Calebe94

Calebe94

In Search of a Self-Hosted Git Interface

4 min read

In Search of a Self-Hosted Git Interface

I was on the hunt for a git interface to host my projects on my own server, serving as a sort of portfolio.

I already knew that gitlab allows users to create their own instance (self-host) on their servers, and I had hosted a gitlab instance on my VPS myself.

However, I found the platform too heavy — it required a lot of RAM, and a fresh install of gitlab already consumed 8 GB of storage.

So I started my search for a git interface that was simple and lightweight.

First, I recalled that the suckless project hosts its own repositories using a very simple git interface.

After some research, I discovered it was [stagit], a tool that generates static pages for your git repositories.

I liked the idea behind [stagit], but this tool needs to be run periodically to generate the repository pages (or on every change).

Digging a bit more, I came across a blog post on paritybit mentioning several platforms the author found during their own journey in search of a git server.

In that post the author cites several servers, but one caught my attention for being written in the C language.

This software is called cgit. What drew me to cgit was the fact that it can be run via CGI, and also that it can render pages on every user access (not necessarily on every repository change). cgit also meets my requirements of being lightweight and simple, and as a bonus it follows the suckless philosophy.

With this information in hand, I decided that cgit would be my git interface.

Configuring cgit

To get started with configuring cgit, I read the cgit article on the Arch Wiki.

This article clearly describes the steps to install cgit on your VPS.

After following the installation steps described on the Arch Wiki, I applied a css with a dark theme I found on the internet.

My css file for cgit can be found in my repository: cgit.

Git Server

To view my repositories rendered by cgit, I need to have my own git server, right?

I was able to set up my own git server with ease by following the git reference guide.

It was straightforward — I ran into no problems following the steps.

After configuring the git server, I simply told cgit which directory my repositories were stored in by filling in the configuration file located at /etc/cgitrepos.

Configuring Mirrors

After setting up the git server, I needed to mirror my projects hosted on both Github and Gitlab onto my server.

For that, I used a script I found on Github called git-mirror.

git-mirror is a simple tool written in shell script.

To mirror my projects, I created a directory on my computer to store my repositories, then I used the following command to create the mirror:

git-mirror setup path/to/directory https://someserver.domain/user/tomirror [email protected]/user/mirror

This script needs to be called frequently to update the remotes on every change. To do this, the developer created a systemd target to perform the update action every 5 minutes.

Unfortunately, my mirrors are currently configured only on my personal computer, so if I make any changes to my projects and my computer is turned off, those changes won’t be visible on my git server at git.calebe.dev.br.

And unfortunately, the mirrors are one-way only — that is, only changes pushed to the Gitlab and Github remotes can be seen on my git server.

Example:

    Gitlab              My Server
    HEAD      ---->          Git
      |                       |
   Commit                   Commit
   cb35f94                  cb35f94

In the future, I want to figure out a way to create bidirectional mirrors, meaning changes can be made on both remotes.

Example:

    Gitlab              My Server
    HEAD      <>---->        Git
      |                       |
   Commit                   Commit
   cb35f94                  cb35f94

Conclusion

Configuring cgit is a relatively easy task if you already have knowledge of how [CGI] applications work, how to configure nginx, how ssh works, and intermediate command-line skills.

By reading the git and cgit documentation, I was able to host a simple and lightweight git server, accessible at git.calebe.dev.br.

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