Why?

With git it is really easy to manage project code and track all file changes. However, when it comes to collaboration, i.e. development of certain application together with a group of people,
it is much more preferable to store code in a centralized way. I really like how Github is organized and how convenient it is.
Unfortunately, in order to have locally hosted Github environment one has to have quite big development team and stable source of revenue ( because price is not so cheap ).
That’s where another project Gitlab can be a lifesaver.

Gitlab?

In past I’ve checked project several times, but it was in it’s early state of development and it was also very difficult to set it up at the moment. However, not so long ago all this changed.
For some people it would be a bit challenging, but installing Gitlab ( on a clean system at least ) became much-much easier.

How it looks and what it offers one can check here: demo.gitlab.com

Small challenge

Gitlab supports Ubuntu Linux and Debian GNU/Linux, thus I wanted to try installing it on FreeBSD system ( FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE amd64 ).

Generally, instructions provided quite clear. Of course
not all steps can be applied to FreeBSD, thus I’ve made necessary changes:
• apt-get steps was replaced by corresponding equivalent of -> cd /usr/ports/%some_path_to_package% && sudo make config-recursive install clean
• when creating user, instead of –disabled-login parameter use extra command after creating git user -> sudo pw mod user git -w no
• to manage ruby and gems I’ve installed rvm multi-user (more about rvm)

I was unable to find any Gitlab init scripts for FreeBSD, I decided to write my own one. Gitlab also has tests to check whether everything was properly installed.
I found that they check mainly for the Linux environment (it is supported 🙂 ), hence they always will fail on the FreeBSD system.

For those who are interested in installing Gitlab on FreeBSD, I have shared adjustments I’ve written on a Github 🙂

Gitlab init script for FreeBSD
Patches for rake tests

As usual, use them at your own risk and please let me know if you find bugs:)