What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Gitolite, shows you why Gitolite is useful along with some examples of basic access control rules as well as some advanced features. It also shows you how to create a test instance of Gitolite to help you try it out safely.

Chapter 2, Installing Gitolite, talks about installing Gitolite and basic administration tasks such as adding a new user and creating a new repository.

Chapter 3, Your Users and Gitolite, discusses how users see a Gitolite-managed system and what they need to know to start using it. It also has useful information on finding and fixing problems with ssh keys.

Chapter 4, Adding and Removing Users, goes into more detail on user management and what happens behind the scenes when you add a user. Special case situations such as users with multiple keys or users who need a full shell command line are discussed.

Chapter 5, Managing Repositories, talks about adding new repositories as well as bringing existing repositories into Gitolite control.

Chapter 6, Getting Started with Access Control, shows most of Gitolite's basic access control features, including various types of access rules and the configuration file syntax.

Chapter 7, Advanced Access Control and Configuration, goes into advanced features such as personal branches, setting Git config variables, and Gitolite options. It also discusses how Gitolite can be made to affect the operation of gitweb and git-daemon.

Chapter 8, Allowing Users to Create Repos, talks about a feature that is probably one of Gitolite's most popular and important features. It discusses how to allow users to create their own repositories, how the access rules work, and what the creator of a repository can do to allow others to access it.

Chapter 9, Customizing Gitolite, shows how administrators can add unique features to their site using Gitolite's customization capabilities, such as commands and triggers.

Chapter 10, Understanding VREFs, talks about Gitolite's ability to use arbitrary factors to make the allow/reject decision when a user pushes to a repository, with only a few lines of code to be written in most cases.

Chapter 11, Mirroring, explores a Gitolite feature that is very useful in large multisite setups that have developers in many locations around the world working on common projects. Gitolite mirroring is very flexible, and this chapter will set you on your way to make the best use of it.