gitgud

A small, self-hosted GitHub clone written in Go. It serves real git repositories over HTTP (clone / push / pull) and provides a web UI for browsing code, opening issues, and reviewing and merging pull requests.

Features

• User registration, login, and session auth
• Public and private repositories (private repos are invisible to others — 404, not 403)
• Real git over HTTP via git http-backend (clone, push, pull) with HTTP Basic auth
• Code browsing: file tree, syntax-highlighted files, rendered README, branch switcher, commit log, and commit diffs (powered by go-git)
• Issues: per-repo numbering, comments, open/close, markdown bodies
• Pull requests: compare two branches, view the diff and commits, comment, and merge
• Flash messages, friendly 404/403/500 pages, and CSRF-protected forms

Run locally

Requirements: Go 1.25+ and the git binary on your PATH.

go run ./cmd/server          # serves http://localhost:8080
# data (SQLite db + bare repos) lands in ./data

Configuration is read from the environment (a local .env file is loaded automatically):

Variable	Example	Purpose
GITGUD_ADDR	:8080	Listen address
GITGUD_DATA_DIR	./data	Where the database and repos are stored
GITGUD_SESSION_KEY	a-random-secret	Session secret (use a random value)
GITGUD_BASE_URL	https://gitgud.ikuro.dev	External URL used in the clone instructions shown in the UI (defaults to http://localhost:8080)

Then register a user, create a repository, and follow the on-screen clone instructions:

git clone http://localhost:8080/<you>/<repo>.git
cd <repo>
echo "# <repo>" > README.md
git add README.md && git commit -m "first commit"
git push -u origin main      # prompts for your gitgud username/password

How it works

gitgud has two git surfaces — a smart-HTTP server (git http-backend via CGI) for clone/push/pull, and a go-git reader for the web browsing UI — sitting on top of a clean, layered architecture (domain / application / interface / infrastructure). See docs/00-overview.md for the full design, and the numbered files in docs/ for how each milestone was built.

Known limitations (v1)

• Git over HTTP only (no SSH)
• Pull requests are between two branches of the same repo (no forks)
• Single-node; SQLite storage; bare repos on the local filesystem