.git repo on Power i and security

[Mike Bohlen]

I have a .git repo setup on a Power i LPAR using the Open Source Manager, and I have developers trying to push to it using SSH, they can push fine one time then if someone else push’s code then the next person can’t ect. the issue is the security on the folder\objects gets set to *RX and the owner to the person who updated the file. If I set security back to *PUBLIC *RWX then it works agian. Any setup guidelines on this?

[Kevin Adler]

It’s not recommended to host a bare git repo directly as you will run in to filesystem permissions as you have seen. Usually one uses a git hosting manager for this. Popular ones include GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab which all offer hosted SaaS versions as well as on-premise versions. There’s also Gogs and Gitea, which are more minimal self-hosted solutions. All of these solutions provide not only git hosting, but have an online GUI supporting repository management, access control, issues, pull requests, wiki, release management, external integrations, etc. None of the above run on IBM i, however.

If you absolutely want to host your git repository on IBM i, you can use gitolite, though it is very minimal. It only covers the git repository hosting and only using SSH. All configuration is done through a text config file in a special git repository. I have a write-up here that shows how to set it up. (not for the faint of heart). (gitolite itself has a good overview of the problem you’re encountering here: https://gitolite.com/gitolite/overview.html)

In addition, there’s also Gerrit, which can be set up to host repositories and supports change reviews and other integrations. I have not used it much, though it seems to run on IBM i just fine (it’s written in Java).

[Mike Bohlen]

Thanks for the info..