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# Setup your own git hosting service
Last modification on 2022-08-07
**This article assumes you use OpenBSD for the service files and OS-specific
examples.**
## Why
A good reason to host your own git repositories is because of having and
keeping control over your own computing infrastructure.
Some bad examples:
* The SourceForge ads/malware/hijack controversies. Injecting malware into proj…
* As of 2019-10-23 Gitlab added telemetry to their software.
* On 2019-10-24 Gitlab reverted it again because many people complained.
* On 2020-11-16 Github reinstated youtube-dl, to reverse a Digital Millennium C…
* On 2021-03-11 Github (owned by Microsoft) removes exploit code for Microsoft …
* On 2022-04-16 Russian software developers are reporting that their GitHub acc…
* On 2022-08-04 GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts.
* On 2022-08-05 GitLab U-turns on deleting dormant projects after backlash.
The same thing can happen with Github, Atlassian Bitbucket or other similar
services. After all: they are just a company with commercial interests. These
online services also have different pricing plans and various (arbitrary)
restrictions. When you host it yourself the restrictions are the resource
limits of the system and your connection, therefore it is a much more flexible
solution.
Always make sure you own the software (which is »Free« or open-source) and you
can host it yourself, so you will be in control of it.
## Creating repositories
For the hosting it is recommended to use a so-called "bare" repository. A bare
repository means no files are checked out in the folder itself. To create a
bare repository use git init with the --bare argument:
$ git init --bare
I recommend to create a separate user and group for the source-code
repositories. In the examples we will assume the user is called "src".
Login as the src user and create the files. To create a directory for the
repos, in this example /home/src/src:
$ mkdir -p /home/src/src
$ cd /home/src/src
$ git init --bare someproject
$ $EDITOR someproject/description
Make sure the git-daemon process has access permissions to these repositories.
## Install git-daemon (optional)
Using git-daemon you can clone the repositories publicly using the efficient
git:// protocol. An alternative without having to use git-daemon is by using
(anonymous) SSH, HTTPS or any public shared filesystem.
When you use a private-only repository I recommend to just use SSH without
git-daemon because it is secure.
Install the git package. The package should contain "git daemon":
# pkg_add git
Enable the daemon:
# rcctl enable gitdaemon
Set the gitdaemon service flags to use the src directory and use all the
available repositories in this directory. The command-line flags "--export-all"
exports all repositories in the base path. Alternatively you can use the
"git-daemon-export-ok" file (see the git-daemon man page).
# rcctl set gitdaemon flags --export-all --base-path="/home/src/src"
To configure the service to run as the user _gitdaemon:
# rcctl set gitdaemon user _gitdaemon
To run the daemon directly as the user _gitdaemon (without dropping privileges
from root to the user) set the following flags in /etc/rc.d/gitdaemon:
daemon_flags="--user=_gitdaemon"
Which will also avoid this warning while cloning:
"can't access /root/.git/config"
Now start the daemon:
# rcctl start gitdaemon
## Cloning and fetching changes
To test and clone the repository do:
$ git clone git://yourdomain/someproject
if you skipped the optional git-daemon installation then just clone via SSH:
$ git clone ssh://youraccount@yourdomain:/home/src/src/someproject
When cloning via SSH make sure to setup private/public key authentication for
security and convenience.
You should also make sure the firewall allows connections to the services like
the git daemon, HTTPd or SSH, for example using OpenBSD pf something like this
can be set in »/etc/pf.conf«:
tcp_services="{ ssh, gopher, http, https, git }"
pass in on egress proto tcp from any to (egress) port $tcp_services
## Pushing changes
Add the repository as a remote:
$ git remote add myremote ssh://youraccount@yourdomain:/home/src/src/so…
Then push the changes:
$ git push myremote master:master
## Git history web browsing (optional)
Sometimes it's nice to browse the git history log of the repository in a web
browser or some other program without having to look at the local repository.
* »Stagit« is a static HTML page generator for git.
* »Stagit-gopher« is a static page generator for
»gopher« and
geomyidae.
* cgit is a CGI-based program which shows HTML views of your repository, see
also the page: »OpenBSD httpd, slowcgi and cgit«.
It's also possible with these tools to generate an Atom feed and then use a
RSS/Atom reader to track the git history:
* An example url from cgit: »Linux kernel tree«.
* An example url from stagit for the »commit log«.
* An example url from stagit for the »releases«.
My »sfeed« program can be used as a RSS/Atom reader.
## Setting up git hooks (optional)
Using git hooks you can setup automated triggers, for example when pushing to a
repository. Some useful examples can be:
* For stagit: update the repo files (example post-receive hook).
* Send an e-mail with the commit subject and message.
* Log/notify commits and changes to an IRC channel using a fifo: »ii«.
* Create a release tarball and checksum file on a tag push/change.
* Checkout files for website content.
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