access to a central server  and set up each user s working directory to push pull from this  origin   That would be the most simple and common setup for small teams    You might also look into gitosis which gives you an http server and the ability to manage it remotely  That way you don t have to grant ssh access and all that entails to each committer

User · Answer

You might consider Gitblit  an open-source  integrated  pure Java Git server  viewer  and repository manager for small workgroups

User · Answer

You can also install Indefero  it is a GPL clone of GoogleCode  as it supports both Subversion and Git  you can have a smooth transition  I am the author of Indefero

User · Answer

If you want pull requests  there are the open source projects of RhodeCode and GitLab and the paid Stash

User · Answer

Gitorious is an open source web interface to git that you can run on your own server  much like github   http   getgitorious com   Update   http   gitlab org  is another alternative now as well   Update 2   Gitorious has now joined with GitLab

User · Answer

http   code google com p luna-tool  is scala application which implements most of needed for me parts of github

User · Answer

Bare Bones Browser  git instaweb --httpd webrick   from the git scm book  combine it with something like the approach described here for distributed development  credit to datagrok for the well described concept   Launch a one-off git server from any local repository   I tweeted this already but I thought it could use some expansion      Enable decentralized git workflow  git config alias serve  daemon --verbose --export-all --base-path  git --reuseaddr --strict-paths  git     Say you use a git workflow that involves working with a core  official  repository that you pull and push your changes from and into  I m sure many companies do this  as do many users of git hosting services like Github   Say that server  or Github  goes down for a bit   No worries  after all  one of the reasons you use git is so you have a copy of the entire project history in your local clone   You can keep right on coding and committing  while you wait for the operations team to bring the server back to life  Note to self  buy doughnuts for operations team   But what if  during this downtime  you want to collaborate with another person  who may not be a git expert  on the same repository   Or  instead of downtime  what if you and your collaborator are in the field  and for some reason you can t get your VPN to let you connect to your official repo   Or  what if you and your collaborator are spiking out a bunch of experimental changes  and even though you have access  you don t want to push your unfinished mess into the official central repository   Not even as feature branches   Maybe you re in the middle of cleaning up a disastrous rebase or merge and the branches are all over the place   Well  git  as you are probably aware  is a  distributed  version control system   Even though you might use a central  official  git repository in your workflow  you still have the ability to use git in a peer-to-peer manner  where you and your collaborator simply build and share commits with each other  and the central server never even has to know   So  how do you get your branches and commits over to them  or vice versa    You could use git s facilities for e-mailing patches  But that s a bit inelegant and requires some knowledge on their end of how to apply e-mailed patches  You could create an account on your own machine for your collaborator to ssh into  But maybe you don t have local root access  or maybe you don t trust them with SSH access to your box  You could clone your repo onto a thumbdrive and pass it back and forth  But that s rather tedious  especially if you happen to be on the same local network  and requires a thumb drive    You can probably think of other methods  too  But there s a super easy way  if you can see each other on the network  you can launch a one-off git server that they can use as their remote to clone  fetch  and pull your changes  and kill it when you re done with it   The tool that enables this is git daemon  which has a lot of options and functionality  but for the purpose of enabling this easy one-off  just serve up the repo I m in   the way to use it is to create an alias  I like to call it git serve  Run   git config --global alias serve  daemon --verbose --export-all --base-path  git --reuseaddr --strict-paths  git     Using an alias is actually crucial  because git aliases are executed in the base directory of your working tree  So the path   git  will always point to the right place  no matter where you are within the directory tree of your repository   Use your new git serve like so    Run git serve   Ready to rumble   it will report  Git is bad-ass  Find out your IP address  Say it s 192 168 1 123  Say  hey Jane  I m not ready able to push these commits up to origin  but you can fetch my commits into your clone by running git fetch git   192 168 1 123   Press ctrl c when you don t want to serve that repo any longer    You could also tell Jane to git clone git   192 168 1 123  local-repo-name if she does not yet have a clone of the repository  Or  use git pull git   192 168 1 123  branchname to do a fetch and merge at once  useful if you are working together on a feature branch   Note however that you shouldn t do this on hostile networks if you keep secrets in your repository  because there s no authentication  It doesn t advertise its existence  but anybody with a a port scanner can find it  connect to it  and clone your repo   But it s not super dangerous because it is read-only by default  Read the git daemon man page carefully if you think that you want to enable write access  In the case where you want to obtain your collaborator s commits  it s much safer to leave it read-only  and ask your collaborator to also run this command  so you can pull from them   Tangentially related  on the subject of one-off servers  if you want to temporarily share a bunch of static files over HTTP  python -m SimpleHTTPServer

