You won’t regret it. I’ve worked with both guys twice now and it has truly been a pleasure.

Here is the link to the gist that Joe posted a while back with the job description.

Did I mention you get to work with Github? :)

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IMPORTANT: Make sure you save your ~/.git-achievements-action.log and ~/.git-achievements.log files if you are transferring from your primary machine.  If you make these files mobile you will be able to use multiple machines.  I forgot mine and now have to start over with git-achievements.  Meh.  More fun.

• I’m using Msysgit Bash CLI (up-to-date install instructions)
• I’ve forked the git-achievements github repository
  • notice it forks to a gh-pages branch, not a master branch
  • this allows github to fire jekyll off against your github account and generate your git-achievements page

•  
  • cloned repository locally into my C:code folder (resulting in /c/code/git-achievements by Git Bash CLI path terms)

•  
  • ~/ (tilde + forward slash means home directory, where the .bashrc file needs to be)

•  
  • add the newly clone git-achievements directory to your PATH environment variable
  • alias the git command to call git-achievements
  • git-achievements calls the real git.exe, this just allows it to wrap it and intercept calls

• 
  • source means to refresh/reapply
  • if you don’t do this, your new changes won’t take effect

• 
  • this outputs your PATH environment variable content.
  • Notice the git-achievements folder at the end. :)

• 
  1. this allows uploads to your fork, on the gh-pages branch

• 
  1. to ensure you didn’t break git

• 
  1. shows the git achievements help
  2. generates your first achievement as a “Student” (I already had mine)

Hope you guys have as much fun as I did.  Yeah, yeah, I’m a nerd.  So what?  ;)

http://blog.jasonmeridth.com/git-achievements

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This told me that I had been using python-setuptools for python 2.5. A little googling and praying that I wouldn’t have to roll back to the snapshot I took before I started the upgrade (Thank God!), I found the solution. I went onto the gitosis slice, cloned the gitosis repository:

and then ran the setup again:

and it fixed the issue. Did I mention how much I love google. Hope this helps someone else.

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Gitosis and Gitweb – Part 2

So we are setup, have a project, and have contributors via the first 2 parts.

I know that we are all enamored by the UI of GitHub.com. I am. Unfortunately you can’t get private repositories for free (In all fairness it’s only $7/mo. – a very wise investment). I am aware of Gitorious like I mentioned in the first part, but I have no experience with that. I will after this series and update this series if I find it better. Again, I like to use the simplest thing that works. (Of course, “simplest” is in the eye of the beholder)

In this section I’m going to show you how to install Gitweb, a UI tool that let’s you view your repositories. I’m also going to mention how to get it to auto-detect any new repositories and ensure they show up on the web UI. I learned how to do most of this from my co-worker Antony Messerli. He is a true Linux and problem-solving Jedi.

Install Apache

First, you need to ensure apache2 is installed. Check to see if you have an /etc/apache2 folder. If you do, you should be okay. If you don’t, you need to install it.

For more in-depth advice, I always reference the Slicehost Articles

Once you have that installed the daemon restarted, go to your slices ip address in the browser of your choice (i.e,. http://123.123.123.123) and you should something like “It Works”

Voila! You have apache running.

Install the Package

This will install gitweb into /var/www/gitweb, create a conf file at /etc/gitweb.conf, and add three files to /usr/share/gitweb (git-favicon.png, git-logo.png, gitweb.css).

Note: If for some reason, the /var/www/gitweb folder is not created, you can clone the git source (git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git) and then just copy the git/gitweb folder to /var/www/gitweb

You only need to edit the $projectroot variable in the /etc/gitweb.conf to point to your gitosis repositories folder:

Since this isn’t a post about Apache, I just add the gitweb directory setup to the base Apache config. Since Ubuntu includes the entire /etc/apache2/conf.d directory, I just added the following information into /etc/apach2/conf.d/gitweb:

Restart Apache to make sure everything works

The first time you go to your website again, you’ll see Gitweb, but it’ll say no projects are available. Fix mentioned below.

Two Hacks (open to suggestions)

1. I had to copy the git-favicon.png, git-logo.png, gitweb.css files from /usr/share/gitweb to /var/www/gitweb/. (if you had to do what is mentioned in the Note above, you don’t have to do this, since the gitweb folder from the git source clone includes these files already)

2. I had to make the repositories that I wanted visible in gitweb have permissions of 755 (aka owner has read, write, execute. group and others have read, execute.)

