git-mdiff

Git-mdiff is a web-hook service based on gitdub. Gitdub is a github web-hook that converts a changeset pushed into one email per change via git-notifier. Beyond gitdub, git-mdiff also supports BitBucket. It sends out detailed diffs for each push on GitHub or BitBucket repositories.

Another mod version, git-mdiff+, is based on REST APIs of GitHub and BitBucket. It does not rely on git-notifier but requires an application password/token generated from the websites.

Setup

Dependencies

• git (>= 1.7.12)
• Ruby (>= v1.9)
• gem install sinatra
• git-notifier (master branch required)

The following packages are required to run git-notifier:

• pip install pygithub
• sendmail (requires port 25 or 587 by default)
• add /path/to/git-notifier to $PATH

Installation

1. add /path/to/gitmdf to $PATH
2. cp config.yml.example config.yml
3. gitmdf config.yml

Integration with GitHub

1. Navigate to a repository you own, e.g., https://github.com/user/repo
2. Click on Settings in the right sidebar
3. Click on Webhooks & Services in the left sidebar
4. Click on Add Webhook
5. Enter the URL to reach gitmdf, e.g., http://gitmdf.mydomain.com:8888/
6. Set the content type to application/x-www-from-urlencoded
7. Select the radio button Just the push event
8. Click on the green Add Webhook button

Integration with GitHub

1. Similar to GitHub. Only support PUSH trigger.

Protocols

If ssh-key is required to visit the repository, please generate a key to GitHub or BitBucket first.

Customizing

The YAML configuration file contains the list of repositories that gitdub tracks. The first section (gitdub:) specifies global options, such as the interfaces gitdub should bind to and ports to listen on. Moreover, you can control the behavior of the first chunk of data. When setting silent_init: to true, gitdub will only fast-forward to the current commit and begin mailing diffs after the next push (or after hitting the Test Hook button). Otherwise gitdub sends exactly one email per commit since the first commit in the repository.

The second section (notifier:) describes the behavior of git-notifier. Here you can the configure a global sender of the emails (from:), the receivers (to:), and the prefix of the email subject (subject:).

The third section (github:) contains a list of github repository entries, where each entry must at least contain an id field. If an item does not contain any further options, the globals from the notifier section apply. However, in most cases it makes sense to override the globals with repository-specific information, e.g.:

notifier:
  # The email sender. (Can be overriden for each repository.)
  from: 'Sam Sender <foo@host.com>'

  # The email subject prefix. (Can be overriden for each repository.)
  subject: '[git]'

github:
  - id: mavam/gitdub
    subject: '[git/gitdub]'    # Overrides global '[git]' subject prefix.
    from: vallentin@icir.org   # Overrides global sender.
    to: [vallentin@icir.org]   # Overrides global receivers.

  - id: mavam/.*
    from: mavam                # Overrides global sender.

Note the regular expression in the second entry. This enables the configuration of entire sets of repositories. Since gitdub processes the list sequentially in order of definition, only settings from the first match apply. For example, appending an entry for mavam/foo would never match.

Restricting Access

To prevent unauthorized access to the service, you can restrict the set of allowed source IP addresses to github addresses, e.g., via iptables:

iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp \
    -s 207.97.227.253,50.57.128.197,108.171.174.178 --dport 42042 -j ACCEPT

If that's not an option on your machine, you can also perform application-layer filtering in gitdub by setting the following configuration option:

allowed_sources: [207.97.227.253, 50.57.128.197, 108.171.174.178]

Sendmail by Gmail

I personally use Gmail for sending commit emails to avoid setting up the email server by myself. To configure Gmail as the sendmail email relay, please reference Configuring Gmail as a Sendmail email relay. If you got the 5.5.1 Authentication Required error, please enable the less secure apps and allow access from a different timezone/IP.

Licence

Gitdub comes with a BSD license, please see COPYING for details. Git-mdiff follows the same license.