README.md

Soft Serve

A tasty Git server. Self-hosted with a built in SSH powered TUI.

What is it?

Soft Serve is a Git server that runs its own SSH service, allows repo creation on first push, is configured by cloning a config repo and provides a TUI accessible to anyone over SSH without having to worry about setting up accounts on the host machine. Give it a shot!

ssh beta.charm.sh

Installing / Building

The Soft Serve command is called soft. You can build it with go.

cd cmd/soft
go build

Setting up a server

Make sure git is installed, then run soft.

Configuring

When Soft Serve is run for the first time, it creates a configuration repo that contains the README displayed for Home and user access control. By default the config repo is publicly writable, so be sure to setup your access as desired. You can also set the SOFT_SERVE_AUTH_KEY environment variable and it will restrict access to that initial public key.

git clone ssh://localhost:23231/config

Pushing a repo

You can add your Soft Serve server as a remote to any existing repo.

git remote add soft ssh://localhost:23231/REPO

After you've added the remote, you can push. If it's a new repo, it will be automatically added to the server.

git push soft main

Soft Serve TUI

Soft Serve provides a TUI over SSH to browse repos, view READMEs, and grab clone commands.

ssh localhost -p 23231

It's also possible to direct link to a specific repo.

ssh localhost -t -p 23231 REPO

Server Options

You have control over the various options via the following server environment variables:

  • SOFT_SERVE_PORT - SSH listen port (default 23231)
  • SOFT_SERVE_HOST - SSH listen host (default 0.0.0.0)
  • SOFT_SERVE_KEY_PATH - SSH host key-pair path (default .ssh/soft_serve_server_ed25519)
  • SOFT_SERVE_REPO_PATH - Path where repos are stored (default .repos)
  • SOFT_SERVE_AUTH_KEY - Initial admin public key (default "")