Gitblit devel
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Gitblit WAR Setup

  1. Download Gitblit WAR %VERSION% to the webapps folder of your servlet container.
  2. You may have to manually extract the WAR (zip file) to a folder within your webapps folder.
  3. Copy the WEB-INF/users.properties file to a location outside the webapps folder that is accessible by your servlet container.
  4. 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> realm.userService (set the full path to users.properties)
  5. You may have to restart your servlet container.
  6. Open your browser to http://localhost/gitblit or whatever the url should be.
  7. Click the Login link and enter the default administrator credentials: admin / admin

    NOTE: Make sure to change the administrator username and/or password!!

Gitblit GO Setup

  1. Download and unzip Gitblit GO %VERSION%.

    Its best to eliminate spaces in the path name.
  2. 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)
    • server.tempFolder (path may be relative or absolute)
    • server.httpBindInterface and server.httpsBindInterface

      https is strongly recommended because passwords are insecurely transmitted form your browser/git client using Basic authentication!
  3. Execute gitblit.cmd or java -jar gitblit.jar from a command-line
  4. 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.
  5. Open your browser to http://localhost or https://localhost depending on your chosen configuration.
  6. Click the Login link and enter the default administrator credentials: admin / admin

    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 (<= 1.0.0) 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.

  1. Review the contents of makekeystore.cmd or makekeystore_jdk.cmd
  2. Set your hostname into the HOSTNAME variable.
  3. 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.

  1. Review the contents of the installService.cmd
  2. Set the ARCH value as appropriate for your installed Java Virtual Machine.
  3. Add any necessary --StartParams as enumerated below in Command-Line Parameters.
  4. 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.

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.properties --storePassword something

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

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.

Administering Users

All users are stored in the users.properties file or in the file you specified in gitblit.properties.

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

username,password,role1,role2,role3...

Usernames

Usernames must be unique and are case-insensitive.

Whitespace is illegal.

Passwords

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

User Roles

There is only one actual role in Gitblit and that is #admin which grants administrative powers to that user. 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.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.

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 (<= 1.0.0) 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