Once that was done I can see the repository and it’s information on Gitweb.

If you want to edit the project description from “Unnamed repository; edit this file ‘description’ to name the repository.” go to the repositories description file (/home/git/repositories/          lostechies.git/description for this repo) and edit the file and save.

Cron job

I, again with the leadership of Ant, utilized a cron job he wrote to automatically make the repositories have permissions of 755. I do have some repositories, like gitosis-admin, that I do not ever want visible on Gitweb. The cron job excludes them. Here is the cron job code, showing that I don’t want to show my personal.git and gitosis-admin.git repositories. This could be easily written in Ruby or any other “scripting language” of your choice:

I chose bash, so that I could take that time to learn it.
Translation: Find all the directories in my gitosis repository path (/home/git/repositories) and if they are not gitosis-admin or personal, change their permissions, recursively, to 0755.

I put this in a file called set_gitosis_permissions_to_view_on_gitweb.sh and put it in root’s home folder, /root. I then called the file from root’s crontab:

This means that every 5 minutes, my bash file will set any new repositories to 0755. This is how to get Gitweb stood up. The next post will show how to hide it behind HTTP basic auth and a self-signed certificate.

Next Part: Hiding the Gitweb site

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So we are setup now thanks to Part 1.

Gitosis repository contents

If we issue the “find .” command locally inside the gitosis-admin directory we will see the following:

We have the .git folder, a gitosis.conf file, and a keydir with a pub key file.

Add our first project

Our project name for this example is lostechies. If you view the gitosis-admin.conf file you will see the initial content like so:

This is the result of the following command from the last part:

That command puts the public ssh key into the keydirs directory and adds the associated username from the file to be the first member of the gisotis-admin project. Hence seeing user@local as the member. It matches the filename of the pub file in the keydir directory (user@local.pub). That’s how gitosis relates members listed in the conf file to the keys in the keydir directory, filename minus the pub extension.

Let’s edit this conf file to include our lostechies project:

It looks exactly like the gitosis-admin one. Now we commit it just like we would normally when using Git. We can add, then commit or commit with the -am argument. This is possible since the gitosis-admin.conf file is already tracked by the repository.

and push it to the remote gitosis-admin repository:

We need to create the lostechies repository locally, add an initial item (README in this case), and push it remotely. Gitosis won’t create the repository until something it pushed to it.

The lostechies repository now exists remotely. Currently my account is the only that has access. Let’s add another contributor.

Add our first contributors

Say I want to allow my friend Joe to have commit (writable) access to my lostechies repository and I want my friend Ryan to only have readonly access. I tell them to send me their public ssh keys. I make sure the files are named joe.pub and ryan.pub. I then put them into my local gitosis-admin repository’s keydir directory and then I edit the gitosis.conf file to be:

Notice that I had to create a whole new group (lostechies_ro) to setup Ryan’s readonly access. You can’t combine readonly and writable permissions in gitosis (wish we could – open source contribution there?).

Now I need to “git add” the new keys, and commit the changes to the conf file. Finally I push the changes.

Now Joe or Ryan can clone this repository:

NOTE: Again, if they receive the following error:

The solution, involving the .ssh/config file is in the first post in this series.

That is how you create a repository and add users.

DEBUG

If you are unable to connect you have the option of editing the gitosis.conf file with more message verbosity by adding “loglevel=DEBUG” at the top of the conf file:

This will give you more information on the ouput when trying to push to the remote repository.

Can’t push changes

As Scott Chacon states in his gitosis section of Pro Git:

“If you’ve lost push access by pushing a messed-up configuration, you can manually fix the file on the server under /home/git/.gitosis.conf — the file from which Gitosis reads its info. A push to the project takes the gitosis.conf file you just pushed up and sticks it there. If you edit that file manually, it remains like that until the next successful push to the gitosis-admin project.”

The .gitosis.conf file in the git user’s home directory is a symlink to the actual conf file in the gitosis-admin repository:

Next Part: Gitweb

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Back to Gitosis. My personal Gitosis server is a slice at Slicehost.com. You can use an Ubuntu server at home as long as you have remote access. I’ve personally only used Gitosis with an Ubuntu slice, so I don’t know if there are any quirks with other Linux distributions. After setting up a slice (after following the instructions here and here) I am ready to go.

