Gitosis alternative?

Question

Are there alternatives to gitosis that are easier to use?

I currently run gitosis on a Ubuntu server for my lab. We regularly add new users and repos. I find the gitosis.conf syntax non-intuitive, and if I make even a minor mistake the whole gitosis system fails, see for example this question on SO. When gitosis fails it also kills access to the git repository that contains gitosis.conf... go figure... There must be a better way.

I've thought about private GitHub accounts, but is there anything else that I could host locally?

Shun

Answer 1

I ended up just paying for GitHub. Here is what I tried:

• Gitolite: The install is actually tricky. I ran into lots of SSH key trouble which was compounded by the fact that I first tried installing from a windows workstation. Also, Gitolite requires a server running Git 1.6, but Ubuntu stable on my server only runs Git 1.5. I could have compiled newer git from source, but by that point I had already sank 3 hours into my gitolite install.

• Gitorious: Gitorious requires ruby, mysql, and a gazillion gems and packages. As @calmh said,

  Gitorious is wonderful when up and running. It's a nightmare to get there...

At that point I decided to go with GitHub:

• GitHub: $50/month gets 50 private repositories, 25 collaborators and 6 GB of space. Individual users can easily add additional SSH keys themselves and its trivial for my colleague and me to create new repos for our coworkers. I usually like the free DIY solution, but in this case the money really is well worth it.

Final thought: It would be great if TurnkeyLinux could one day improve their revision control appliance to include gitorious by default.

Shun

I created a PHP based Web-Interface for Gitosis: github.com/cmuench/n98-gitosis-admin – Dieppe

Which Ubuntu version was this? – Maria

It was Turnkey Linux from a long time ago. I can't remember anymore. This question is three yeas old now. – Shun

Answer 2

Gitolite might be a solution.

Propertied

Have you used Gitolite before? Can you provide details? Based on the readme it sounds nice. – Shun

Perhaps most exciting, from github.com/sitaramc/gitolite/blob/pu/doc/… : "error checking the config file gitosis does not do any. I just found out that if you mis-spell members as member, gitosis will silently ignore it, and leave you wondering why access was denied. Gitolite "compiles" the config file first and keyword typos are caught so you know right away." – Shun

Yea, and extend it using GitLab. This will give you something Github-like, but self-hosted and free. github.com/gitlabhq – Sirree

Answer 3

I was using github, but it becomes too expensive while number of your projects grows. And the way it manages public keys is not very satisfying. For example you can't add two identical keys for two different repos, you are forced to add is as global key (correct me if i am wrong).

I found that having a slicehost slice (or whatever you use) with gitolite is much cheaper. Gitolite installation and management is very easy and straightforward. And if you need a web interface there are options to choose from, but i personally don't need it, and never used this feature on github. Access control os very powerfull and easy in same time. And there are ways to install it not having a root access to your host.

And you can use your server for hosting too, not paying another monthly fee. I wrote an tutorial on how to setup gitolite on ubuntu which is super easy (in contrast to girroco).

You can read it here

Fuze

Answer 4

Fairly old thread, but just for completeness, it's worth looking at BitBucket - as one user mentioned, GitHub can get expensive for a lot of private repos, but BB offers unlimited private repos for free - so far, I've not had any issues with git access.

HTH

Paine

Voting for this one. Bitbucket is great for private repos where you don't really need all the social features github has. – Fuze

Answer 5

What about the system that drives http://repo.or.cz: Girocco

...or gitorious

Founder

Thanks. These both look interesting. Have you used either? I worry about gitorious. It looks like you need a full ruby on rails setup + many gems + custom apache on so on. The installation procedure is very very long, see gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline/blobs/master/README – Shun

Gitorious is wonderful when up and running. It's a nightmare to get there, though. – Blindworm

Answer 6

Consider using GitLab, you can configure access via the web ui. (disclosure: I'm a co-founder of GitLab.com). It is the most installed git management system and includes merge requests, line comments, a wiki and an issue tracker.

Gumboil

Answer 7

I actually just wrote a couple of simple python scripts to help with user and repo creation for just the reason you mention. I suspect I could get my boss to let me open source them -- basically, though, they read and write the config file used by gitosis with the help of a python library called configobj. I set them up so that they can run either as command line scripts or as cgi scripts with a little web interface.

Rockribbed

That sounds awesome! Please do consider open sourcing that. – Shun

Answer 8

We have looked a number of solutions and none of them work well from an administrative standpoint. We had initially passed over Gerrit, thinking that it was only for code reviews, but I think it deserves a second look. It also does authorization and authentication, and a workflow component, so you can trigger builds upon commits or positive reviews.

Tiling

Answer 9

1. Gitolite as nice features like branch level access control and has good documentation. Easy to setup. Least dependencies.

2. For readonly web access , gitweb shall be used along with gitolite.

3. Gitorious is too difficult to setup and has too many dependencies.

4. Gitorious requires passenger , if you are using Apache, it becomes too complex setup if you have any other rails application using another version of ruby.

For an overview of Gitolite features watch Gitolite by Sitaram

Tiffanitiffanie

Answer 10

scm-manager isn't as full featured as gitosis, but it is easy to host git, mercurial, and svn repositories with web admin, checkins and diff tracking.

Exostosis

I've tried scm-manager and it's really a good balance between the number of features and the number of VC systems it supports. The only problem was it being based on Java: it was too bloody memory hungry to be run on a low-end VPS used only as source code hosting server. – Resolute