HowTo Easily integrate a (SSH secured) GIT repository into redmine » History » Revision 2
Revision 1 (Matthias B., 2013-05-16 14:06) → Revision 2/7 (Jeff Fendley, 2016-02-11 18:06)
h1. HowTo: Easily integrate a (SSH secured) GIT repository into redmine
{{>TOC}}
h2. Scope
This HowTo will show how to integrate a GIT repository to your redmine project and how to keep the repository up to date.
h2. Prerequisites
* The owner of your redmine-directory needs an SSH-Key and (reading) access to the repository you want to integrate in redmine.
* A directory to clone the GIT-repository is needed.
* Redmine must find the GIT-binaries, that means GIT must be installed. You can check this in redmine in the "administration > repositories" settings. If there is green checkmark everything is fine. If not you have to install GIT first, e.g. via "apt-get install"
h3. Example configuration
To better understand this HowTo I will use the following configuration
* My owner of redmine is called "redmine"
* My redmine main directory is "/var/lib/redmine" and I will create a subdirectory "repos" there, where I clone the repositories. So the full path of this directory is "/var/lib/redmine/repos/"
* The URL of my repo is "git.my-url.com", the name "my_repo", so full URL is "git@git.my-url.com:my_repo"
h2. Step 1: Clone the repositories
First we need to clone the repository as a *MIRROR* (not BARE!) repository. A mirror repository has no workfiles but only the commit information what is all we need for redmine.
We switch to redmine-user and clone the repository into the choosen directory.
<pre>
sudo -su redmine
cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/
git clone --mirror git@git.my-url.com:my_repo my_repo
</pre>
Now all repository information are on disk, but redmine don't knows anything about that. So in the next step we will change this.
h2. Step 2: Introduce the repository to redmine
Inside redmine we open the "administration > project -> repositories" dialog. You can access this dialog also via "project -> settings -> repositories". There we add a new repository
<pre>
Type: GIT
Main-repository: check this if the cloned repository is you main repository, if not leave it unchecked.
Name (redmine intern): I suggest to choose the same name as the repository, e.g. "my_repo"
Path: Absolute path of the repository, e.g. "/var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo"
</pre>
Now redmine knows the repository. If you open the "repository"-tab inside your project you will see the repository tree, last commits and so on.
*Note*: When you open the dialog redmine fetchs all changeset *the local repository and the redmine database* since the last time anyone opend this dialog. Especially opening the dialog for the first time of a large repository may take very long. Don't cancel the progress, just let redmine work until it has finished. *Possible Fallacy*: When opening the dialog redmine *DOESN'T* fetch new commits out of GIT! This means that you will never see new commits inside redmine if you don't update the local GIT repository. For that we will write a cronjob in step 3.
h2. Step 3: Adding a cronjob to fetch the GIT-repository
To keep the GIT repository automatically up to date we will add a cronjob. With the "--all" parameter we define to fetch all branches.
We open the user specified crontab for the user "redmine" and add a cronjob to fetch all branches every five minutes.
<pre>
sudo crontab -e -u redmine
*/5 * * * * cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo && git fetch --all
</pre>
Alternatively we can directly edit the "/etc/crontab"-file. If we do this we have to add the username of the repository-owner who should execute the commands.
<pre>
nano /etc/crontab
*/5 * * * * redmine cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo && git fetch --all
</pre>
*NOTE* If you clone multiple repositories you have to add a crontab-line for every repository.