Gitolite provides access to several Gitolite users, using only one actual user ID on the server. Before we start installing and setting up Gitolite, it's useful to have some knowledge of what is actually going on behind the scenes and how this is achieved.

Gitolite uses one Unix user called the hosting user to provide repository access to many Gitolite users. The hosting user can be any valid user on the system, though by convention it is either git or gitolite. This is the only user ID that is used by Gitolite on the server, and it is within the home directory of this user that Gitolite places its files, its own configuration, as well as the repositories it manages.

Gitolite can support thousands of Gitolite users on one server. These users are not real users as far as the server operating system is concerned, and they do not get access to the shell command line on the server. A Gitolite user does, however, get access to some of the repositories on the...