Update: This howto is outdated. GitLab has changed a lot since it was written and a lot of it is not applicable anymore (e.g. since GitLab 5.0 it doesn’t depend on Gitolite any more and only needs one system user to be setup). So you are probably better off using the official installation guide. 🙂
If you want to install Gitlab on Debian you can easily follow their installation steps for Ubuntu. But be careful there are a few gotchas nobody is talking about.
The following steps will assume you are root.
Preparations
First make sure you have all the latest updates installed.
1 2 | aptitude update aptitude full-upgrade |
Then we have to install a few packages.
1 | aptitude install git-core wget curl gcc checkinstall libxml2-dev libxslt-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libc6-dev libssl-dev libmysql++-dev make build-essential zlib1g-dev libicu-dev redis-server sudo |
Install Ruby
If you have not installed ruby you might want to consider using RVM.
Install it with
1 | bash -s stable < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer) |
It will be installed into /usr/local/rvm.
Ask it for the requirements for installing MRI and install them.
1 | rvm requirements |
1 | aptitude install build-essentials ... |
Install ruby and make it the default.
1 2 | rvm install 1.9.3 rvm --default use 1.9.3 |
You should install a minimum set of gems. Add “passenger” if you are running Apache as your web server or “thin” if you are using Nginx.
1 | gem install bundler |
Install Gitolite
First of all we want to create a dedicated user for Gitolite and Gitlab. This will also be the user the Rails processes will be running in (this is important later).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | adduser \ --system \ --shell /bin/sh \ --gecos 'Git Version Control' \ --group \ --disabled-password \ --home /home/git \ git |
Configure git for the new user.
1 2 | sudo -u git -H git config --global user.email "git@your-server.tld" sudo -u git -H git config --global user.name "Gitlab Admin" |
Generate the ssh key for the git user. It will be saved in /home/git/.ssh/id_rsa. We will run Gitlab as the git user so it will use this key to authenticate against Gitolite.
1 | sudo -u git -H ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 |
Copy the public part of the key for later use when we setup Gitolite.
1 | sudo -u git -H cp /home/git/.ssh/id_rsa.pub /home/git/rails.pub |
After that we install Gitolite. In contrast to the Gitlab documentation I installed it from the Debian repositories.
1 | aptitude install gitolite |
It will not be fully installed as it will tell you something like:
No adminkey given – not initializing gitolite in /var/lib/gitolite.
So we do this by using dpkg-reconfigure and using our previously prepared account.
When prompted, answer as follows:
- Gitolite user: git
- repositories directory: /home/git
- admin key: /home/git/rails.pub
1 | dpkg-reconfigure gitolite |
Now you should have Gitolite set up in the /home/git directory. But we will still have to tweak it a little.
Edit /home/git/.gitolite.rc and find the line that reads “REPO_UMASK = 0077;” and change it to “REPO_UMASK = 0007;” (i.e. three zeros).
You now need to change the directory privileges on the /repositories directory so Gitlab can use them
1 2 | sudo chmod -R g+rwX /home/git/repositories/ sudo chown -R git:git /home/git/repositories/ |
Gitolite should be ready now.
You can test it by cloning the admin repository:
1 2 | sudo -u git -H git clone git@localhost:gitolite-admin /tmp/gitolite-admin rm -rf /tmp/gitolite-admin |
Install Gitlab
Install a few prerequisites.
1 2 | aptitude install python-dev python-pip redis-server libicu-dev sudo pip install pygments |
Clone Gitlab
1 2 | git clone git://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq.git gitlab cd gitlab |
We create a gemset for Gitlab to not pollute the global gemset. To automate this we will use a .rmvrc inside the Gitlab directory. RVM will make sure it will be loaded automatically whenever you enter the directory.
1 | echo "rvm use 1.9.3@gitlab --create" > .rvmrc |
cd into directory to make rvm use the .rvmrc and accept with “y”.
1 | cd .. && cd gitlab |
Check your current gemset with
1 | rvm current |
It should show something like “ruby-1.9.3-p0@gitlab”.
Now you might need to update Gitlab’s Gemfile (e.g. add the mysql2 gem for MySQL databases).
Now install the gems necessary for running Gitlab.
1 | bundle install --deployment |
You may need to run “bundle install –no-deployment” to pick up changes to the Gemfile and rerun the previous command.
Edit config/gitlab.yml to configure Gitlab. If you have followed this howto you should only need to update the “email” section and the “host” option in the “git_host” section.
You might want to edit config/application.rb and update the time zone and locale configurations.
Edit config/database.yml and set up your database configuration.
Now set up and initialize your database.
1 2 | bundle exec rake db:setup RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:seed_fu RAILS_ENV=production |
Install with Passenger + Apache
(todo)
Install with Thin + Nginx
(todo)
Result
😀