threads / discuss / 28649

"trying out" gitolite with minimum impact on a system

Subject: "trying out" gitolite with minimum impact on a system

## tl;dr

3 messages between Oct 11, 2011 and Oct 12, 2011.

replies: 2people: 2as markdown or json

Sitaram Chamarty· Oct 11, 2011, 17:19 UTC · lore

(This is kind of a record for me, 2 gitolite related emails to the git ML in less than a month)

If you were in the position of vaguely thinking gitolite may be useful to you but lacked the time to actually install it to try things out, this may help.

----

Some folks want to be able to try gitolite's access control features, play with the configuration language, and so on, but to actually *install* it seems like a "commitment" of some kind.

Gitolite has always had the ability to be installed *entirely* within one Unix userid. Plus, the homegrown test suite I've been using for a while now has always simulated different "gitolite users" with a bit of ~/.ssh/config magic.

So I just combined the two, and made the client also be on the same Unix userid, resulting in this: http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/t/README.html#_playing_with_gitolite

Briefly, it boils down to this: create a user, log in as that user, clone gitolite, run *one* command. Done.

After that, entirely within that user, you have an admin user and six normal users, to do with as you please. You emulate different users simply by using a different username in the URL, like "git clone u1:reponame" versus "git clone u2:reponame".

This gives you a chance to play with the myriad access control features gitolite has.

When done, delete that user and your system is back where it was.

-- 
Sitaram

Philippe Vaucher· Oct 12, 2011, 06:15 UTC · re: Sitaram Chamarty · lore

Re: "trying out" gitolite with minimum impact on a system

> After that, entirely within that user, you have an admin user and six
> normal users, to do with as you please.  You emulate different users
> simply by using a different username in the URL, like "git clone
> u1:reponame" versus "git clone u2:reponame".

Hum, except if I missed something the classic way to use gitolite is to always clone using the same user (git@host:repository.git), and the "real" identification is done by the ssh keys (which means that contrary to plain ssh you lose the ability to have two users with the same ssh key, which should never happen anyway).

But maybe you're refering to an alternate authentification mechanism within gitolite I'm unaware of.

Philippe

Sitaram Chamarty· Oct 12, 2011, 07:52 UTC · re: Philippe Vaucher · lore

Re: "trying out" gitolite with minimum impact on a system

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Philippe Vaucher <philippe.vaucher@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

>> After that, entirely within that user, you have an admin user and six
>> normal users, to do with as you please.  You emulate different users
>> simply by using a different username in the URL, like "git clone
>> u1:reponame" versus "git clone u2:reponame".
>
> Hum, except if I missed something the classic way to use gitolite is
> to always clone using the same user (git@host:repository.git), and the
> "real" identification is done by the ssh keys (which means that
> contrary to plain ssh you lose the ability to have two users with the
> same ssh key, which should never happen anyway).
>
> But maybe you're refering to an alternate authentification mechanism
> within gitolite I'm unaware of.

you should read "entirely within that user" as "entirely within that new, possibly throw-away, Unix userid you created". This is meant to fit with the subject line's "minimum impact on a system" phrase.

regards

sitaram