Notice: This post is a combination of scie.nti.st’s gitosis post and Scott Chacon’s Pro Git gitosis section. They are my de facto references. Maybe my own will be now. :)

“Enough talk. Let’s fight” ~Po, Kung Fu Panda

Intall Git

After logging into your box, let’s install Git (if not already installed):

Press enter or type ‘Y’ and press enter and git will be installed. Type the following to confirm:

and you’ll see something like:

Intall python-setuptools

Also install the python-setuptools because we’ll need them (gitosis is written in python):

Press enter or type ‘Y’ and press enter and python-setuptools will be installed.

Download Gitosis

We need to clone the gitosis source locally to install it:

Install Gitosis

Now let’s install it:

Gist. Gitosis is now installed. Next steps are to create git user and handle a file permission on a git hook.

Create Git User

You’ll see something like the following if it is successful

Use local, public ssh key

You need to initially use your public ssh key (id_rsa.pub). If you have one, it will be at $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and if you have never generated one, you can do so by running the following command (accept the default location and you don’t need to enter a passphrase when prompted):

Now you need to upload it to the server/slice. I usually use the scp (secure copy command):

This will upload the local id_rsa.pub file to the /tmp/ folder on the server. Why there? So that the git user can use it. How is that possible? The folder has permissions of 777 (drwxrwxrwt) meaning everyone has read and write access to it.

Sidenote: SSH Port

If you have your sshd daemon running on a different port other than 22 (which is the default, but I highly suggest changing), then you need to use scp like this:

I believe the “-P” option must be capitalized.

Initialize gitosis-admin repository

On the server, issue the following command to set your public ssh key as the first authorized key of a new gitosis-admin repository:

You will see something like the following:

This means it was successful.

Take note: If you put your id_rsa.pub file in a different location you need to use that instead of /tmp/id_rsa.pub

Change Permissions on post-update hook

You have to set the permissions on the post-update git hook of the gitosis-admin repository so that gitosis-admin can add new repository structures when they are added/removed to/from the gitosis.conf file.

Note: First round of this post, I didn’t make this change. When I added a new project, it failed because this hook didn’t have the right permissions.

Clone gitosis-admin repository

Now we’re going to use Git to administrate this gitosis instance. I think that is pretty ingenius. Let’s clone the gitosis-admin repository locally:

We are now in the gitosis-admin repository folder locally

Two most common errors

FIRST ONE:

it is because you have used a port for SSH other than port 22 (the default). To fix this, you need to edit your .ssh/config file and add the following:

Of course, you need to put in your server hostname and port number (i.e., mydomain.com and 12345)

SECOND ONE:

This has usually hit me because I locked down my /etc/ssh/sshd_config file to only allow in certain users or groups. I have to change the AllowUsers line in my file from:

to

Once I restart the ssh daemon:

Now the git user has access to reach my server/slice via ssh.

The local gitosis-admin repository

You now have a local clone of the gitosis-admin repository. The contents are only a conf file and key directory:

Note: before anyone asks, the (master) notation in my prompt is usage of the __git_ps1

Next Part: Add Projects and Contributors

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I like knowing which Git branch I’m currently in. I use the git-ps1 function feature that comes with git-core. If you clone or download the git source:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git

There is a file in the contrib/completion folder called git-completion.bash:

~/code/git/contrib/completion<span class="o">(</span>master<span class="o">)</span> > ls
total 96
-rwxr-xr-x  1 user  staff    44K Apr 14 15:26 git-completion.bash

I copy this file to my $HOME folder as .git-completion.bash and then reference it and the ps1 propt feature in my .bashrc file

<span class="nb">source</span> ~/.git-completion.bash
<span class="nb">export </span><span class="nv">PS1</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="s1">'w$(__git_ps1 "(%s)") > '</span>

And now whenever I cd into a folder that is a Git repository I see something like the following prompt:

~/gitosis-admin<span class="o">(</span>master<span class="o">)</span> >

Notice the (master) notation. That is telling me I’m on the master branch. It’s just easier than issuing a “git branch” command everytime I want to know.

