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Github helped popularize git and its concepts to many. Nevertheless, it involves making public all the codes you want to host, unless you buy a fairly expensive subscription, and for a limited number of projects. Moreover, Github is not open, and it is therefore necessary to give it some trust to store its projects.
Several solutions exist to host a git server on his personal server. For example, Gitlab aims to become equal to Github, with a graphical interface and many tools; thereby, it is very large and relatively heavy for a small server.
Here we will see how to install Gitolite, which provides a very light and functional git server, in order to synchronizing repositories between different working stations.
First, we will create on the server a `git` user, which will be needed:
sudo adduser git
Once connected to `git` on the server, we create a `bin` directory that will contain binaries, that we then add to the `path`:
cd ~ mkdir bin PATH=$PATH:~/bin PATH=~/bin:$PATH
In order to connect to Gitolite, we will used SSH key-based authentication, both simpler and more secure than HTTP. If you do not already have a key, it is necessary to create one. For this, we will used `ssh-keygen` locally:
cd ~/.ssh ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 100
When the path is requested, enter your username `<user>`. The password is optional: if you choose one, it will be asked each time a git command is requesting the server.
We then send the public key on the server:
cat ~/.ssh/<user>.pub | ssh git@<hostname> -p <port> 'umask 0077; mkdir -p .ssh; cat >> <user>.pub'
Finally, we create a `~/.ssh/config` file that contains the following information:
Host git HostName <hostname> Port <port> User git IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<user>
Back to the user `git` on the server, we can now install Gitolite:
cd ~ git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite gitolite/install -ln gitolite setup -pk ~/<user>.pub
Locally, you can now check that everything works well with `ssh git`. This should return something like:
PTY allocation request failed on channel 0 hello <user>, this is git@<hostname> running gitolite3 v3.6.5-9-g490b540 on git 2.1.4 R W gitolite-admin R W testing
That's all ! Now, if you want to clone a `repo` directory, simply run the command `git clone git:repo`. The `git push`,` pull`, `fetch` ... will operate without password.
The main originality of Gitolite is that its configuration system uses a specific git repository. To configure Gitolite, simply clone the `gitolite-admin` repository:
git clone git:gitolite-admin
This repository contains a `conf/gitolite.conf` file that lists the directories and permissions, and a `keydir` folder containing the users public keys (your `<user>.pub` key, provided during the installation, is already there).
For example, to add a `project` repository, just edit `conf/gitolite.conf` to add:
repo project
RW+ = <user>
To apply all changes, `commit` then `push` those files on the server.