Reposetup

Reposetup is a minimalist tool to manage repositories on a remote server. It requires only an ssh server and optionally a web server.

It is a simpler alternative to more feature complete tools like Gitolite if you want to host repositories on your own server.

Installation

Assuming you have a server with SSH installed and Apache with the mod_userdir module enabled, the following will setup Reposetup to manage Git repositories in the public_html/git directory inside your user home directories.

• Connect to your server

• Copy the reposetup script to a directory which is part of $PATH when running a command over SSH, for example /usr/local/bin. ($HOME/bin is likely not a good candidate because it is only added to $PATH when starting a shell)

• Create /etc/reposetuprc with the following content, replacing <yourserver> with the hostname of your server:

  # Path where repositories will be created
  REPO_BASE_DIR=$HOME/public_html/git
  
  # Repository url for read-write access
  REPO_RW_URL=$USER@<yourserver>:public_html/git/$REPO_NAME
  
  # Repository url for read-only access
  REPO_RO_URL=http://<yourserver>/~$USER/git/$REPO_NAME
  

Note: You can also create a reposetuprc file in the $HOME/.config directory of each user.

Usage

Reposetup is designed to be used over SSH, from your workstation.

Let's say user sheldon wants to create a repository named example on the bazinga server:

$ ssh sheldon@bazinga reposetup create example
The "example" repository has been created. You can now clone it with:

    git clone sheldon@bazinga:public_html/git/example

If you already have a local repository, you can push its content with:

    git remote add origin sheldon@bazinga:public_html/git/example
    git push -u origin master

The url for read-only access is:

    http://bazinga/~sheldon/git/example

To list your repositories:

$ ssh sheldon@bazinga reposetup ls
example:
    read-write url: sheldon@bazinga:public_html/git/example
    read-only url: http://bazinga/~sheldon/git/example

To rename the repository:

$ ssh sheldon@bazinga reposetup rename example bbt

To delete the repository:

$ ssh sheldon@bazinga repository rm bbt
Delete the "bbt" repository? y

Shouldn't you host this on your own server?

You might find it ironic that a tool to manage repositories is hosted on GitHub rather than self-hosted on a server I own.

The reason for this is that I am no sysadmin. I am not qualified to setup a secure, public-facing Git server. I use Reposetup on private servers, but hosting it on GitHub is simpler for me and probably safer for you.

That should not stop from hosting it yourself on your own server, that's the beauty of Git.