User · Answer

If you need good  easy GIT server than you must try GitBlit  Also i use gitolite but it only server  with GitBlit you get all in one  server  admin  repos  manager     URL  http   gitblit com

User · Answer

You can even install GitHub on your local server  but not for free    https   enterprise github com

User · Answer

http   repo or cz  while fairly good tends to have some issues with some users   If you are one of them I recommend that you try out  http   unfuddle com since you come from a subversion background   Check out  The 30 Second Tour   http   unfuddle com about tour plans

User · Answer

If you don t mind getting down and dirty with the command line  gitolite is an absolute treat when working in a corporate environment where you need to set differenct access rights on different repositories  It is sort of a newer version of gitosis mentioned by  Chris  Here is the summary from the author s web site   Gitolite lets you use a single user on a server to host many git repositories and provide access to many developers  without having to give them real userids on or shell access to the server  The essential magic in doing this is ssh s pubkey access and the authorized keys file  and the inspiration was an older program called gitosis  Gitolite can restrict who can read from  clone fetch  or write to  push  a repository  It can also restrict who can push to what branch or tag  which is very important in a corporate environment  Gitolite can be installed without requiring root permissions  and with no additional software than git itself and perl   It has quite a comprehensive feature set  but one thing I like very much  is that all of the day to day configuration editing is done through a special git repository  That is  adding a user is just  Add user to configuration file Add the user s ssh key Commit the change Push it to gitolite Voila  the configuration is live   And when needing to look at the code through browser  gitolite has support for  quot syncing quot  configuration with gitweb  Or if you like cgit  which is a very good web frontend for git written in C  better  then you should look at this how-to

User · Answer

https   rhodecode com is an open source web app for Git  amp  Mercurial which can be very easily installed under any operating system  an installer is included     RhodeCode  the new version is called RhodeCode Enterprise  adds missing Git features like code review and it is generally speaking very fast and reliable

User · Answer

Try GitLab  The best git GUI tool i have ever used  It is very similar to GitHub   It is open source  MIT License  and is the most installed git management software with over 25 000 installation  It has monthly releases and an active community with over 375 contributors  You can have unlimited private  internal and public repositories on your own server  It is a Ruby on Rails app that runs on most Unix platforms

User · Answer

It may not be the most common git server setup  but having played with different layouts  tools  mirroring and permission schemes  I d say one pretty solid alternative for enterprise repositories is Gerrit  which may seem surprising as it is more known as a code review tool  We started using it as code review and it slowly became our main repository  deprecating g3 gitolite   It is straightforward to deploy  you basically drop the  war in a tomcat  has a web ui to manage repositories  groups and permissions  or a ssh cli  has a built-in java ssh and git implementation  so you have nothing else to set up  ldap support for users and groups  usually a must for companies  a very flexible permission system  with project groups  permission inheritance  restricting read write branching unreviewed writes etc  code review capabilities  if you re into that thing  repo mirroring  to push some repositories to github or other public repo    In addition  it s used by large projects  e g  android  chrome  so it does scales and is now fairly solid  Just give your users the PUSH permission if you want to allow bypassing the code review part

User · Answer

In the meantime  the Mercurial hosting site Bitbucket has started to offer Git repositories as well   So if you don t need a local server  just some central place where you can host private Git repositories for free  IMO Bitbucket is the best choice   For free  you get unlimited private and public Git and Mercurial repositories  The only limitation is that in the free plan  no more than five users can access your private repositories  for more  you have to pay   See https   bitbucket org plans for more info

User · Answer

For a remote hosting As others have said bitbucket org offers free private repositories  I ve been using it without problems   For local or LAN network I will add this one scm-manager org  A single executable file  is really simple to install  it s made on Java so it can run on Linux or Windows   Just in case you install it  these are default passwords   Username  scmadmin Password  scmadmin

[git] Git Server Like GitHub?

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