gitblit

Gitblit WAR Setup

Download Gitblit WAR %VERSION% to the webapps folder of your servlet container.
You may have to manually extract the WAR (zip file) to a folder within your webapps folder.
Copy the WEB-INF/users.conf file to a location outside the webapps folder that is accessible by your servlet container.
Optionally copy the example hook scripts in WEB-INF/groovy to a location outside the webapps folder that is accesible by your servlet container.
The Gitblit webapp is configured through its web.xml file.
Open web.xml in your favorite text editor and make sure to review and set:
- <context-parameter> git.repositoryFolder (set the full path to your repositories folder)
- <context-parameter> groovy.scriptsFolder (set the full path to your Groovy hook scripts folder)
- <context-parameter> realm.userService (set the full path to users.conf)
You may have to restart your servlet container.
Open your browser to http://localhost/gitblit or whatever the url should be.
Enter the default administrator credentials: admin / admin and click the Login button
NOTE: Make sure to change the administrator username and/or password!!

Gitblit GO Setup

Download and unzip Gitblit GO %VERSION%.
Its best to eliminate spaces in the path name.
The server itself is configured through a simple text file.
Open gitblit.properties in your favorite text editor and make sure to review and set:
- git.repositoryFolder (path may be relative or absolute)
- groovy.scriptsFolder (path may be relative or absolute)
- server.tempFolder (path may be relative or absolute)
- server.httpPort and server.httpsPort
- server.httpBindInterface and server.httpsBindInterface
  https is strongly recommended because passwords are insecurely transmitted form your browser/git client using Basic authentication!
Execute gitblit.cmd or java -jar gitblit.jar from a command-line
Wait a minute or two while all dependencies are downloaded and your self-signed localhost certificate is generated.
Please see the section titled Creating your own Self-Signed Certificate to generate a certificate for your hostname.
Open your browser to http://localhost:8080 or https://localhost:8443 depending on your chosen configuration.
Enter the default administrator credentials: admin / admin and click the Login button
NOTE: Make sure to change the administrator username and/or password!!

Creating your own Self-Signed Certificate

Gitblit GO automatically generates an ssl certificate for you that is bound to localhost.

Remote Eclipse/EGit/JGit clients (<= 1.1.0) will fail to communicate using this certificate because JGit always verifies the hostname of the certificate, regardless of the http.sslVerify=false client-side setting.

The EGit failure message is something like:

Cannot get remote repository refs.
Reason: https:/myserver.com/git/myrepo.git: cannot open git-upload-pack

If you want to serve your repositories to another machine over https then you will want to generate your own certificate.

Review the contents of makekeystore.cmd or makekeystore_jdk.cmd
Set your hostname into the HOSTNAME variable.
Execute the script.
This will generate a new certificate and keystore for your hostname protected by server.storePassword.

NOTE:
If you use makekeystore_jdk.cmd, the certificate password AND the keystore password must match and must be set as server.storePassword or specified with the storePassword command-line parameter!

Additionally, if you want to change the value of server.storePassword (recommended) you will have to generate a new certificate afterwards.

Running as a Windows Service

Gitblit uses Apache Commons Daemon to install and configure its Windows service.

Review the contents of the installService.cmd
Set the ARCH value as appropriate for your installed Java Virtual Machine.
Add any necessary --StartParams as enumerated below in Command-Line Parameters.
Execute the script.

After service installation you can use the gitblitw.exe utility to control and modify the runtime settings of the service.
Additional service definition options and runtime capabilities of gitblitw.exe (prunmgr.exe) are documented here.

NOTE:
If you change the name of the service from gitblit you must also change the name of gitblitw.exe to match the new service name otherwise the connection between the service and the utility is lost, at least to double-click execution.

VM Considerations

By default, the service installation script configures your Windows service to use your default JVM. This setup usually defaults to a client VM.
If you have installed a JDK, you might consider using the gitblitw.exe utility to manually specify the server VM.

Execute gitblitw.exe
On the Java tab uncheck Use default.
Manually navigate your filesystem and specify the server VM with the ... button
```
Java Virtual Machine:
C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\server\jvm.dll
```

Command-Line Parameters

Command-Line parameters override the values in gitblit.properties at runtime.

