# How to make your own git server/website

## Server setup

We're going to create a `git` user and group, will be used for accessing our git repositories without needing to be root.

```sh
useradd -m git
mkdir /srv/git
chown git:git /srv/git
```

The repositories will be stored as bare, this mean that we will only store the `.git` folder to save space.

>To create a bare repo: `git init --bare`

>To clone a repo as bare: `git clone bare <location>`

You can either add a password for the git user or put your ssh public key in `/home/git/.ssh/authentication_keys` and disable password authentication for ssh.

You can now clone from your server with `git clone git@<hostname>:/srv/git/<reponame>`

## Better server interaction with git-shell

Permit the git user to have a regular shell can be a security issue,
we would like that to restrict him to a few action,
like creating/deleting a repository, importing a repository, listing the repo currently stored

Make the git-shell a valid shell `echo $(which git-shell) >> /etc/shells`

Change the shell of the git user `chsh -s $(which git-shell) git`

If you try to ssh as the git user, you will be greeted with something along the line of:

```
fatal: Interactive git shell is not enabled.
hint: ~/git-shell-commands should exist and have read and execute access.
Connection to <host> closed.
```

As suggested by the hint we have to create the directory `/home/git/git-shell-commands` and put the commands (executable) that the git user is allowed to execute in.

Here is a script to create a repo:

```sh
#!/bin/sh
[ $# -ne 1 ] && echo "Usage: $0 name" && exit 1
repo_path="/srv/git/$1.git"
[ -d "$repo_path" ] && echo "$0: Error: $repo_path already exist" && exit 2
mkdir "$repo_path"
git -C "$repo_path" init --bare
```

Put it under `git-shell-commands/create` and make it executable then try to ssh as the git user once again.

You should have a prompt like `git> `, you can call the `create` command with a repo name as the first argument and it should create a new repository for you.

## Allow anyone to clone with git-daemon

The git daemon will allow annone to clone your repos with something like `git clone git://<host>/<repo>`

`git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=/srv/git/ /srv/git/` and that's it

You should make it a service in your service supervisor, example with systemctl:

```
[Unit]
Description=Start Git Daemon
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=/srv/git/ /srv/git/
Restart=always
RestartSec=500ms
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=git-daemon
User=git
Group=git
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
```

Put it in `/etc/systemctl/system/git-daemon.service` and run `systemctl enable git-daemon` then `systemctl start git-daemon`.

### Public/private repo

You may want to introduce a distiction of which repo is public and which is private

A simple way to do this is by creating a `public` directory in `/srv/git` which will contain symbolic link to the repo in `/srv/git`

```
/srv/git
|- foo.git
|- bar.git
|- qux.git
|- public
    |- foo.git -> /srv/git/foo.git
    |- bar.git -> /srv/git/bar.git
```

You can change the git daemon to only serve the public repositories `git daemon --reuseaddr --base-path=/srv/git/public /srv/git/public`

## Generate a static website

Here we will create a site that look's like [this](https://git.suckless.org) with [nginx](https://nginx.org), [stagit](https://git.codemadness.org/stagit/) and a few scripts.

If you don't like the minimalistic appearence of the site, [here](https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Interfaces,_frontends,_and_tools#Web_Interfaces) is a list of alternative.

Install nginx (on Debian based distro): `apt install nginx`

Create a basic configuration file for your site:

```
server {
    root /var/www/git;
    index index.html index.htm;

    server_name git.<hostname> www.git.<hostname>;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}
```

It's a convention to put it in a `git.` subdomain.
`systemctl enable nginx && systemctl start nginx`

Install stagit:

```
git clone git://git.codemadness.org/stagit
cd stagit
make
make install
```

To generate a static page for a repo `stagit /path/to/repo`.
To generate an index for multiple repositories `stagit-index repo1 repo2 repo3 > index.html`

Here is a script to generate a site for all repo in `/srv/git/public`

```sh
#!/bin/sh

repos=$(find /srv/git/public/ -type l)
current=$(pwd)

for repo in $repos; do
    repo_name=$(basename "$repo" | sed 's/\.git//')
    repo_static_path="/var/www/git/$repo_name"
    mkdir -p "$repo_static_path"
    cd "$repo_static_path" || exit 1
    echo "git://cacharle.xyz/$repo_name" > "$repo/url"
    stagit "$repo"
    ln -sf "$repo_static_path/log.html" "$repo_static_path/index.html"
    echo "Generated $repo_static_path"
done

echo "Creating index"
stagit-index $repos > /var/www/git/index.html

cd "$current" || exit 1
chown -R git:git /srv/git
```

There is more smart ways to handle this to rebuild the webpages each time someone pushes to the repo with [git hooks](https://git.codemadness.org/stagit/file/README.html#l92).

## Sources

* [Setting up \*Your Own\* Git Server](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju9loeXNVW0)
* [Git book - setting up the server](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Setting-Up-the-Server)
* [Git book - git daemon](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Git-Daemon)
* [stagit - Static website generator for git repository](https://git.codemadness.org/stagit/)
* [git-shell man](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-shell.html)