Docker GitBlit
If you need a local git server a really handy one is gitblit. You guessed it, it’s available as a Docker container.
If your up-to-speed with Docker networking, then you can be up and running with a working git server within minutes:
Exporting default data to the host
It’s best to use a volume to store your git data at a handy location on the host, I chose to store my data under /srv/docker/git.lan since my server was going to be called git.lan.
When using a host directory, it’s necessary to put the initial copy of the data you want to share there yourself, as Docker won’t do this for you (deliberately).
To get a functional system, the easiest thing to do was spin up a gitblit container, copy the files I wanted from /opt/gitblit-data and then destroy the container.
Here’s what these commands look like:
# create our throw-away container
docker run -d jmoger/gitblit
bc8bcb2e6f58a94dc736ca9d730c3ddaea904517e6c945e5da592ffe4f2a9a4c
# copy the files from the container to the host directory
docker cp bc8bcb2e6f58a94dc736ca9d730c3ddaea904517e6c945e5da592ffe4f2a9a4c:/opt/gitblit-data /srv/docker/git.lan/data
# check files copied ok - looks good
ls /srv/docker/git.lan/data/
certs gitblit.properties plugins serverTrustStore.jks temp
default.properties gitignore projects.conf ssh-dsa-hostkey.pem users.conf
git groovy serverKeyStore.jks ssh-rsa-hostkey.pem
# remove the container
docker rm -f bc8bcb2e6f58a94dc736ca9d730c3ddaea904517e6c945e5da592ffe4f2a9a4c
Starting the container
Once these files are in place, you can start your proper gitblit container and have it configure itself for automatic restarts and bridge mode networking:
docker run -d --restart=always --name='git.lan' --volume /srv/docker/git.lan/data:/opt/gitblit-data --net=none -e 'pipework_cmd=br0 -i eth0 @CONTAINER_NAME@ udhcpc ' jmoger/gitblit
In a few seconds, you should have a fully working GUI git server available at whatever IP address your DHCP server allocated. In my case I have dynamic DNS too so I just headed over to http://git.lan
…And that’s all there is to it - now we have a functional network-connected git server after just a few minutes work. Pretty cool hey!
Next Steps
- Change your password! The default is admin/admin
- Make sure you regularly backup the volume directory on your Host machine - that was why we made it external after all… ;-)