Gitolite Essentials

by Sitaram Chamarty

Leverage powerful branch and user access control with Git for your own private collaborative repositories This book is for system administrators and development managers who need to keep a lid on Git-based development workflows. Basic knowledge of Git as well as of the Unix shell will be helpful. If you're responsible for securing a Git server where lots of developers work with lots of repositories, you have a problem on your hands. You probably want to implement security restrictions and authorization for certain repositories. You will love the simplicity and power of Gitolite's access control language and model. Gitolite allows you to set up Git hosting on a central server with very fine-grained access control and many powerful features. You'll start with a brief introduction to Gitolite. The very first chapter tells you how to create a test setup so you can play with Gitolite—something that is very important when learning about a powerful tool with lots of features. You'll go from there, at an easy pace, through the most important aspects of Gitolite. Basic access control is easy and obvious. With this book, you will learn how to restrict access to critical files, allowing users to create their own repositories and manage their own access control, but within the limits you set. You will also learn how to extend Gitolite to do very useful things with very little code, and how to fall back on a mirror in case disaster strikes your main server. All this and more is packed within this concise and practical book with easy-to-follow, real-world examples.

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Iustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reasonable book, but light on details - it refers too much to "go read the manpages". It's a good introduction to gitolite, but could explain in more detail some aspects. For example, when talking about triggers, it says: "“The important trigger points, from a customization point of view, are INPUT, POST_CREATE, and POST_COMPILE, although there are several other trigger points supported.” However, it doesn't list them. Then, at the end of the chapter, it mention as a single line a few other triggers - PRE_GIT and POST_GIT being very interesting, but not explained at all.

I know this is "essentials", and not "in depth", but I do think it should have gone into more detail. Still, I enjoyed it as a quick intro to gitolite, and time spent reading it was worth it.

[Alessandro Pellizzari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ottimo manuale, soprattutto nella prima parte, in cui spesso non solo spiega come configurare gitolite, ma scende nei dettagli del funzionamento a basso livello e del perché di certe configurazioni.
Diventa un po' lacunoso e oscuro solo nella parte finale, dalla spiegazione delle VREF in poi.