How to use Go with a private GitLab repo

Question

GitLab is a free, open-source way to host private .git repositories but it does not seem to work with Go. When you create a project it generates a URL of the form:

git@1.2.3.4:private-developers/project.git

where:

• 1.2.3.4 is the IP address of the gitlab server
• private-developers is a user group which has access to the private repo

Golang 1.2.1 doesn't seem to understand this syntax.

go get git@1.2.3.4:private-developers/project.git

results in:

package git@23.251.148.129/project.git: unrecognized import path "git@1.2.3.4/project.git"

Is there a way to get this to work?

Answer 1

This issue is now resolved in Gitlab 8.* but is still unintuitive. The most difficult challenge indeed is go get and the following steps will allow you to overcome those:

1. Create an SSH key pair. Be sure to not overwrite an existing pair that is by default saved in ~/.ssh/.

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
   

2. Create a new Secret Variable in your Gitlab project. Use SSH_PRIVATE_KEY as Key and the content of your private key as Value.

3. Modify your .gitlab-ci.yml with a before_script.

   before_script:
     # install ssh-agent if not already installed
     - 'which ssh-agent || ( apt-get update -y && apt-get install openssh-client -y )'
     # run ssh-agent
     - eval $(ssh-agent -s)
     # add the SSH key stored in SSH_PRIVATE_KEY
     - ssh-add <(echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY")
     # for Docker builds disable host key checking
     - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
     - '[[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n\n" > ~/.ssh/config'
   

4. Add the public key from the key pair created in step 1 as a Deploy Key in the project that you need to go get.

Answer 2

For the record, this works outside of go using gitlab 7.3.2 and, as JimB has observed, can be used as a workaround. I find that i do get prompted for username/password, even though an SSH key is registered with gitlab:

git clone http://1.2.3.4/private-developers/project.git

Alternatively i can use the SSH equivalent which, since i have an SSH key registered with gitlab, avoids the prompts:

git clone git@1.2.3.4:private-developers/project.git

Neither works with go currently. A fix may be in 7.9 but i haven't had a chance to test it: upcoming bugfix

Answer 3

The way I usually do it is:

Ensure you are using SSH.

once that's done you can configure your git to use ssh instead https

If you are using Mac OX. you can run vim ~/.gitconfig and add

[url "[e-mail]:"]
insteadOf = https://gitlab.com/

once configured you can run

GOPRIVATE="gitlab.com/your_username_or_group" go get gitlab.com/name_or_group/repo_name

I hope that helps.

Answer 4

From dep version 5.2, dep supports private repositories for Gitlab private repositories.

On .netrc file, you can provide your Gitlab username and access token for accessing private repositories.

1. Create .netrc file in your $HOME directory

$ touch $HOME/.netrc

2. Edit your .netrc with your Gitlab credentials

machine gitlab.<private>.com
login <gitlab-username>
password <gitlab-access-token>

... (more private repositories if needed)

3. In your Go repository, run the dep command to resolve private packages. In this case,

$ dep ensure -v

Answer 5

Gitlab does support go get natively.

go get will issue an http request to the url you provide and look for meta tags that point to the exact source control path.

For my gitlab installation this is mygitlabdomain.com/myProject/myRepo. For you I assume this would be 1.2.3.4/private-developers/project.

Unfortunately it only appears to give the http scm path, not the ssh path, so I had to enter my credentials to clone. You can easily fiddle with the remote in your local repository after it clones if you want to update to the ssh url.

You can test the url by poking http://1.2.3.4:private-developers/project?go-get=1 and viewing source and looking for the meta tag.

Answer 6

If go get can't fetch the repo, you can always do the initial clone with git directly:

git clone git@gitlab:private-developers/project.git $GOPATH/src/gitlab/private-developers/project

The tools will then work normally, expect for go get -u which will require the -f flag because the git remote doesn't match the canonical import path.