Version Control with Git

This chapter is not a Git Tutorial. It focuses on the integration of Git with Tuleap and how to use it in an optimal way in this context. If you are not familiar with Git we warmly advise you to first read some of the documents listed in the references section (see Git References).

Git support has been designed to support multiple repositories for a given project as well as “Personal repositories” for each developer. This is consistent with the Distributed Version Control System philosophy which allows to delegate project features to be developped in separated repositories.

Git access (for both read and write operations) requires a valid SSH key to be configured in user account preference. See Account Maintenance for details.

Two types of repositories are available:

  • Project References: the default, aims to catch the official version of project repositories. There might be several repositories and they can be organized into folders for grouping.
  • Personal Fork (clone): each project member can clone References in order to publish it’s personal work. It aims to support the publish/integrator development model.

How to use a Git repository:

Go to the repository, and under its name, copy the clone url. Now you can paste the url after your git clone command:

git clone ssh://gitolite@tuleap.example.com/project_name/repository_name.git

Or just add this repository as a remote to an existing local repository:

git remote add your_repository_name ssh://gitolite@tuleap.example.com/project_name/repository_name.git
git fetch your_repository_name
git checkout -b my-local-tracking-branch your_repository_name/master

Reference

A reference can be created by project admin from the Git service home page, a reference name can be like reference-project_1.

A reference must be initialized:

cd mysources
git init
git add .
git commit -m 'initial commit'
git push gitolite@tuleap.example.com:<project_shortname>/<repo_name>.git master

If you have an existing repository with branches and tags you want to push, as an alternative you can run:

git push --mirror gitolite@tuleap.example.com:<project_shortname>/<repo_name>.git

Fork

Personal forks allow to support a fully decentralized development model where “References” are maintained by integrators and represent the official repositories of the project.

In this context, developments should happen in developers repositories (on developer’s computer) and are regularly pushed into a public repositories for sharing with other developers.

Tuleap “Personal Fork” are those public repositories.

If you ever need to group the selected repositories into a common namespace, you can give a specific path the repositories will be created in.

Git repositories fork screen

Git repositories fork screen

This screen also allows to fork across projects. Given you are administrator of a project with Git service activated, you can choose to create the forks in this project instead of into the personal area of the current project.

In this case, the forked repositories become “References” into the target project.

Repository settings

As a project admin, you are allowed to modify the configuration of any project repositories. This includes:

  • textual description of the repository,
  • access control,
  • and “Email notification on push”

Access control

Project administrators can control permissions details of each repository. By default a repository is readable by all active users of the platform but only project member can modify it.

In “Git repository management” screen, project administrator can select the User Groups allowed to:

  • READ: access the repository
  • WRITE: push content into the repository (commits, new branches, etc)
  • REWIND: references deletion (branches, tags) and full history rewriting. This is highly un-advised to activate it if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, you can erase your whole repository. You are warned!
Control Git repository permissions

Control Git repository permissions

Fine grained permissions

For a better permissions customization, project administrators can manage permissions branch by branch and tag by tag.

To do it, administrators must enabled fine-grained permissions. If the platform allows it, regexp can be used in pattern.

Important

When regex are enabled, they are kept the way administrators wrote them, it might end up in a non working state, invalids regex are ignored without errors. Please see Gitolite regex documentation: http://gitolite.com/gitolite/regex.html

Control Git repository fined grained permissions

Control Git repository fined grained permissions

Email notification

It’s often a good idea to notify the whole team when someone pushes some new content into a repository. You can configure your repository to send an email a list of addresses (or even better a mailing list) upon pushes.

The content of the mail will depend on the push but you can modify:

  • the email subject prefix
  • the list of recipients

When you add a new recipient, the autocompletion is done with the list of valid users. You are not mandated to use them, you can force any address, like a mailing list one.

Once configured, any subsequent push will send an email to the selected addresses. Emails will contain:

  • the list of commit pushed in the repository,
  • the modified files (+diffstats)
  • for each commit, the link to the diff in Tuleap gitweb interface
  • for each reference (in commit description for instance), the corresponding automagic link

Please note that cross-reference extraction will not work if email notification is not configured.

Repository deletion

A repository can be deleted, this will create a backup named after {PROJECT_SHORT_NAME}_{REPOSITORY_NAME}_{DEL_TIMESTAMP}.tar.bz2 and move it into Git Plugin backup directory defined in plugin configuration. See import repository section Importing an existing Git Repository for backup reactivation.

Importing an existing Git Repository

There is no automatic procedure to perform repository import. To move one Git repository from one Tuleap project to another, there are two commands to type (after creating the new repository in the destination project):

git clone --mirror gitolite@tuleap.example.com:<source_project_shortname>/<repo_name>.git
git push --mirror gitolite@tuleap.example.com:<destination_project_shortname>/<repo_name>.git

Webhooks

You can configure you repository so that each time a push is made, a webhook endpoint is called. Two categories of webhooks are available:

  1. Custom Webhooks
  2. Jenkins Webhooks

Custom Webhooks

Custom webhooks are available for Git. See the Git section in the webhook documentation section.

Jenkins Webhooks

The best way to integrate a project with Hudson/Jenkins is to configure a Jenkins Webhook. Only one Jenkins Webhook is needed so you cannot create more than one. Please read Push notification from repository from Jenkins documentation for more information.

You can see the list of triggered jobs in the logs section of the Jenkins Webhook.

Important

The hudson_git plugin needs to be installed in order to be able to create Jenkins Webhook. Ask to your site administrator if it is not the case on your Tuleap instance.

Git Large File Storage (LFS)

Managing large binary files such as video, graphic or audio files is not the strong suit of Git. Large Git repositories will quickly encounter performance issues. To work around that, Git LFS can be used.

Important

The gitlfs plugin needs to be installed and activated in order to be able to use Git LFS. Ask to your site administrator if it is not the case on your Tuleap instance.

Using Git LFS

The basic workflow to get started with Git LFS is:

git clone gitolite@tuleap.example.com:<project_shortname>/<repo_name>.git
git lfs install                 # Make sure Git LFS is installed
git lfs track "*.mkv"           # Select the file types you want to manage with Git LFS
git add .gitattributes          # Make sure the .gitattributes file is tracked, otherwise Git LFS will not be able to manage the files

git add video.mkv               # Just work as usual, Git LFS works in a transparent way
git commit -m "Add video file"
git push

More information about Git LFS can be found on the Git LFS website and the Git LFS wiki.

Existing repositories can be migrated to Git LFS. To rewrite all, e.g., *.mp4 files not present on the remote, for example if you accidentally committed files not yet tracked by Git LFS:

git lfs migrate import --include='*.mp4'

You can also rewrite all, e.g., *.mp4 files on given branches. Note this might require to rewrite the history of the repository and, as such, require Rewind access right. Only do this if you really need it and coordinate with the other contributors of the repository.

git lfs migrate import --include="*.mp4" --include-ref=refs/heads/master --include-ref=refs/heads/dev

After the conversion, push the new repository:

git push

Git file size restrictions

Starting 10.9, new files bigger than 50MB will be rejected automatically by Tuleap. Git doesn’t handle very will large files (esp. binary ones) and those files should really be handled by git lfs (see previous section).

Note: If you were using tuleap before 10.9 and you already had files bigger than 50MB, you will still be able to modify them.

Important

Site administrators might grant your project an exception and allow arbitrary file size in your projects. For them, it’s done in “Git” section of Site administration.

Git References