Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Adam Nielsen]

Hi all,

I'm attemping to learn Git but I've gotten stuck trying to configure a 
server to host my repositories.

I would like to be able to do this:

   git clone ssh://myserver/project.git
   git push

And have it work, but I keep getting errors about "/project.git" not 
existing in the root directory of my server.  (Which is correct, they 
are stored elsewhere.)

The only documentation I could find about mapping a deep path to a 
"pretty" URL like this was in git-push(1) which stated I should add 
something like the following to a "config file".  I'm guessing it means 
/etc/gitconfig on the server.

[url "ssh://myserver/path/to/repos/"]
   insteadOf myserver:

I'm a bit confused about where the colon comes into it, if I use that on 
the command line I get errors about resolving domain names.  I've tried 
many variations of the insteadOf line ("ssh://myserver/", "myserver:/", 
"myserver/" etc.) but none of them make any difference.  I don't even 
know if this file is being used.

Any pointers about how this URL mapping can be set up?

Many thanks,
Adam.

(Please CC)

Re: Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Johannes Sixt]

Adam Nielsen schrieb:
> I would like to be able to do this:
> 
>   git clone ssh://myserver/project.git
>   git push
> 
> And have it work, but I keep getting errors about "/project.git" not
> existing in the root directory of my server.  (Which is correct, they
> are stored elsewhere.)

This form of URL can only accept the absolute path to project.git on
myserver, eg.:

   ssh://myserver/home/adam/project.git

-- Hannes

Re: Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Junio C Hamano]

Adam Nielsen <adam.nielsen@uq.edu.au> writes:

> I'm attemping to learn Git but I've gotten stuck trying to configure a
> server to host my repositories.
> ...
> [url "ssh://myserver/path/to/repos/"]
>   insteadOf myserver:

url.*.insteadOf is a configuration done on the _client_, i.e. the one that
you run "git clone", "git fetch", "git push", etc. on. 

	$ cat >>$HOME/.gitconfig <<\EOF
        [url "ssh://myserver/path/to/repos/"]
        	insteadOf = myserver://
	EOF
        $ git clone myserver://project.git

In any case, "attempting to learn Git" doesn't mix well with use of
"insteadOf" to me.  If you know /path/to/repos/project.git is what you
want to access, any "attempting to learn Git" person would do more
straight-forward "git clone ssh://myserver/path/to/repos/project.git", or
"git clone myserver:/path/to/repos/project.git" which is even better (it
is shorter to type and is a more natural form to spell ssh transport).

;-)

Re: Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Adam Nielsen]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies!

> In any case, "attempting to learn Git" doesn't mix well with use of
> "insteadOf" to me.  If you know /path/to/repos/project.git is what you
> want to access, any "attempting to learn Git" person would do more
> straight-forward "git clone ssh://myserver/path/to/repos/project.git", or
> "git clone myserver:/path/to/repos/project.git" which is even better (it
> is shorter to type and is a more natural form to spell ssh transport).

Jumping in the deep end is a valid method of learning :-)  Does that 
mean anyone using my repositories really needs to know exactly where on 
the server I choose to keep them?  Something like "git clone 
myserver:/mnt/raid/nightly-backedup/public/repositories/git/project.git" 
isn't particularly friendly.  (It's something that bugs me with NFS as 
well.)  What happens if I want to move the repositories to another area 
on the server?  Do all users have to update their local copies with a 
new origin address?

Is there any hacky way that this could be made to work?  I guess I could 
symlink my repository directory to /git, then myserver:/git/project.git 
might work.

What actually happens when you use the ssh:// style connection? 
git-daemon has a --base-path option which solves this issue for git:// 
URLs, so do ssh:// URLs not use the git protocol at all?  What is 
git+ssh://?  Does that SSH to the machine and then connect to git-daemon 
via localhost?  Because that would presumably make use of --base-path.

Thanks again,
Adam.

Re: Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Junio C Hamano]

Adam Nielsen <adam.nielsen@uq.edu.au> writes:

> What actually happens when you use the ssh:// style connection?

Be it ssh://host/full/path or host:/full/path or host:path/in/home, you
log in as whatver ssh identifies you as to the server, and start a
server-side git process over there.

With ssh://host/path notation, there is no way to specify any relative
path (i.e. "/path" part begins at root) so it will mean the same thing for
everybody (unless you are getting chrooted or something), while host:path
notation allows relative path which will be taken relative as where you
are, i.e. home directory of the user on the server.

Re: Unable to get "pretty" URL aliases working

[Adam Nielsen]

>> What actually happens when you use the ssh:// style connection?
> 
> Be it ssh://host/full/path or host:/full/path or host:path/in/home, you
> log in as whatver ssh identifies you as to the server, and start a
> server-side git process over there.

Ah ok, that makes more sense.  Strange then if it's a server-side git 
process that it ignores the server's /etc/gitconfig where aliases can be 
set up.

> With ssh://host/path notation, there is no way to specify any relative
> path (i.e. "/path" part begins at root) so it will mean the same thing for
> everybody (unless you are getting chrooted or something), while host:path
> notation allows relative path which will be taken relative as where you
> are, i.e. home directory of the user on the server.

In that case I symlinked my repository folder to /git so that SSH users 
can "cd /git/project.git" and this seems to work well.  I can now use 
git URLs like ssh://server/git/project.git even though the repos are 
buried much deeper down in the tree.

Thanks for the explanations!

Cheers,
Adam.