Gitblit

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 case-insensitive-unique but 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.

Access Restrictions and Access Permissions

permissions matrix

Discrete Permissions (Gitblit v1.2.0+)

Since v1.2.0, Gitblit supports more discrete permissions. While Gitblit does not offer a built-in solution for branch-based permissions like Gitolite, it does allow for the following repository access permissions:

These permission codes are combined with the repository path to create a user permission:

RW:mygroup/myrepo.git

NOTE:
The following repository permissions are equivalent:

This is to preserve backwards-compatibility with Gitblit <= 1.1.0 which granted rewind power to all access-permitted users.

Discrete Permissions with Regex Matching (Gitblit v1.2.0+)

Gitblit also supports case-insensitive regex matching for repository permissions. The following permission grants push privileges to all repositories in the mygroup folder.

RW:mygroup/.*
Exclusions

When using regex matching it may also be useful to exclude specific repositories or to exclude regex repository matches. You may specify the X permission for exclusion. The following example grants clone permission to all repositories except the repositories in mygroup. The user/team will have no access whatsoever to these repositories.

X:mygroup/.*
R:.*
Order is Important

The preceding example should suggest that order of permissions is important with regex matching. Here are the rules for determining the permission that is applied to a repository request:

  1. If the user is an admin or repository owner, then RW+
  2. Else if user has an explicit permission, use that
  3. Else check for the first regex match in user permissions
  4. Else check for the HIGHEST permission from team memberships
    1. If the team is an admin team, then RW+
    2. Else if a team has an explicit permission, use that
    3. Else check for the first regex match in team permissions

No-So-Discrete Permissions (Gitblit <= v1.1.0)

Prior to v1.2.0, Gitblit has two main access permission groupings:

  1. what you are permitted to do as an anonymous user
  2. RW+ for any permitted user

Committer Verification

You may optionally enable committer verification which requires that each commit be committed by the authenticated user pushing the commits. i.e. If Bob is pushing the commits, Bob must be the committer of those commits.

How is this enforced?

Bob must properly set his user.name and user.email values for the repository to match his Gitblit user account BEFORE committing to his repository.

[user "bob"]
    displayName = Bob Jones
    emailAddress = bob@somewhere.com


git config user.name "Bob Jones"
git config user.email bob@somewhere.com

or

git config user.name bob
git config user.email bob@somewhere.com

The committer email address is required to be identical. Display name or username can be used as the committer name.

All checks are case-insensitive.

What about merges?

You can not use fast-forward merges on your client when using committer verification. You must specify --no-ff to ensure that a merge commit is created with your identity as the committer. Only the first/left parent chain is traversed when verifying commits.

Reflog

Gitblit v1.2.1 introduced an incomplete reflog mechanism which was completed in 1.3.0. All pushes to Gitblit are automatically logged on an orphan branch, refs/meta/gitblit/reflog. If this ref exists, the reflog page link will be displayed on the repository pages.

This reflog is similar to, but not the same as, the normal Git reflog. The Gitblit reflog links Gitblit accounts to ref changes and because it is stored on an orphan branch, the reflog is portable by the federation mechanism or by a normal git clone --mirror command.

Teams

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

All users and permissions are stored in the users.conf file. 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 = RW+:repo1.git
    repository = RW+:repo2.git

[user "hannibal"]
    password = bossman
    repository = RWD:topsecret.git
    repository = RW+:ateam/[A-Za-z0-9-~_\\./]+

[user "faceman"]
    password = vanity

[user "murdock"]
    password = crazy     

[user "babaracus"]
    password = grrrr

[team "ateam"]
    user = hannibal
    user = faceman
    user = murdock
    user = babaracus
    repository = RW:topsecret.git
    mailingList = list@ateam.org
    postReceiveScript = sendmail

The users.conf file allows flexibility for adding new fields to a UserModel object without imposing the complexity of relying on an embedded SQL database.

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 four actual roles in Gitblit:

Personal Repositories & Forks

Personal Repositories and Forks are related but are controlled individually.

Creating a Personal Repository

A user may be granted the power to create personal repositories by specifying the #create role through the web ui or through the RPC mechanism via the Gitblit Manager. Personal repositories are exactly like common/shared repositories except that the owner has a few additional administrative powers for that repository, like rename and delete.

Creating a Fork

A user may also be granted the power to fork an existing repository hosted on your Gitblit server to their own personal clone by specifying the #fork role through the web ui or via the Gitblit Manager.

Forks are mostly likely personal repositories or common/shared repositories except for two important differences:

  1. Forks inherit a view/clone access list from the origin repository.
    i.e. if Team A has clone access to the origin repository, then by default Team A also has clone access to the fork. This is to facilitate collaboration.
  2. Forks are always listed in the fork network, regardless of any access restriction set on the fork.
    In other words, if you fork RepoA.git to ~me/RepoA.git and then set the access restriction of ~me/RepoA.git to Authenticated View, Clone, & Push your fork will still be listed in the fork network for RepoA.git.

If you really must have an invisible fork, the clone it locally, create a new personal repository for your invisible fork, and push it back to that personal repository.