I know there are many other configurations out there, but I like to use the simplest thing that works.

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I have gotten tired of twitterfeed not handling our RSS feed and tweeting our new posts. So have the other LosTechies members. I decided to finally learn OAuth so that I can write a script/app to handle tweeting our new blog posts.

This is the way I learned so bare with me.

First things first, is you have to go to twitter and login to your account. Once done, register your OAuth application and click the Register a new application link. This will set you up with an OAuth consumer key and secret; which we need to obtain the OAuth request token/secret and our ultimate goal of an OAuth access token/secret.

Required fields that I had to fill out were:

1. Application Name
2. Descriptions
3. Application Website
4. Application Type (I chose Client)
5. Default Access Type (I chose Read & Write)
6. ReCaptcha at the bottom.

Once accepted you’ll be directed to a page displaying your consumer key and secret, like this:

I’ve looked at a few ways to do this and the easiest that I found was by using the twitter_oauth gem. Following the README for this gem I was able to get an access token/secret pretty easily.

I’m doing all of this through IRB because there is one part where you need to open a web page and allow your twitter client to post to Twitter.

~ > irb
irb(main):001:0$ require 'rubygems'
=> true
irb(main):002:0$ require 'twitter_oauth'
=> true
irb(main):003:0$ client = TwitterOAuth::Client.new(
irb(main):004:1* :consumer_key => 'YOUR_APP_CONSUMER_KEY',
irb(main):005:1* :consumer_secret => 'YOURA_APP_CONSUMER_SECRET')
)
=> ...object output...
irb(main):005:0$ request_token = client.request_token
=> ...object output...
irb(main):006:0$ puts request_token.token, request_token.secret
=> [REQUEST_TOKEN]
=> [REQUEST_SECRET]
irb(main):007:0$ request_token.authorize_url
=> http://twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=TOKEN

Copy that url and put it into your browser of choice. When the “Deny” and “Allow” buttons become visible, click the “Allow” button. You will be presented with a numeric PIN. Copy that number into your clipboard because we’re going to use it on this final step to obtain the OAuth Access Token and Secret.

irb(main):007:0$ access_token = client.authorize(
irb(main):008:1*   request_token.token,
irb(main):009:1*   request_token.secret,
irb(main):0010:1*  :oauth_verifier => 'THE_NUMERIC_PIN_YOU_GOT_FROM_TWITTER'
irb(main):0011:1* )
=> ...object output...
irb(main):0011:0$ puts access_token.token, access_token.secret
=> [ACCESS_TOKEN]
=> [ACCESS_SECRET]
irb(main):0012:0$ client.authorized?
=> true

You now have everything you need to use the TwitterOAuth gem without having to authenticate everytime.

irb(main):0013:0$ client = TwitterOAuth::Client.new(
irb(main):0014:1*    :consumer_key => 'YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY',
irb(main):0015:1*    :consumer_secret => 'YOUR-CONSUMER-SECRET',
irb(main):0016:1*    :token => access_token.token, 
irb(main):0017:1*    :secret => access_token.secret
)
=> ...object output...
irb(main):0017:0$ client.authorized?
=> true

To tweet something after you have the client instance, just call the update method:

client.update('test tweet with OAuth')

That is how I figured out OAuth without a callback URL. Hacky, but it works.

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These are my notes from reading Scott Chacon’s Pro Git

I highly suggest buying this book if you are serious about using the Git version control tool.

pg 48

A branch in Git is simply a lightweight movable pointer

pg 50

a special pointer called HEAD…is a pointer to the local branch you’re currently on

pg 52

Creating a new branch is as quick and simple as writing 41 bytes to a file (40 characters and a newline).

pg 53

To create a branch and switch to it at the same time…git checkout command with the -b switch

pg 61

To see the last commit on each branch, you can run git branch -v

pg 69

git checkout -b [branch] [remotename]/[branch]

is the same as

git checkout --track [remotename]/[branch]

pg 81

Git protocol…listens on a dedicated port (9418)

pg 82

The Git protocol is the fastst transfer protocol available.

pg 111

The Git project provides a document that lays out a number of good tips for creating commits from which to submit patches—you can read it in the Git source code in the Documentation/SubmittingPatches file.

