Git with authentication but without ssh

Question

I have the project to set up a git server for my school with a web interface to create repositories and display them. This web part will be handled by Django, which knows the users. Now the problem: I want authentication to pull and push private repositories but I can't use SSH to handle that part (the IT guys don't want to do support on that). The HTTP protocol is read-only without "complexe WebDAV" (according to the official doc) and use .htaccess as authentication. The problem with .htaccess is to manage them with Django: I tried to use a Django user's hash in it but it didn't work. And, finally, the Git protocol is read-write but it lacks authentication. Summing up: - I want authentication linked with Django's users database. (To avoid having multiple places with same data) - No SSH - Avoid WebDAV and .htaccess With these constraints I found that rewriting the git daemon (code on github) to handle authentication would be an idea but I don't know for sure how a Git client would rea…

Accepted Answer

You could setup an Apache server (even one with https like I do in my config!), except you would ask your wsgi application to handle the authentication.

See "Access Control Mechanisms", in the mod_wsgi:

```
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Top Secret"
AuthBasicProvider wsgi
WSGIAuthUserScript /usr/local/wsgi/scripts/auth.wsgi
Require valid-user
```

The auth.wsgi script can check the credentials against your Django users database.

That solution means calling the `git-http-backend` (smart http transport), which is ore efficient than WebDAV.

Git with authentication but without ssh

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