--repositoriesFolder   Git Repositories Folder
--userService          Authentication and Authorization Service (filename or fully qualified classname)
--useNio               Use NIO Connector else use Socket Connector.
--httpPort             HTTP port for to serve. (port <= 0 will disable this connector)
--httpsPort            HTTPS port to serve.  (port <= 0 will disable this connector)
--storePassword        Password for SSL (https) keystore.
--shutdownPort         Port for Shutdown Monitor to listen on. (port <= 0 will disable this monitor)
--tempFolder           Folder for server to extract built-in webapp

Example

java -jar gitblit.jar --userService c:\myrealm.config --storePassword something

Upgrading Gitblit

Generally, upgrading is easy.

Since Gitblit does not use a database the only files you have to worry about are your configuration file (gitblit.properties or web.xml) and possibly your users.conf or users.properties file.

Any important changes to the setting keys or default values will always be mentioned in the release log.

Gitblit v0.8.0 introduced a new default user service implementation which serializes and deserializes user objects into users.conf. A users.conf file will be automatically created from an existing users.properties file on the first launch after an upgrade. To use the users.conf service, realm.userService=users.conf must be set. This revised user service allows for more sophisticated Gitblit user objects and will facilitate the development of more advanced features without adding the complexity of an embedded SQL database.

users.properties and its user service implementation are deprecated as of v0.8.0.

Upgrading Gitblit WAR

Backup your web.xml file
Backup your web.properties file (if you have one, these are the setting overrides from using the RPC administration service)
Delete currently deployed gitblit WAR
Deploy new WAR and overwrite the web.xml file with your backup
Review and optionally apply any new settings as indicated in the release log.

Upgrading Gitblit GO

Backup your gitblit.properties file
Backup your users.properties file (if it is located in the Gitblit GO folder)
OR
Backup your users.conf file (if it is located in the Gitblit GO folder)
Backup your Groovy hook scripts
Unzip Gitblit GO to a new folder
Overwrite the gitblit.properties file with your backup
Overwrite the users.properties file with your backup (if it was located in the Gitblit GO folder)
OR
Overwrite the users.conf file with your backup (if it was located in the Gitblit GO folder)
Review and optionally apply any new settings as indicated in the release log.

Upgrading Windows Service

You may need to delete your old service definition and install a new one depending on what has changed in the release.

Gitblit Configuration

Administering Repositories

Repositories can be created, edited, renamed, and deleted through the web UI. They may also be created, edited, and deleted from the command-line using real Git or your favorite file manager and text editor.

All repository settings are stored within the repository .git/config file under the gitblit section.

[gitblit]
    description = master repository
    owner = james
    useTickets = false
    useDocs = true
    showRemoteBranches = false
    accessRestriction = clone
    isFrozen = false
    showReadme = false
    federationStrategy = FEDERATE_THIS
    isFederated = false
    skipSizeCalculation = false
    federationSets =

Repository Names

Repository names must be unique and are CASE-SENSITIVE ON CASE-SENSITIVE FILESYSTEMS. The name must be composed of letters, digits, or / _ - .
Whitespace is illegal.

Repositories can be grouped within subfolders. e.g. libraries/mycoollib.git and libraries/myotherlib.git

All repositories created with Gitblit are bare and will automatically have .git appended to the name at creation time, if not already specified.

Repository Owner

The Repository Owner has the special permission of being able to edit a repository through the web UI. The Repository Owner is not permitted to rename the repository, delete the repository, or reassign ownership to another user.

Teams

Since v0.8.0, Gitblit supports teams for the original users.properties user service and the current default user service users.conf. Teams have assigned users and assigned repositories. A user can be a member of multiple teams and a repository may belong to multiple teams. This allows the administrator to quickly add a user to a team without having to keep track of all the appropriate repositories.

Administering Users (users.conf, Gitblit v0.8.0+)

All users are stored in the users.conf file or in the file you specified in gitblit.properties. Your file extension must be .conf in order to use this user service.

