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Virtual Git Server

A C# library that turns your .NET application into a git server for your own data. Users clone, fetch and push with the regular git client, while every request is answered from your data model (a database, a blob store, an API, ...) - with no repository on disk and no git binary on the server.

var git = GitServer.Create()
                   .Repository(new DocumentRepository());

await Host.Create()
          .Handler(git)
          .RunAsync();

git clone http://localhost:8080/ documents

How it fits in

The library is distributed as the NuGet package GenHTTP.Modules.Git. It is a module for GenHTTP, a lightweight, embeddable web server framework for .NET: the module provides a request handler that speaks git's smart HTTP protocol, and you decide where in your web application it lives.

  • In a GenHTTP application, the handler is added to the server like any other content, either on its own or next to websites, APIs and files. See Getting Started.
  • In an ASP.NET Core application, an adapter maps the handler to a path of your existing WebApplication. See ASP.NET Core.

In both cases, your code describes the repository (branches, commits and files) and decides what to do with pushes, while the module handles the git protocol.

Why?

Git is the interface developers, CI pipelines and coding agents already know. If your application manages versioned content (documents, configurations, small apps, snippets), offering it via git removes the need for custom sync tools: users clone it, edit it with their favorite tools and push their changes back.

Hosting real repositories for this means keeping two sources of truth in sync. A virtual repository has a single source of truth (your data model) and derives everything git needs from it on the fly:

  • Branches and tags are whatever your model provides, e.g. one tag per version.
  • Commits are created once from your data and stored as a few hundred bytes.
  • Files are loaded from your storage only when a client actually needs them.
  • Pushes are parsed, verified and handed to you as a list of commits with their files, so you decide what to accept.

Features

Area Support
Transport Smart HTTP, protocol v2 (ls-refs, fetch) and v0/v1 for fetching, v0 for pushing
Fetching Clones, incremental fetches, shallow clones (--depth, --shallow-since, --shallow-exclude, --deepen)
Pushing Creating, updating and deleting branches and tags, deltas, push options, remote: messages
History Truncated histories (e.g. deleted old versions) are served as shallow repositories
Files Regular files, executables and symbolic links, loaded on demand
Hosting Single or multiple repositories, any GenHTTP engine or ASP.NET Core, concerns such as authentication

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