Creating and using a git mirror 

This is an example of how to create a git mirror using git’s git-http-backend and lighttpd .

Prerequisites 

You will need git installed, and git-http-backend must be present. It is assumed that the git-http-backend binary exists at /usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend .

You will need lighttpd installed, and at the bare minimum has the modules mod_alias , mod_cgi , and mod_setenv .

I will be using gnome-modulesets as an example, which can be cloned from http://gnome7.codethink.co.uk/gnome-modulesets.git .

Starting a git http server 

1. Set up a directory containing mirrors 

Choose a suitable directory to hold your mirrors, e.g. /var/www/git .

Place the git repositories you want to use as mirrors in the mirror dir, e.g. git clone --mirror http://git.gnome.org/browse/yelp-xsl /var/www/git/yelp-xsl.git .

2. Configure lighttpd 

Write out a lighttpd.conf as follows:

server.document-root = "/var/www/git/"
server.port = 3000
server.modules = (
     "mod_alias",
     "mod_cgi",
     "mod_setenv",
alias.url += ( "/git" => "/usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend" )
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/git" {
     cgi.assign = ("" => "")
     setenv.add-environment = (
             "GIT_PROJECT_ROOT" => "/var/www/git",
             "GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL" => ""
If you have your mirrors in another directory, replace /var/www/git/ with that directory.
3. Start lighttpd
lighttpd can be invoked with the command-line lighttpd -D -f lighttpd.conf.
4. Test that you can fetch from it
We can then clone the mirrored repo using git via http with
git clone http://127.0.0.1:3000/git/yelp-xsl.
If you have set server.port to something other than the default, you will
need to replace the ‘3000’ in the command-line.
5. Configure the project to use the mirror
To add this local http server as a mirror, add the following to the project.conf:
mirrors:
- name: local-mirror
  aliases:
    git_gnome_org:
    - http://127.0.0.1:3000/git/
6. Test that the mirror works
We can make buildstream use the mirror by setting the alias to an invalid URL, e.g.
aliases:
  git_gnome_org: https://www.example.com/invalid/url/
Now, if you build an element that uses the source you placed in the mirror
(e.g. bst build core-deps/yelp-xsl.bst), you will see that it uses your mirror.
Bonus: lighttpd conf for git and tar
For those who have also used the tar-mirror tutorial,
a combined lighttpd.conf is below:
server.document-root = "/var/www/"
server.port = 3000
server.modules = (
        "mod_alias",
        "mod_cgi",
        "mod_setenv",
alias.url += ( "/git" => "/usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend" )
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/git" {
        cgi.assign = ("" => "")
        setenv.add-environment = (
                "GIT_PROJECT_ROOT" => "/var/www/git",
                "GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL" => ""
} else $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/tar" {
        dir-listing.activate = "enable"
Further reading
If this mirror isn’t being used exclusively in a secure network, it is strongly
recommended you use SSL.
This is the bare minimum required to set up a git mirror. A large, public project
would prefer to set it up using the
git protocol,
and a security-conscious project would be configured to use
git over SSH.
Lighttpd is documented on its wiki.