What Rabun Git is

Rabun Git is a git forge you run yourself.

Rabun Git is a git forge you run yourself. Teammates use ordinary git clone / git push over SSH. You manage people, keys, and permissions from the command line. There is no website and nothing is sent to GitHub.com.

This guide assumes you already know a little git: commits, branches, and that a remote is another copy of a repository you can push to and fetch from.

The idea in git terms

On this machine you have a working copy (files you edit). GitHub, GitLab, and Rabun Git are all places that store a remote copy so other people can get the same history.

You already knowIn Rabun Git
git clone git@github.com:org/app.gitgit clone ssh://git@HOST:2222/org/app.git
GitHub users and SSH keysrabun-git user and rabun-git key
Repo permissions (read / write / admin)rabun-git access grant
Pull requestsMerge requests (rabun-git request or a special push ref)
GitHub ActionsSmall YAML files in .rabun/workflows/ (shell steps only)

The git protocol is the same. The host, port, and how you log in are different.

Two machines, two hats

  1. The server runs rabun-git serve. That process listens for git and management commands on port 2222 (not the usual SSH port 22). Your existing sshd on port 22 is left alone.
  2. This machine (and any other client) uses git and optionally ssh -p 2222 … to talk to that server.

On the server, the rabun-git binary you run in a terminal is the operator: it can do everything, with no SSH. Over the network, identity is an SSH public key that you attached to a forge user.

Repository names

Every repository is owner/name, for example ada/website or team/warehouse.

  • owner is a user login or a team-style prefix (ada, team).
  • name is the project (website).
  • Clone URLs may include a leading / and a .git suffix; both are optional: /ada/website.git is the same repo as ada/website.

Allowed characters: letters, digits, ., _, -. Names cannot start with ..

What this tool does not do

  • No browser UI, issues, wiki, or packages
  • No GitHub Actions uses: marketplace
  • Merge is fast-forward only (the branch you merge must already contain the target branch)
  • master and main are protected: only a repo or forge admin can push them directly. Everyone else opens a merge request.

Full tables (gh commands, GitHub products with no counterpart): Compared to GitHub.

Next: Install.