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gitolite.conf -- by example

I hate people who make statements like "I dont have time to learn". People with that sort of attitude shouldn't use gitolite at all, and I refuse to spoon-feed them or be their personal tutor.

However, it's possible that even with the right attitude and willingness to learn, some people just get a mental block about something, and so I figure this might help.

(Side note: followup questions not welcome from people in the former category; you know who you are).

WARNING 1: in case of conflict between this document and reality, reality wins. For conflict between this document and the main document, the main document wins. In any case, please bring such issues to my notice.

WARNING 2: this document has examples only for the most commonly used features. If you don't find a feature here, look in the main document before asking me.

WARNING 3: Read the WHOLE document. I can't keep saying, for instance, that "rewind" actually means any of 3 different things so I'll say it only once. It's upto you to have read that part also.

general notes

Git branch/tag name recap: branches look like refs/heads/something, tags look like refs/tags/something. When there is no ambiguity, we leave out the refs/heads/ and the refs/tags/.

A "rewind" means any of 3 things: force-push a branch (make it go backward, using 'git push -f' or equivalent), delete a branch, or update a tag. The first two are clearly information-losing operations so it is wise to require special rights to do them. The third is in the same category because tags are supposed to be "write once" so re-writing a tag is considered abnormal.

These examples are only for the more complex parts of the conf file. We're not going to discuss things like what characters are allowed in a username or reponame, how to write a comment line, how to write continuation lines (you can't), include files, and all such lexical issues.

extremely brief regex overview: Link

basic access control: Link

advanced access control: Link