forge is a small self hosted git server in Go modelled on the browsing side of sourcehut. It serves repositories over ssh and smart https, renders trees, blobs, logs, diffs, refs and READMEs as server side HTML, and keeps users, profiles, keys, tokens and repository metadata in a single SQLite file. Source is highlighted with chroma, Markdown is rendered with goldmark and sanitised with bluemonday, and LaTeX in Markdown is typeset in the browser by a bundled KaTeX, which is the only JavaScript a reader ever loads.
Build
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -ldflags='-s -w' -o forge .
The SQLite driver is the pure Go modernc port, so the binary is static and copies to the server as one file next to a system git.
Usage
forge -root /srv/forge serve -listen 127.0.0.1:3200 -host git.example.org
forge -root /srv/forge invite
The data directory holds forge.db and a repos/<user>/<name>.git tree of bare repositories. Registration needs a single use invite from the second command unless serve is given -open. Clone URLs take the sourcehut shape https://host/~user/repo and git@host:~user/repo, with the .git suffix optional.
Every read of git data shells out to the plumbing with a 30 second timeout rather than parsing packfiles in process. Tree listings use ls-tree -l, history uses log with a NUL separated format, and commit pages parse the unified output of diff-tree -p --root -M into hunks for rendering. This keeps the server stateless and lets large repositories inherit git's own performance, at the cost of one process spawn per page section.
SSH
Pushes over ssh reuse the host sshd. Point AuthorizedKeysCommand for the git user at forge -root /srv/forge keys %u %h %t %k, which looks the presented key up by SHA256 fingerprint and answers with a forced command of forge shell <user>. That forced command reads SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND, checks ownership and visibility against the database, and execs git upload-pack or git receive-pack directly, so nothing stays resident between connections. The lookup opens the database read only and runs as root, while the forced command runs as the git user who owns the repositories.
HTTPS
Anonymous clients may fetch public repositories. Private repositories and all pushes require basic auth with either the account password or an access token created in settings. Token hashes are stored as SHA256, passwords as bcrypt. The web forms rely on the standard library cross origin protection, so a POST without a same origin Sec-Fetch-Site or Origin header from a browser is refused while non browser git clients pass.
Profiles
Each user has a bio, location, workplace, website and an avatar. Avatar uploads are decoded on the server, cropped to the square the settings page chose with a small canvas script, resampled to 256 pixels and stored as PNG, so the served image never contains the original file's metadata or dimensions. Without JavaScript the crop falls back to the centred square.
Pull requests
Any account can fork a public repository, which runs a local bare clone, and open a pull request from a branch of the target repository or of their own fork. Creating the request fetches the source branch into refs/pull/N/head of the target, so the diff, commit list and mergeability are computed inside one repository with merge-base, diff and merge-tree --write-tree. Merging builds the merge commit with commit-tree and advances the branch with a compare and swap update-ref, so no working tree is ever checked out and a concurrent push makes the merge fail cleanly rather than clobber. Discussion is a flat list of Markdown comments. Repositories also carry a visibility of public, unlisted or private and up to three tags, which the /projects page searches and sorts by last push time taken from ref mtimes.
Limitations
There is no search, no collaborators beyond the owner and no disk quota, so a pushed repository is bounded only by the nginx body limit and free space. Login, registration and https basic auth share a per address failure counter of ten misses per five minutes, which nginx must feed through X-Forwarded-For. Blobs over 1 MiB are not rendered and over 64 MiB are not served raw. Pull requests have no inline review comments, no required reviews and no rebase or squash strategies, only a merge commit.