Hosting Your Own Git Repositories

- Once you have your own VPS or other Internet-available server, you can - start hosting your own git repositories. The goal of this tutorial is - for you to go from

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git clone github.com/...

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git clone YourLandChadDomainName.xyz/...

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- so you can cultivate your own homegrown, grass-fed code, rather than - relying on a centralized proprietary service like GitHub. -

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Installing git

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- You most likely already have it installed on your server, but if not, - run:

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apt install git

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- We don't need any additional software, git itself ships - with everything needed to host a remote repository! -

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Creating bare repositories

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- For each repository you want to host, you will need to manually create - what's called a "bare" repository on your server. These hold all the - commits and any other git data needed for your repository, but without - an expanded "index" in which you can just browse all the files of a - certain commit in the file system. -

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- These repositories need to be owned by the git user, and - you should probably pick a directory where you will store them all. One - sane choice is under /srv/git/, and we will use this as the - example directory for the rest of the tutorial, but any other path will - do as well. -

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Become the git user and create the directory

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- If you're logged in to your server as root and have git - installed, you can become the git user by executing -

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su git

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- Now navigate to/create your desired directory, for example -

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cd /srv
-mkdir git

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Create the repo

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- Now you can create the bare repository with -

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git init --bare my-repo.git

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- By convention, bare repository names end with ".git". -

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- Repeat the above command for any other repositories you want to host. -

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Syncing local repositories with your server

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Set up SSH login for the git user

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- You will need to be able to login remotely via ssh as the - git user we've used before. To do this, you will either - need to set up a password for the git user by running - passwd git, - or copy your public SSH key from your local machine to - /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys. - See the SSH keys instructional for details - (just log in as git instead of root). -

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Syncing a new repository with your server

- If you've just created a new repository on your local machine, you will - need to tell git where the remote repository is to be able - to sync with it (using commands like git push or - git pull). We do this by defining a "remote" for your - repository. -

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- A remote is just a named URL remembered in your repo's configuration. So - we need a name and a URL. By convention, the "main" remote is called - "origin". The URL has the format user@host:path, where: -

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- user is git, the git user - we've already worked with before. -
- host is your domain name. - Alternatively you could even use your server's raw IP address. -
- path is the absolute path to the repository on the - server, in our example /srv/git/my-repo.git -

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- So, to create a new remote, run: -

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git remote add origin git@yourdomain.xyz:/srv/git/my-repo.git

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- Now you'll be able to run git push origin master to push - your commits or git pull origin to pull from the remote. -

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Syncing an existing repository

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- If you've already set up your local repository to sync with a service - like GitHub it probably already has a remote called "origin". You can - see your repo's remotes with: -

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git remote -v

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- You can follow the above instructions, substituting an arbitrary other - name other than "origin" to create a differently named remote, e.g. -

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git remote add vps git@...

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- Now you'll be able to push/pull with git push vps master - and git pull vps, respectively. -

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- Or, to completely sever ties with your centralized git provider, first - remove the original origin with: - git remote remove origin - and then follow the instructions as above. -

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Contribution

Martin Chrzanowski -- website, donate