pg 116

git log --no-merges origin/master ^issue54

pg 121

Compare origin changes with local changes before merging:

git log origin/featureA ^feature

pg 126

git merge --no-commit --squash featureB

pg 130

git apply

It’s almost identical to running a patch -p1 command to apply the patch, although it’s more paranoid and accepts fewer fuzzy matches then patch.

pg 131

git apply --check

check to see if a patch applies cleanly before you try actually applying it

pg 134

git log contrib --not master

To find common ancestor of both branches

git merge-base contrib master

git diff [sha1 from previous command]

pg 135

git diff master...topic

shows you only the work your topic branch has introduced since its common ancestor with master.

pg 140

tagging releases with signed keys

pg 141

generating a build number with your tags

preparing a release as a tarball

pg 142

Show work by author since a specific time

git shortlog --no-merges master --not v1.0.1

pg 144

Git can figure out a short, unique abbreviation for your SHA-1 values

git log --abbrev-commit --pretty=oneline

wolves paragraph

pg 145

Find out the SHA1 of a branch

git rev-parse [branch]

pg 146

To see reflog information inline with your normal log information

git log -g master

Because reflog is a log, it will show you where the HEAD pointer was 2 months ago – if the repo is older than that

git show HEAD@{2.months.ago}

pg 147

^ is the first parent of the current commit
^2 is the second parent of the current commit (only works if the current commit is a merge commit, where first parent is the branch you on when you merged, second was the other)
~ is the first parent
~2 (or any number) is the grandparent(s) of the current commit only on the current branch or branch you were on when you merged

pg 148

Shows you any commits in your current branch that aren’t in the master branch on your origin remote

git log origin/master..HEAD

Git substitutes HEAD if one side is missing (git log origin/master..)

Just like above command and example shown on pg134

git log refB --not refA

pg 155

Tells the stash command to try to reapply the staged changes

git stash apply --index

pg 156

Create a branch from a stash, testchanges

git stash branch testchanges

pg 157

…don’t amend your last commit if you’ve already pushed it (git commit —amend command)

git rebase -i HEAD~3

Don’t include any commit you’ve already pushed to a central server—doing so will confuse other developers by providing an alternate version of the same change

pg 158

It’s important to note that these commits (interactive rebase) are listed in the opposite order (oldest first, newest last) than you normally see then using the log command (newest first).

pg 160

…make sure no commit shows up in that list (git log -4 —pretty=format:“%h %s”) that you’ve already pushed to a shared repository

pg 164

was wondering how to automate the good/bad declaration

pg 168

git submodule update
You have to do this every time you pull down a submodule change in the main projects. It’s strange, but it works.

pg 172 (subtree merging)

You want to pull the Rack project into your master project as a subdirectory

git read-tree --prefix=rack/ -u rack_branch

pg 175

global git config /etc/gitconfig
user global git config ~/.gitconfig
local repository git config .git/config

pg 182

git config --global core.autocrlf input

This setup should leave you with CRLF endings in Windows checkouts but LF endings on Mac and Linux systems and in the repository

pg 184

To tell Git to treat a specific file as binary data, add the following line to your .gitattributes file:
*.extension -crlf -diff

pg 185

…one of the most annoying problems known to humanity: version-controlling Word documents (LOL)

pg 192

post-receive hook…This scripts can’t stop the push process, but the client doesn’t disconnect until it has completed; so, be careful when you try to do anything that may take a long time

pg 194

Is practically the git log command…it prints out only the SHA-1 values and no other information

git rev-list [SHA-1]..[SHA-1]

Get the commit message from each of these commits to test

git cat-file commit [SHA-1]

Incantation:

git cat-file commit [SHA-1] | sed '1,/^$/d'

pg 196

See what files have been modified in a single commit

git log -1 --name-only --pretty=oneline:'' [SHA-1]

pg 198

anything your script prints to stdout will be transferred to the client

pg 200

Get your file listing from the staging area

git diff-index --cached --name-only HEAD

pg 224

Git is a content-addressable filesystem

hash-object (plumbing command)

pg 221

Pull the content back out of Git

git cat-file -p [SHA-1]

pg 226

Git will tell you what type of object it is [blob, tree, tag, commit]

git cat-file -t [SHA-1]

pg 231

Git compresses the new content with zlib

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