Give access to certain parts of a repo?

Question

I am using github for my web design team currently to store our projects. We have a micro account and will soon be needing to upgrade. I find it silly that we should need to keep adding more repos though when we finish a project we probably won't be using the repo much anymore. Maybe a bug fix or two here and there.

I was wondering if it was possible to create 1 master repo for my team which I could then split into sub-folders and give access to folders based on who is working on that project.

If I cannot do this then how difficult is it to setup my own git server somewhere? In addition how difficult is it to setup some GUI for my less experienced team members to use?

Thanks for any inforamtion.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 28 '13 at 17:10

I was wondering if it was possible to create 1 master repo for my team which I could then split into sub-folders and give access to folders based on who is working on that project.

No, this isn't how Git works. It's specifically designed not to work this way. One project per repo is the way to go, regardless of how "silly" you think this is. "Sane content boundaries" are the words you should live by.

It's trivially easy to create your own server for Git repositories. If that's your only worry, throw a Linux box on your network and start giving people SSH access. There are also 3rd party GitHub-like services like Gitorious you can install on the same box to provide a web-based front-end.

The presence/lack of a GUI has nothing to do with how your repositories are hosted.

I have a similar need, but instead to keep only binaries available to external parties, while keeping the source code private. I guess the only way to do this is with some githooks to move the binaries to another repo that has external parties permissions set up. Or set up a private dependency registry, but that is a lot of work :( — Hoffmann, Jun 19 '18 at 09:51

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 19 '18 at 07:16

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I don't believe you can provide access on only one part of a repo.

Setting up your own git server isn't difficult providing you have reasonable knowledge of git and Linux. There are plenty of tutorials for this if you search for them. Alternatively, have a look at something like Redmine or Gitlab which are both free to use and provide web interfaces.

edited Nov 19 '18 at 07:16

vgoff

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answered Mar 28 '13 at 17:00

chrisbulmer

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

You can't keep many projects under the same repository. You could use sub-modules but they still need as many git repositories. I'm afraid there is no workaround on that (unless you cram all your projects in one repository and tell people to be careful, but that's not really wise).

It's very easy to set up a git server. Since every copy of the repository is self-sufficient, each computer that has a copy of the repository is practically almost a git server. You need to take care of two things though:

Setup ssh on the server. There should be plenty of material online regarding this.
Make a bare copy of your repository on the server. See this question for example.

Finally, any git gui out there that you find and you like can be easily made to work with your server. When you tell the software where your repository is, github or personal server are equally simple. They are both just simple URLs.

Give access to certain parts of a repo?

3 Answers3