The users.conf file uses a Git-style configuration format:

[user "admin"]
    password = admin
    role = "#admin"
    role = "#notfederated"
    repository = repo1.git
    repository = repo2.git

[user "hannibal"]
    password = bossman

[user "faceman"]
    password = vanity

[user "murdock"]
    password = crazy        

[user "babaracus"]
    password = grrrr

[team "ateam"]
    user = hannibal
    user = faceman
    user = murdock
    user = babaracus
    repository = topsecret.git

The users.conf file allows flexibility for adding new fields to a UserModel object that the original users.properties file does not afford without imposing the complexity of relying on an embedded SQL database.

Administering Users (users.properties, Gitblit v0.5.0 - v0.7.0)

All users are stored in the users.properties file or in the file you specified in gitblit.properties. Your file extension must be .properties in order to use this user service.

The format of users.properties loosely follows Jetty’s convention for HashRealms:

username=password,role1,role2,role3...
@teamname=!username1,!username2,!username3,repository1,repository2,repository3...

Usernames

Usernames must be unique and are case-insensitive.
Whitespace is illegal.

Passwords

User passwords are CASE-SENSITIVE and may be plain, md5, or combined-md5 formatted (see gitblit.properties -> realm.passwordStorage).

User Roles

There are two actual roles in Gitblit: #admin, which grants administrative powers to that user, and #notfederated, which prevents an account from being pulled by another Gitblit instance. Administrators automatically have access to all repositories. All other roles are repository names. If a repository is access-restricted, the user must have the repository’s name within his/her roles to bypass the access restriction. This is how users are granted access to a restricted repository.

Authentication and Authorization Customization

Instead of maintaining a users.conf or users.properties file, you may want to integrate Gitblit into an existing environment.

You may use your own custom com.gitblit.IUserService implementation by specifying its fully qualified classname in the realm.userService setting.

Your user service class must be on Gitblit’s classpath and must have a public default constructor.
Please see the following interface definition com.gitblit.IUserService.

Groovy Hook Scripts

SINCE 0.8.0

The preferred hook mechanism is Groovy. This mechanism only executes when pushing to Gitblit, not when pushing to some other Git tooling in your stack.

The Groovy hook mechanism allows for dynamic extension of Gitblit to execute custom tasks on receiving and processing push events. The scripts run within the context of your Gitblit instance and therefore have access to Gitblit’s internals at runtime.

Your Groovy scripts should be stored in the groovy.scriptsFolder as specified in gitblit.properties or web.xml.

Scripts must be explicitly specified to be executed. A script can be run on all repositories by adding the script file name to groovy.preReceiveScripts or groovy.postReceiveScripts in gitblit.properties or web.xml. Alternatively, you may specify per-repository scripts in the repository settings. Global/shared scripts are executed first in their listed order, followed by per-repository scripts in their listed order.

Some primitive sample scripts are included in the GO and WAR distributions to show you how you can tap into Gitblit with the provided bound variables.
Hook contributions and improvements are welcome.

Client Setup and Configuration

Https with Self-Signed Certificates

You must tell Git/JGit not to verify the self-signed certificate in order to perform any remote Git operations.

NOTE:
The default self-signed certificate generated by Gitlbit GO is bound to localhost.
If you are using Eclipse/EGit/JGit clients, you will have to generate your own certificate that specifies the exact hostname used in your clone/push url.
You must do this because Eclipse/EGit/JGit (<= 1.1.0) always verifies certificate hostnames, regardless of the http.sslVerify=false client-side setting.

Eclipse/EGit/JGit
1. Window->Preferences->Team->Git->Configuration
2. Click the New Entry button
3. ```
Key = http.sslVerify
Value = false
```

Command-line Git (Git-Config Manual Page)

git config --global --bool --add http.sslVerify false

Cloning an Access Restricted Repository

Eclipse/EGit/JGit
Nothing special to configure, EGit figures out everything.
```
https://yourserver/git/your/repository
```
Command-line Git
My testing indicates that your username must be embedded in the url. YMMV.
```
https://username@yourserver/git/your/repository
```

01_setup.mkd 16KB Raw Blame History