I have been asked more and more these days, "How do I host a Git repository?" Usually it is assumed that some access control beyond simply read-only is involved (some users have commit rights). With access control comes issues of security, and that's a whole other bag of cats. This post is about presenting an answer to this question, without the fuss.

The rest of this article will be a tutorial showing you how to host and manage Git repositories with access control, easily and safely. I use an up and coming tool called gitosis that my friend Tv wrote to help make hosting git repos easier and safer. It manages multiple repositories under one user account, using SSH keys to identify users. However, users do *not* need shell accounts on the server, instead they will talk to one shared account that does not allow arbitrary commands. Git itself is used to setup gitosis and manage the Git repos, which pleases the recursion-seeking orthogonal CS-side of my brain.

Assumptions: I take my examples from a Ubuntu Linux server. While I haven't tested other systems, I imagine different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OS X, etc... would be similar. Gitosis is written in Python, so you should have a copy of Python installed as well.

Enough talk, let's get down and dirty.