A simple Git LFS server implementation in Dart

Overview

Git Large File Storage (LFS) is a free, open-source extension that replaces large files with text pointers inside Git and stores the contents of those files on a remote server.
— GitHub Training & Guides

Git LFS protocol requires a Git server that supports LFS, and a Git LFS client. There is only one official open-source LFS client. But there are several LFS server implementations. This implementation provides a simple solution that works with Git mirrors.

An example that this implementation can be used for

Your team has a (LFS) repo at GitHub (which supports LFS). That repo contains very large file(s) so you mirror it to your local machine to share with your team to save bandwidth. Your teammates can clone/fetch/pull from your local machine instead of GitHub. The problem is git lfs always fails to fetch the file. You run git lfs fetch --all on the mirror but it doesn’t solve the problem. That’s because your machine doesn’t have a Git LFS server. So this implementation now comes in handy. Just install, run it, then your teammates can clone/fetch/pull from your local machine, with LFS. Note that this implementation only supports download operations, i.e. git lfs fetch. You cannot upload files, i.e. git lfs push.

Installing

Dependencies

• Dart SDK: git-lfs-server is a Dart package so it needs this to execute.
  • Ubuntu: sudo snap install flutter
  • MacOS: brew install flutter
• pwgen: git-lfs-server needs this to generate a random authentication code.
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install pwgen
  • MacOS: brew install pwgen
• Git LFS: you need to fetch large files from original remote manually.
  • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install git-lfs
  • MacOS: brew install git-lfs

From source

dart pub global activate --source git https://github.com/khoa-io/git-lfs-server.git

Docker

TODO

Usage

Configure HTTPS

• Server:
  • Generate a key pair: openssl req -x509 -sha256 -nodes -days 2100 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout mine.key -out mine.crt
  • Convert the key pair to a PEM file: openssl x509 -in mine.crt -out mine.pem
• Client: modify ~/.gitconfig

[http "https://address:port"]
	sslverify = false

Environment Variables

The git-lfs-server needs some environment variables in order to run:

• GIT_LFS_SERVER_URL: The URL of the git-lfs-server, for example: http://localhost:8080.
• GIT_LFS_EXPIRES_IN: The number of seconds after which the server will expire the file object, for example 86400.
• GIT_LFS_SERVER_CERT: The path to the certificate file, for example mine.crt.
• GIT_LFS_SERVER_KEY: The path to the key file, for example mine.key.
• GIT_LFS_AUTHENTICATE_TRACE: Controls logging of git-lfs-authenticate command.
• GIT_LFS_SERVER_TRACE: Controls logging of git-lfs-server command.
• GIT_LFS_AUTH_SERVICE_TRACE: Controls logging of auth-service.
• GIT_LFS_HTTP_SERVER_TRACE: Controls logging of the http-server.

Developing

Check out DEVELOPING.md

GitHub

View Github