Gitolite essentials : leverage powerful branch and user access control with Git for your own private collaborative repositories

About This Book

• Learn to manage the many repositories and the users accessing these repositories in the Git server
• Walks you through the most important ideas and concepts in Gitolite supported by examples and use cases
• Master the most powerful tool for fine-grained access control of Git repositories

Who This Book Is For

This book is for system administrators and development managers who need to keep a lid on Git-based development workflows. Basic knowledge of Git as well as of the Unix shell will be helpful.

What You Will Learn

• Secure a Git server that has many repositories and many users accessing it
• Manage the growth of the server, both in the number of users and the number of repositories, with minimal hassle
• Allow web-based access to specific repositories only for convenience and security
• Provide your users with the features they need to be productive with Git, while preventing them from accidentally introducing inconsistencies and errors into the repositories
• Permit users to create their own repositories and manage their own access control list, but within the limits you set
• Customize Gitolite for your site's unique needs and constraints quickly and easily
• Ensure your developers always have a backup option by setting up Gitolite mirroring

In Detail

If you're responsible for securing a Git server where lots of developers work with lots of repositories, you have a problem on your hands. You probably want to implement security restrictions and authorization for certain repositories. You will love the simplicity and power of Gitolite's access control language and model. Gitolite allows you to set up Git hosting on a central server with very fine-grained access control and many powerful features.

You'll start with a brief introduction to Gitolite. The very first chapter tells you how to create a test setup so you can play with Gitolite—something that is very important when learning about a powerful tool with lots of features. You'll go from there, at an easy pace, through the most important aspects of Gitolite.

Basic access control is easy and obvious. With this book, you will learn how to restrict access to critical files, allowing users to create their own repositories and manage their own access control, but within the limits you set. You will also learn how to extend Gitolite to do very useful things with very little code, and how to fall back on a mirror in case disaster strikes your main server. All this and more is packed within this concise and practical book with easy-to-follow, real-world examples.