gitnamespaces(7)

NAME

   gitnamespaces - Git namespaces

SYNOPSIS

   GIT_NAMESPACE=<namespace> git upload-pack
   GIT_NAMESPACE=<namespace> git receive-pack

DESCRIPTION

   Git supports dividing the refs of a single repository into multiple
   namespaces, each of which has its own branches, tags, and HEAD. Git can
   expose each namespace as an independent repository to pull from and
   push to, while sharing the object store, and exposing all the refs to
   operations such as git-gc(1).

   Storing multiple repositories as namespaces of a single repository
   avoids storing duplicate copies of the same objects, such as when
   storing multiple branches of the same source. The alternates mechanism
   provides similar support for avoiding duplicates, but alternates do not
   prevent duplication between new objects added to the repositories
   without ongoing maintenance, while namespaces do.

   To specify a namespace, set the GIT_NAMESPACE environment variable to
   the namespace. For each ref namespace, Git stores the corresponding
   refs in a directory under refs/namespaces/. For example,
   GIT_NAMESPACE=foo will store refs under refs/namespaces/foo/. You can
   also specify namespaces via the --namespace option to git(1).

   Note that namespaces which include a / will expand to a hierarchy of
   namespaces; for example, GIT_NAMESPACE=foo/bar will store refs under
   refs/namespaces/foo/refs/namespaces/bar/. This makes paths in
   GIT_NAMESPACE behave hierarchically, so that cloning with
   GIT_NAMESPACE=foo/bar produces the same result as cloning with
   GIT_NAMESPACE=foo and cloning from that repo with GIT_NAMESPACE=bar. It
   also avoids ambiguity with strange namespace paths such as
   foo/refs/heads/, which could otherwise generate directory/file
   conflicts within the refs directory.

   git-upload-pack(1) and git-receive-pack(1) rewrite the names of refs as
   specified by GIT_NAMESPACE. git-upload-pack and git-receive-pack will
   ignore all references outside the specified namespace.

   The smart HTTP server, git-http-backend(1), will pass GIT_NAMESPACE
   through to the backend programs; see git-http-backend(1) for sample
   configuration to expose repository namespaces as repositories.

   For a simple local test, you can use git-remote-ext(1):

       git clone ext::'git --namespace=foo %s /tmp/prefixed.git'

SECURITY

   Anyone with access to any namespace within a repository can potentially
   access objects from any other namespace stored in the same repository.
   You can't directly say "give me object ABCD" if you don't have a ref to
   it, but you can do some other sneaky things like:

    1. Claiming to push ABCD, at which point the server will optimize out
       the need for you to actually send it. Now you have a ref to ABCD
       and can fetch it (claiming not to have it, of course).

    2. Requesting other refs, claiming that you have ABCD, at which point
       the server may generate deltas against ABCD.

   None of this causes a problem if you only host public repositories, or
   if everyone who may read one namespace may also read everything in
   every other namespace (for instance, if everyone in an organization has
   read permission to every repository).

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