gitWrap - A Git Wrapper for Servers

gitWrap is a lightweight Git wrapper designed for server environments written in C. It manages the creation of new repositories and handles users and permissions on different repositories. It provides a simple and efficient way to host Git repositories.

Description

I've recently started usign Git a lot more for various projects. I, as most people, use GitHub for hosting my repositories (you are probaly reading this from it right now). However, I wanted to have a way to host my own repositories on my own server and I wanted to have an experience near to GitHub but without leaving the command line.

I started from the basics: saying hello to Git users via SSH but don't giving them shell access.

Then I started liking the idea, and here we are now.

Roadmap

This are the basic starting prerequisites for gitWrap:

• Basic Git over SSH functionality.
• User validation and identificaition.
• Welcome users with a custom message upon SSH connection.
• Remote repository creation.
  • Complete repository creation script.
  • Correctly call the script from the binary.
  • Create user folders automatically.
• Remote repository deletion.
  • Complete repository deletion based on user.
  • Add safety checks to avoid accidental deletions.
• Access to repositories with git@gitWrap:User/repoName syntax.
• User permission management.
  • Different permission levels.
  • Automatically set permissions on repository creation.
  • Automatically remove user access on repository deletion.
• Change all bash scripts to C functions.

Installation

To install gitWrap, follow these steps:

1. Get the binary from the releases page or compile it from source.

2. Place the binary in a directory of your choice on your server.

3. Set up SSH Keys for different users in the authorized_keys file of the git user:

   command="SSH_USER=Username /path/to/gitwrap" ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAr...
   command="SSH_USER=Username2 /path/to/gitwrap" ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIB...

4. Make sure the gitWrap binary is executable.

5. Start using gitWrap to manage your Git repositories.

Note: At the actual state of the project, some files and configurations might need to be set up manually. In the future, the binary will handle more of these tasks automatically.

Usage

To use gitWrap, after setting up SSH keys as described in the installation section, users can interact with their repositories using standard Git commands over SSH. For example, to clone a repository, a user would run:

git clone git@gitWrap:Username/repoName

And for other Git operations like push, pull, etc., the commands remain the same as with any Git repository.

---

For repository creation, users can use a command like:

ssh git@gitWrap create repoName

---

For repository deletion, users can use a command like:

ssh git@gitWrap delete repoName

---

Permissions

For permission management, gitWrap reads a file called users.conf located one level above the gitWrap binary location.

This file should contain lines with the following format:

#Comment1
[Username1]
repository1 = permission_level
#Comment2
repository2 = permission_level

[Username2]
repository1 = permission_level

Where permission_level can be, for now, values like read, write, own and collaborator.
The own permission is added automatically on repository creation for the user creating it.

Right now users are expected to modify permissions manually for other users to have access to other repositories.

It is important to note that creating the file and adding the users must be done manually for now.
It is also important to note that between the last repository and the next user section, there must be an empty line and that between different repositories for the same user, there must not be empty lines.

Multiple user having different repositories with the same name is not actively supported right now, it has to be tested as it might already work but might lead to unexpected results.

Permissions and user management is still under development.

Curiosities

• This project is being tracked in my own server, and it is configured so every time I push something to my repository, it is compiled with a hook, so it is always ready to test.
• The project was born from the need to have a server for an university social media group project, so I decided to host it myself, as I already had a server running for other purposes, but still wanted everyone to be able to contribute easily.