How to run a git server on your local machine
Let’ see how you can install a git server locally on your development machine.
I see a couple of reasons why would you want to do that in the first place:
- to have a safe playground to play with git
- to see what is happening on the server when you execute git commands (what’s what I did with the couple of git related articles on this blog)
- and finally, why not?
Git in a docker container
The easiest way to run a git server is to run it inside a docker container.
There is a pretty popular Docker container to run git: jkarlos/git-server-docker
This container exposes the port 22 and 2 volumes:
*/git-server/keys*: Volume to store the users public keys*/git-server/repos*: Volume to store the repositories
Directories setup
One simple way to set up this git image is to have a dedicated directory for the server data like: $HOME/git-server
In that directory, you can create 2 subdirectories:
keysto store the SSK key(s)reposto host the git repositories directories
We will use the --volume to share those directories with the docker container.
SSH keys
Step #1 is to create the ssh keys: even though the server will be running locally on your machine, you still need ssh keys to allow the SSL connection.
The command to create the key is the usual ssh-keygen. For the sake of clarity, you may want to save the key in a different file:
tmp ssh-keygen -t rsaGenerating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/pcarion/.ssh/id_rsa): /Users/pcarion/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):Enter same passphrase again:Your identification has been saved in /Users/pcarion/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /Users/pcarion/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:SHA256:XOte9MwaBiso20TGI5ciPypWhjTcIyJhdF6MRvAN2oA pcarion@Pierres-MacBook-Pro.localThe key's randomart image is:+---[RSA 2048]----+|o+o+o. ||E.Bo+. ||ooo+ . . ||o= o . o . . ||+ = + B S o . || . = * o . + + || o + o . o + + ||.. . * o o o ||... . . . . |+----[SHA256]-----+In order for the container to access the public key, you need to copy it to your keys directory
➜ cp ~/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsa.pub $HOME/git-server/keys➜ ls -l $HOME/git-server/keystotal 8-rw-r--r-- 1 pcarion staff 415B Jan 23 18:59 id_mygit_id_rsa.pubStarting the git docker container
We can start the server by setting the volumes and we will be using the port 2222 locally.
docker run -d -p 2222:22 -v ~/git-server/keys:/git-server/keys -v \ ~/git-server/repos:/git-server/repos \ jkarlos/git-server-dockerYou can test that the server is properly running by trying to ssh connect to it, using your private key:
➜ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsa git@127.0.0.1 -p 2222Welcome to Alpine!
The Alpine Wiki contains a large amount of how-to guides and generalinformation about administrating Alpine systems.See <http://wiki.alpinelinux.org>.
You can setup the system with the command: setup-alpine
You may change this message by editing /etc/motd.
Welcome to git-server-docker!You've successfully authenticated, but I do notprovide interactive shell access.Connection to 127.0.0.1 closed.Network setup
In order to make it easy to access this git server from the command line, you can configure your ~/.ssh/config file to configure a pseudo remote host which will connect to your docker container:
Host remote.mygit.com Hostname 127.0.0.1 Port 2222 User git IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_mygit_id_rsaCreate a bare repository
In order to create a repository on the server, you must create a so-called bare repository (the directory structure is not quite the same as the structure on the client side, mostly because there is no such thing as a working directory there).
➜ pwd/Users/pcarion/git-server/repos➜ git init --bare my-first-repo.gitInitialized empty Git repository in /Users/pcarion/git-server/repos/my-first-repo.git/You can then clone that repository, in a different directory (obviously), with the command:
➜ git clone ssh://remote.mygit.com/git-server/repos/my-first-repo.gitCloning into 'my-first-repo'...warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.➜ cd my-first-repo➜ my-first-repo git:(master) date > README.txt➜ my-first-repo git:(master) ✗ git add README.txt➜ my-first-repo git:(master) ✗ git commit -m 'first commit'[master (root-commit) e7195b5] first commit 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) create mode 100644 README.txt➜ my-first-repo git:(master) git pushEnumerating objects: 3, done.Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 243 bytes | 243.00 KiB/s, done.Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)To ssh://remote.mygit.com/git-server/repos/my-first-repo.git * [new branch] master -> masterand now, you are in business!
