Software
version control
systems (VCS) are
among essential (almost life-saving) tools when programming in team.
Also while
working by themselves they can reveal a big deal useful. I had
Mercurial
and Mercurial-server installed
on my desktop computer time ago and
used them to
backup and synchronize
my programming experiments between the
netbook and the desktop computer.
Since
I installed Mercurial I went trough a couple of desktop
full-reinstall, of course, I also had to reinstall and reconfigure
the version control system tools. So, when I bought the Raspberry Pi
3, I did put using it as VCS server on top of my personal wish-list.
Why
Git? Why GitLab?
I
must say I have no complaints against Mercurial, it always worked
without any problem, but I’ve become a GitHub user so, passing to
Git also at home seemed me the natural thing to do. At the beginning
I was thinking about a plain bare-bone Git installation, without any
graphical user interface, just like it was for Mercurial-server.
While I was looking for a suitable git-on-raspberry how-to page
I literally stumbled on this
GitLab Installation how-to.
GitLab
is a Git server
full featured with web interface, projects and users management.
GitLab is
Open-source, or at
least exists a community
version, but what triggered my decision is that it’s quite easy to
install. Installing
GitLab is not harder than installing a bare-bone Git server, so …
here I am.
Installing
GitLab
Installing
GitLab has been a simple four-step process, at the end of
installation process GitLab was ready-and-running without any need of
configuration.
First
I installed some required dependencies.
Because of
previous installations
on my Raspberry the only one I had to install has been Postfix
mail server.
sudo apt install curl openssh-server ca-certificates postfix apt-transport-https
Then
I added GitLab repositories and keys to Raspbian sources:
curl https://packages.gitlab.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo curl -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_ce.list "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/raspberry-pi2/config_file.list?os=debian&dist=jessie" && sudo apt-get update
I
then installed GitLab with a simple apt-get command
sudo apt-get install gitlab-ce
At
last I executed the GitLab reconfiguration command in order to make
configuration effective.
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
I
edited GitLab configuration file (located in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb)
only to change two configuration details: I placed GitLab repository
folder on Raspberry external USB disk
git_data_dirs({"default" => "/media/usbdisk/gitlab"})
And
I set GitLab web server in order to work on a HTTP port different
from default one.
external_url 'http://raspberrypi3:8887'
After
any change of GitLab configuration file the reconfigure command must
be executed in order to see them effective. In spite of changing
GitLab web port SFPG picture gallery I had installed on the Raspberry
stopped working, I’ll have to solve this in the near future.
First
login
On
the very first access to GitLab web page user is asked to change
administrator password
