Yeap GitLab 5.0 will be without gitolite
Gitolite was a real help when we started with GitLab. It saves us a lot of work and provide a pretty functional solution.
But after time we understood - keep gitlab and gitolite synced is harder than build own solution.
Problems:
- out of sync between gitlab and gitolite
- gitolite becomes slower on bigger count of repos
- 2 system users increased complexity of setup
- code complexity, easy to make a mistake
- gitolite does not allow to create repositories, keys in simultaneously
GitLab Shell
GitLab Shell is my replacement for gitolite.
Basically it's a few scripts on ruby and shell for managing /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys and /home/git/repositories
You can find source code on github
2 users -> 1 user
Earlier we have 2 users for GitLab. gitlab for GitLab and git for gitolite.
Now its only one git user for GitLab and GitLab Shell
New GitLab directory structure
This is the directory structure you will end up with following the instructions in the Installation Guide.
|-- home
| |-- git
| |-- .ssh
| |-- gitlab
| |-- gitlab-satellites
| |-- gitlab-shell
| |-- repositories
PROFIT
1. Amount of code
Its was ~ 1000 lines of code related to gitolite inside of GitLab. And one library for parsing gitolite config.
Now it is only 150 lines of pretty simple code related to gitlab shell.
2. Performance
For https://gitlab.com we decreased project creation time in 10 times.
3. Stability
GitLab Shell does not store Access Control List. It asks GitLab for permissions via api.
No out of sync between GitLab and GitLab Shell == much stable backend solution.
4. Simplicity of update
You can update gitlab-shell just by git pull
You dont even need to restart gitlab service
Feb 22: GitLab 4.2 - last release with gitolite
Mar 22: GitLab 5.0 - requires gitlab-shell
Currently I'm working on migration docs to GitLab 5.0.0pre. You can find a draft here