Re: [PATCH] gnu: service: Add git-service.

[Andy Wingo]

On Tue 30 Aug 2016 13:45, ng0 <address@hidden> writes:

>>I also think that "path" might
>> not be the right word, which in GNU manuals is only used for search
>> paths.  See the "GNU Manuals" section of standards.texi for more.
>> Anyway I suggest #:base-directory.  Make sure the port is an integer and
>> not a string.
>
> See 'man git daemon'.

I ran this and it did not work -- first showed me a page for git then
for daemon.  I believe you want "man git-daemon"?

> The switch is called --base-path.  Looking at the openrc conf.d/git or
> what the config file was called again, they stick to this name too.
> It would just cause confusion if we go ahead and call it differently.
> Upstream should be fixed, but I'm not going there.  If you think we
> should break expectations, I can rename it.

"Fixing" upstream is out of our remit :)  All I can ask is that we do
not introduce new uses of the word "path".

>>> +Return a service to run the @uref{https://git-scm.com, git} daemon version 
>>> control
>>> +daemon.
>>
>> Extra "daemon" here.  Probably needs a sentence on what running the
>> daemon will do (namely, expose local repositories for remote access).
>>
>> What about authentication?  Is this purely anonymous?
>
> Exactly, authentication is handled via other daemons, for example ssh or
> gitolite. git daemon supports no authentication and is read-only, as far
> as I know. At the servers I use and setup, I pull via
> git://,http://,https:// and push via ssh.
> Its selfdescription is:
> git-daemon - A really simple server for Git repositories.

This needs to be documented in the manual, is what I was getting at :)
Mention that this is for anonymous read-only access please.

>>Use "file name" instead of path in general.
>
> Why?

It is because it is standard in the GNU project.  I mentioned this
before.  See "info standards" and go to "GNU manuals".

>>> +Furthermore it takes the parameter @var{port} which defaults to 9418.
>>> +Run @command{man git daemon} for information about the options.
>>
>> This man command does not work.
>
> Works for me. As far as I know man pages were merged into git package
> recently. When I run this on debian with guix, 'man git daemon' works
> too.

It does not work for me on NixOS with Guix.  Maybe I am out of date
though.

>>> +(define %git-accounts
>>> +  ;; User account and groups for git-daemon.
>>> +  ;; We can give it git-shell for now, otherwise we can switch to /bin/sh.
>>
>> What does this comment mean?  Why would we switch?
>
> I am not sure about the limitations of git-shell compared to
> /bin/sh. If this turns out to be a mistake, it can be corrected. The
> only thing I know about git-shell is that it allows no logins.

If you do not want a login then probably what you want is
#~(string-append #$shadow "/sbin/nologin").

Andy