Redmine

h1. HowTo: Easily integrate a (SSH secured) GIT repository into redmine

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h2. Scope

This HowTo will show how to integrate a GIT repository to your redmine project and how to keep the repository up to date.

h2. Prerequisites

* The owner of your redmine-directory needs an SSH-Key and (reading) access to the repository you want to integrate in redmine.

* A directory to clone the GIT-repository is needed.

* Redmine must find the GIT-binaries, that means GIT must be installed. You can check this in redmine in the "administration > repositories" settings. If there is green checkmark everything is fine. If not you have to install GIT first, e.g. via "apt-get install"

h3. Example configuration

To better understand this HowTo I will use the following configuration

* My owner of redmine is called "redmine"

* My redmine main directory is "/var/lib/redmine" and I will create a subdirectory "repos" there, where I clone the repositories. So the full path of this directory is "/var/lib/redmine/repos/"

* The URL of my repo is "git.my-url.com", the name "my_repo", so full URL is "git@git.my-url.com:my_repo"

h2. Step 1: Clone the repositories

First we need to clone the repository as a *MIRROR* (not BARE!) repository. A mirror repository has no workfiles but only the commit information what is all we need for redmine.

We switch to redmine-user and clone the repository into the choosen directory.

<pre>

sudo -su redmine

cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/

git clone --mirror git@git.my-url.com:my_repo my_repo

</pre>

Now all repository information are on disk, but redmine don't knows anything about that. So in the next step we will change this.

h2. Step 2: Introduce the repository to redmine

Inside redmine we open the "administration > project -> repositories" dialog. You can access this dialog also via "project -> settings -> repositories". There we add a new repository

<pre>

Type: GIT

Main-repository: check this if the cloned repository is you main repository, if not leave it unchecked.

Name (redmine intern): I suggest to choose the same name as the repository, e.g. "my_repo"

Path: Absolute path of the repository, e.g. "/var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo"

</pre>

Now redmine knows the repository. If you open the "repository"-tab inside your project you will see the repository tree, last commits and so on.

*Note*: When you open the dialog redmine fetchs all changeset *the local repository and the redmine database* since the last time anyone opend this dialog. Especially opening the dialog for the first time of a large repository may take very long. Don't cancel the progress, just let redmine work until it has finished. *Possible Fallacy*: When opening the dialog redmine *DOESN'T* fetch new commits out of GIT! This means that you will never see new commits inside redmine if you don't update the local GIT repository. For that we will write a cronjob in step 3.

h2. Step 3: Adding a cronjob to fetch the GIT-repository

To keep the GIT repository automatically up to date we will add a cronjob.

We open the user specified crontab for the user "redmine" and add a cronjob to fetch all branches every five minutes.

<pre>

sudo crontab -e -u redmine

*/5 * * * * cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo && git remote update

</pre>

Alternatively we can directly edit the "/etc/crontab"-file. If we do this we have to add the username of the repository-owner who should execute the commands.

<pre>

nano /etc/crontab

*/5 * * * * redmine cd /var/lib/redmine/repos/my_repo && git fetch --all

</pre>

*NOTE* If you clone multiple repositories you have to add a crontab-line for every repository.