Enable Smart HTTP on GIT repos

Submitted by imcdona on Fri, 01/26/2018 - 10:34

The Virtualmin GIT plugin implements the outdated "dumb HTTP (web-dav)" method for git push functionality rather than the much improved Smart HTTP Transport.

The advantages of the Smart HTTP transport are numerous. To name a few, git hooks are executed when doing a push via Smart HTTP but not when using dumb http. The speed of git transactions (push/pull) are significantly improved.

Implementing Smart HTTP is straight forward. The changes required are as follows:

Create ~cgi-bin/wrapper.cgi in order to pass environment variables to git-http-backend

#!/bin/sh

export GIT_PROJECT_ROOT=/home/sandbox/public_html/git
export GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL=1
export REMOTE_USER=$REDIRECT_REMOTE_USER

exec /usr/libexec/git-core/git-http-backend

Add the following directives to the virtual-host config. Note, the "ScriptAliasMatch" allows gitweb and git-http-backend to be served from the same url /git

ScriptAliasMatch \
        "(?x)^/git/(.*/(HEAD | \
                        info/refs | \
                        objects/(info/[^/]+ | \
                                 [0-9a-f]{2}/[0-9a-f]{38} | \
                                 pack/pack-[0-9a-f]{40}\.(pack|idx)) | \
                        git-(upload|receive)-pack))$" \
        /home/sandbox/cgi-bin/wrapper.cgi/$1


<Files "git-http-backend">
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Git Access"
    AuthUserFile /home/sandbox/etc/git.basic.passwd
    Require expr !(%{QUERY_STRING} -strmatch '*service=git-receive-pack*' || %{REQUEST_URI} =~ m#/git-receive-pack$#)
    Require valid-user
</Files>

The current method of initializing repositories needs to include this git command git config http.receivepack true to enable users to push.

I've implemented this setup on a Virtualmin virtual-host and it works as expected.

Additional documentation on implementing Smart HTTP functionality can be found here.

Status: 
Needs work

Comments

Submitted by imcdona on Fri, 01/26/2018 - 13:54

You'll also need to set the repo as shared in addition to above git config http.receivepack true

git config core.sharedRepository group

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sat, 01/27/2018 - 13:53

Thanks, I didn't know about this - I'll look into implementing the change you suggested.

Submitted by imcdona on Sat, 01/27/2018 - 14:09

You'll need to change the < files > directive to include the name of the wrapper script. I mistakenly included the wrong file name. The correct name would be wrapper.cgi

Thanks

Submitted by mmoxnes on Fri, 09/11/2020 - 07:09 Pro Licensee

Hi, is there any progress on this, was reported in january 2018, now september 2020 still listed as open....

Submitted by JamieCameron on Fri, 09/11/2020 - 17:39

No we haven't worked on this yet, sorry.

Submitted by sebaj80 on Thu, 06/10/2021 - 08:09

Hi! I did all the steps (including comments after post) and I have error 500 :(