Git repository on this server

Repository Types

This server can host two types of Git repositories.

Central repositories

These repositories are managed by Gitolite tool, which allows to conveniently manage repository permissions. World readable repositories can be browsed online.

Personal repositories

Any user with shell access to this server can create his/her own git repository under his/her home directory and make it public using git protocol.

Central Repositories

Write access to central repositories can only be given to users who sent their Open SSH public key to the administrator together with their university assigned login name (if any). The SSH key can be created in Linux/Unix (or in MSysGit shell in Windows) by:

 ssh-keygen

It is stored by default at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

During the key creation you will be asked for a passphrase. If you do not specify any passphrase, anybody with access to your ~/.ssh directory could access your repositories. If you specify the key, the passphrase will need to be entered whenever to use the key. By using ssh-add command you can specify the passphrase only once and the decrypted key will be remembered in the memory.

Creating central repositories

To create a repository send an email to the administrator with the name of the repository, a short description and a list of people (SSH public keys) who should have access to the repository.

Automatic creation of repositories

Our group staff members can create their repositories without asking the administrator. It is simply a matter of pushing the repository to a special URL containing the login, like this:

git push --set-upstream ssh://git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz/«login»/«whatever» HEAD

This will create a new repository called «whatever» (if it does not exist yet) and push the current HEAD to it. It also makes this repository the default for pushing and pulling (this is what --set-upstream does).

Gitweb description for automatic repositories

Similar to the getperms/setperms commands, there are the getdesc/setdesc commands. I.e. you can set the description by:

echo "Description" | ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz setdesc <repo>

Managing central repositories

Finding available repositories

You can find the list of repositories you have access to by running:

ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz info [filter]

where filter is optional string used to filter the list.

It there are wildcard (automatic) repositories, as in the example below, you will only see the wildcard pattern and not the created repositories.

 C  R   W      fpga/[a-zA-Z0-9].*

To expand the wildcards, use the command expand instead of info. This command is a way slower than info command!

ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz expand
ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz expand fpga

Permissions to automatic repositories

The owners of automatically created repositories can manage the access permissions by themselves:

cat > perms
READERS pepa franta
WRITERS kerel lojza
(hit ctrl-d here)

ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz setperms «login»/«whatever» < myperms

The current permissions can be viewed by

ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz getperms «login»/«whatever»

More information can be found in Gitolite manual.

To allow public access and listing on gitweb page use the following command sequence:

 ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz getperms repo-name > perms
 echo "READERS @all" >> perms
 ssh git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz setperms repo-name < perms

This script can be used to make permission management easier.

Accessing the repository

After installing Git on your local computer, you can access the repository as follows.

Cloning the repository

Read/Write access (for users with registered SSH key):

git clone ssh://git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz/repo-name

Read-only access (for public repositories only):

git clone git://rtime.felk.cvut.cz/repo-name.git

First push

After an empty repository is created either by admin (central) or by you (wildcard), you can push (upload) the data to it:

For git 1.6.2 and newer

• Clone the empty repository.
• Put your sources into your cloned repository

git add .             # tells git to track all files in your project
git commit            # commits the added files to the repository

• Push your sources to the server

git push

For older git versions

• Put your sources into your local repository

cd your/project
git init              # initializes git repository in your project's directory
git add .             # tells git to track all files in your project
git commit            # commits the added files to the repository

• Then "connect" your repository to the one on this server (replace login by your login and repo-name by the name of repository created for you)

git remote add origin git@rtime.felk.cvut.cz:repo-name  # this is for central repos
git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master

1. Push your sources to the server

git push --all

Pushing to non-master branches

If you are not allowed to push to the master branch but to a different one, you have to push like this:

git push origin master:your-branch

which pushes your local master branch to the remote your-branch

To make this behavior default run

git config remote.origin.push master:your-branch

And from now on, it is sufficient to run only

git push

Personal repositories

A personal repository can be created this way:

ssh login@rtime.felk.cvut.cz
mkdir $HOME/myproject.git
cd $HOME/myproject.git
git init --bare --shared=everybody

If you want to make your repository public, it has to be accessible by user gitdaemon. It is usually sufficient to give "x" permission to your home directory:

setfacl -m user:gitdaemon:x $HOME

Read-only access for public repositories is possible with the following command:

git clone git://rtime.felk.cvut.cz/~yourlogin/repo-name.git

Contributing to other projects

Using personal repository to contribute to other projects

If you do not have write access to the repository of some project (not necessarily a central repository on this server), you can work in your personal repository then ask somebody with write access to merge your changes.

1. Clone a central repository

   git clone git://rtime.felk.cvut.cz/project.git

2. Add your rtime personal repository as remote (using SSH access)

   git remote add personal yourlogin@rtime.felk.cvut.cz:myproject.git

3. Edit files in project...
4. Commit your changes

   git commit ...

5. Push your changes to your personal repository

   git push personal

6. Write email to somebody with write access to merge changes in git://rtime.felk.cvut.cz/~yourlogin/myproject.git

Links to git related documents

• Gitolite documentation on DCE IT pages