HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is anyone using any headless Git service?

4 points by Existenceblinks ↗ HN
Basically an api server for git, like Github API without public facing stuff (also excluding endpoints for its public facing stuff like issues/pull requests etc), only git related endpoints.

I believe there should be at least one .. but I didn't find any. Only found self-hosted git even though some have api.

So I think you know what I mean by "headless".

11 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] thread
pmontra
Not sure if it's what you're looking for but I self host gitolite on a VPS. Access and auth control is via ssh keys on its user on the server and its script there. Administration is via a git push. There are only git repos, no GUI. Git is the API.
Existenceblinks
I just look into the gitolite but it doesn't have API. To clarify, what I mean is REST style API via http.
notwokeno
Does git actually let you push over http? I'd imagine that's the same as using ssh/sftp just with WebDAV. If it's the same just create a bare repo in a directory your web server has access to.
Existenceblinks
I haven't looked into it but I don't think it's enough to build app on top. Otherwise there wouldn't be a bunch of libgit2 binding. Github is basically building around libgit2 (Rugged) and some of its custom stuff + collaboration UI. It's quite surprising no one has ever built libgit2 as a api service .. yet.
pmontra
So maybe Gitea is what you are looking for. It can be self hosted and they have an API. Links to the documentation from here

https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/api-usage/

It's not headless but maybe there is a way to shut down the HTML interface. But probably the same could be said of GitLab.

pkd
Something like the Gitea API? https://try.gitea.io/api/swagger

I don't know if you can run it purely headless.

Existenceblinks
No. Something like this: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/git/trees?apiVersion=2022-11...
pkd
I actually don't see what's special with that compared to any other API. Here's the analogous endpoint from the Gitea API docs: https://try.gitea.io/api/swagger#/repository/GetTree
Existenceblinks
True. Though I mean it's not specially git api. There are just a few endpoints. And somewhat tie to the service's db such as branch. It's like a afterthought of ui centric.
cdaringe
ssh myserver -c “git init” && git remote add origin git@myserver && git push origin HEAD.

headless git is just ssh to a sever with an associated repository, ya?

What else do you need?