Setting up a Gitolite repository on your Site5 account.
The purpose of this guide is to get you started in setting up a Gitolite respository from start to finish, as well as doing an initial pull from master to ensure that it’s working. Much like Gitosis, Gitolite is a very powerful system that can be used for setting up and managing a Git respository.
This tutorial assumes that:
- You are running Windows or Linux.
- You have an SSH client and are familiar with the workings of SSH.
- Git is installed on your Linux PC, or Tortoisegit on WIndows.
1. In order for Gitolite to install correctly you’ll need to modify the PATH variable in your .bash_profile.
- Open the .bash_profile in your favorite text editor.
- Change the PATH line to the following: PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
- Save your changes and exit.
- Source your .bash_profile to apply the changes:
source ~/.bash_profile |
2. As Gitolite requires a newer version of git installed for all of its features to work correctly you’ll need to install a newer version of git locally under your account. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll be using 1.7.4.1. See the following to get a custom version of git installed under your account:
Download git 1.7.4.1 or the newest 1.7 version available onto your account
Extract the file:
tar -xjvf git-1.7.4.1.tar.bz2 |
Then run the following commands:
cd git-1.7.4.1 |
./configure --prefix=$HOME |
make && make install |
git --version |
The version shown should now be 1.7.4.1, or whichever version of git you decided to install.
3. Generate a public key on your local machine.
- Linux users:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f USERNAME |
- Windows users: Open Puttygen and generate a RSA key. If you already have a SSH key that is not in PPK format that you wish to use, you can convert it. For information on how to do this, please click here.
Once this has been done, create a file named ‘USERNAME.pub” (with USERNAME being the username of the user you’re logged in as on your Site5 account) and copy the public key into this file and save.
4. Now, it’s time to install Gitolite under your account. Do the following:
cd $HOME/bin |
git clone git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite |
cd gitolite |
src/gl-system-install |
gl-setup ~/USERNAME.pub |
cat ~/USERNAME.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys |
Note that the “USERNAME.pub” file is going to be the file that contains your public key as created in step 3.
5. Gitolite should now be setup and fully working. We’ll now try an initial pull from the default master branch to retrieve it.
-Linux: On your local PC type the following in the folder you wish to use for your git projects:
git clone --branch master USERNAME@domain.com:~/repositories/gitolite-admin.git |
At this point, it should successfully retrieve the contents of the master branch and download the “keydir” and “gitolite.conf” file.
Windows Users: On Windows, navigate to the folder you wish to use for projects (For example – C:\projects) and right click. This will open up a pop up menu. Towards the bottom you should see “Git Clone…”. Select that and enter the following details (taking careful note of replacing USERNAME@domain.com and mykey with your information).
Type: Web (Drop-down menu on the right)
URL: USERNAME@domain.com:~/repositories/gitolite-admin.git
Load Putty Key: C:\mykey.ppk
To further explain the above: USERNAME is going to be the primary user on your account. So, if your username is “bob” and your domain is “bobsdomain.com” it would be “bob@bobsdomain.com” for the first part of the URL.
On Windows, the “mykey.ppk” file is going to be the name of the private key that you generated earlier in this tutorial. The location will vary depending on where you saved it, so make sure you take note of where the file is located.
Once you have entered the correct information, select “OK” from the bottom of the window. If the transfer was successful, then you should see a “Success” message at the bottom and there will be a “keydir” directory and “gitolite.conf” file in the sub-directory where you performed the pull.
At this point, your Gitolite repository should be all setup and working as expected. You can now setup additional repositories and begin comitting changes. For additional assistance with Gitolite, see the official Git and Gitolite documentation.