Non-Git code hosts (Perforce, Mercurial, Subversion, raw text, etc.)

Sourcegraph natively supports all Git-based Version Control Systems (VCSs) and code hosts. For non-Git code hosts, Sourcegraph provides a CLI tool called src-expose to periodically sync and continuously serve local directories as Git repositories over HTTP.

NOTE: If using Perforce, see the Perforce repositories with Sourcegraph guide.

Use src serve-git

Since Sourcegraph 3.19 we recommend users to use src serve-git. src serve-git only provides the serving of git repositories (no snapshotting). We found users generally wanted to control the git repos and snapshotting complicated the setup. Additionally src serve-git uses a fast and modern git transfer protocol.

Installing src-expose

Navigate to the directory that contains the Git repositories that you want to serve, then run the following commands.

For Linux:

BASH
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/sourcegraph-artifacts/src-expose/latest/linux-amd64/src-expose
 
chmod +x src-expose

For macOS:

BASH
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/sourcegraph-artifacts/src-expose/latest/darwin-amd64/src-expose
 
chmod +x src-expose

You can run src-expose -h any time for help.

Using src-expose

src-expose can be used in two ways:

  • Serving local Git repositories
    src-expose can serve local Git repositories over the network, and make them available to Sourcegraph (as if they were available on a traditional code host). See serving repositories, or run src-expose serve -h.

  • Syncing changes, turning them into Git commits, and serving the resulting Git repositories
    src-expose can periodically run a command to sync changes to the code, and then combine those changes into a new Git commit in the local repository. See syncing and serving repositories, or run src-expose -h.

Serving repositories

src-expose serves a list of local Git repositories over HTTP, making them available to Sourcegraph. In addition to simply providing a Git endpoint, it also provides a repository listing API that Sourcegraph expects a code host to have.

If you wish to serve a local directory without running any syncing commands automatically, you can run src-expose serve (instead of the default src-expose) to only perform this function.

In order to keep the code in the local repository up to date, you will need to run another command periodically to fetch changes. For example, if you are using Perforce, you can set up a cron job to run git p4 sync every few minutes or hours to fetch changes and convert them to Git commits that can then be served. Similar options exist for other non-Git VCSs.

Syncing and serving repositories

In addition to serving a local directory, src-expose can periodically run a command of your choice to fetch changes from a remote and combine them into a single new Git commit.

For example, if your src-expose is using a configuration YAML file that contains the following:

YAML
# before is a command run before sync. before is run from root.
before: p4 sync
# duration defines how often sync should happen. Defaults to 10s.
duration: 10s

Then Sourcegraph will run p4 sync every 10 seconds, and combine all of the fetched changes into a new Git commit. The new Git commit's author will be src-expose, and will contain all changes since the last time the syncing command was run.

While this syncing functionality means that the original change history will be lost, it eliminates any slow and costly Perforce-to-Git or Hg-to-Git or similar conversions that would otherwise be required. If you prefer to retain history, see serving repositories.

Quickstart

  1. Start up a Sourcegraph instance or our full installation documentation.

  2. Install src-expose

  3. Pick the directory you want to export from, then run:

BASH
# Run a command periodically to sync changes, commit those changes as Git commits, and serve over HTTP.
./src-expose dir1 dir2 dir3

or

BASH
# Serve local Git repositories over HTTP. This command serves all Git repositories at the provided directory.
./src-expose serve dir

depending on whether you want to automatically sync and commit changes, or just serve the local directories.

  1. src-expose will output a configuration to use. It may scroll by quickly due to logging, so if so, just scroll up. However, this configuration should work:
JSON
 {
    // url is the HTTP url to src-expose (listening on 127.0.0.1:3434). url should be reachable by Sourcegraph.
    //
    // "http://host.docker.internal:3434" works from Sourcegraph when using Docker for Desktop.
    "url": "http://host.docker.internal:3434",
    // By using the special value ("src-expose") below, Sourcegraph will pull all of the repositories that src-expose is serving.
    "repos": ["src-expose"]
}

IMPORTANT: If you are using a Linux host machine, replace host.docker.internal in the above with the IP address of your actual host machine because host.docker.internal does not work on Linux. You should use the network-accessible IP shown by ifconfig (rather than 127.0.0.1 or localhost).

Go to Admin > Manage code hosts > Add repositories > Single Git repositories. Input the above configuration. Your directories should now be syncing in Sourcegraph.

Next steps: advanced configuration

Please consult src-expose -help to learn more about the options available.

For more complex setups, configure your src-expose by providing a local configuration file:

BASH
src-expose -snapshot-config config.yaml

See an example YAML file containing available configuration options.