Gerrit Code Review docker images

These images provide official Gerrit Code Review releases using the DEB/RPM packages available from the GerritForge repositories. The DEB/RPM packages contain the release gerrit.war file along with additional configuration files that provide an out-of-the-box setup.

Each image is intended to be used AS-IS for training or staging environments.

For production environments, the images provide a base on which required customizations to gerrit.config and persistent external modules can be made.

Quickstart

Start Gerrit Code Review in its demo/staging "out-of-the-box" setup like so:

docker run -ti -p 8080:8080 -p 29418:29418 docker.io/gerritcodereview/gerrit

Wait a few minutes until the Gerrit Code Review NNN ready message appears, where NNN is your current Gerrit version, then open your browser to http://localhost:8080 and you will be in Gerrit Code Review.

NOTE: If your docker server is running on a remote host, change 'localhost' to the hostname or IP address of your remote docker server.

The plugin-manager introduction screen guides you through the basics of Gerrit and allows installation of additional plugins downloaded from Gerrit CI.

Images for previous Gerrit Code Review releases are available; e.g. to run version 3.8.0, use the following command:

docker run -ti -p 8080:8080 -p 29418:29418 docker.io/gerritcodereview/gerrit:3.8.0

Build docker images

To build docker images, clone the git repository https://gerrit.googlesource.com/docker-gerrit.

Release tags are available and can be used to build particular releases. E.g. to build an image using Gerrit 3.8.0, checkout the respective tag:

git checkout v3.8.0

Navigate to either ./almalinux/9 or ./ubuntu/22 to build the almalinux- or ubuntu-based docker image. Then run:

docker build -t gerritcodereview/gerrit:$(git describe) .

To build an image containing a development build of Gerrit (e.g. to test a change), run the following command instead:

docker build --build-arg GERRIT_WAR_URL="<url>" -t gerritcodereview/gerrit -f Dockerfile-dev .

The <url> passed to the GERRIT_WAR_URL-build argument has to point to a Gerrit-.war-file. The build argument defaults to the URL pointing to the last successful build of the Gerrit master branch on the Gerrit CI.

Build multi-platform images

For the official releases one can build both amd64 and arm64 images at once and either load them to the local docker registry or push them to the gerritcodereview dockerhub account. In order to do that, one simply calls:

./build_multiplatform.sh --load

And multiplatform images will be created and loaded locally. Calling:

./build_multiplatform.sh --push

pushes images to docker-hub instead.

Notes:

in the --load target only the current system architecture image is pushed to the local registry
the almalinux image is additionally tagged as the default release image.

Using persistent volumes

Use docker persistent volumes to keep Gerrit data across restarts. Below is a sample docker-compose.yaml with externally-mounted Lucene indexes, Caches and Git repositories.

version: '3'

services:
  gerrit:
    image: docker.io/gerritcodereview/gerrit
    volumes:
       - git-volume:/var/gerrit/git
       - index-volume:/var/gerrit/index
       - cache-volume:/var/gerrit/cache
    ports:
       - "29418:29418"
       - "8080:8080"

volumes:
  git-volume:
  index-volume:
  cache-volume:

Run docker compose up (or docker-compose up with older versions of Docker) to trigger the build and execution of your container.

Note that the path /var/gerrit/etc may also be externally-mounted. If this is done, then the config file /var/gerrit/etc/gerrit.config initialized by the Gerrit DEB/RPM package inside the container will no longer be available. If gerrit does not find an existing gerrit.config file under the externally-mounted path, then it generates a new one. However, the newly generated config file does not provide the same first-run behaviour as the one from the DEB/RPM package (the out-of-the-box plugin is not configured, and the introductory screen of the plugin-manager will not appear).

Environment variables

This is a list of available environment variables to change the Gerrit configuration:

CANONICAL_WEB_URL: Optional. Set the gerrit.canonicalWebUrl parameter in gerrit.config. Defaults to http://<image_hostname>
HTTPD_LISTEN_URL: Optional. Override the httpd.listenUrl parameter in gerrit.config.

Using Gerrit in production

When running Gerrit on Docker in production, it is a good idea to rely on a physical external storage with much better performance and reliability than the Docker's internal AUFS, and an external configuration directory (etc) for better change management traceability. Additionally, you may want to use a proper external authentication (e.g. ldap).

A more advanced docker-compose.yaml example is given below, which uses OpenLDAP (published by Osixia on Docker Hub). The example assumes you have an external directory available as /external/gerrit

version: '3'

services:
  gerrit:
    image: docker.io/gerritcodereview/gerrit
    ports:
      - "29418:29418"
      - "80:8080"
    depends_on:
      - ldap
    volumes:
      - /external/gerrit/etc:/var/gerrit/etc
      - /external/gerrit/git:/var/gerrit/git
      - /external/gerrit/db:/var/gerrit/db
      - /external/gerrit/index:/var/gerrit/index
      - /external/gerrit/cache:/var/gerrit/cache
    environment:
      - CANONICAL_WEB_URL=http://localhost
    # command: init

  ldap:
    image: docker.io/osixia/openldap
    ports:
      - "389:389"
      - "636:636"
    environment:
      - LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD=secret
    volumes:
      - /external/gerrit/ldap/var:/var/lib/ldap
      - /external/gerrit/ldap/etc:/etc/ldap/slapd.d

  ldap-admin:
    image: docker.io/osixia/phpldapadmin
    ports:
      - "6443:443"
    environment:
      - PHPLDAPADMIN_LDAP_HOSTS=ldap

Example of /external/gerrit/etc/gerrit.config

[gerrit]
  basePath = git

[index]
  type = LUCENE

[auth]
  type = ldap
  gitBasicAuth = true

[ldap]
  server = ldap://ldap
  username=cn=admin,dc=example,dc=org
  accountBase = dc=example,dc=org
  accountPattern = (&(objectClass=person)(uid=${username}))
  accountFullName = displayName
  accountEmailAddress = mail

[sendemail]
  smtpServer = localhost

[sshd]
  listenAddress = *:29418

[httpd]
  listenUrl = http://*:8080/

[cache]
  directory = cache

[container]
  user = root

Example of /external/gerrit/etc/secure.config

[ldap]
  password = secret

Initialize Gerrit DB and Git repositories with Docker

The external filesystem needs to be initialized with gerrit.war beforehand:

All-Projects and All-Users Git repositories created in Gerrit
System Group UUIDs created in Git repositories

The initialization can be done as a one-off operation before starting all containers.

Step-1: Run Gerrit docker init setup from docker

Uncomment the command: init option in docker-compose.yaml and run Gerrit with docker compose in foreground.

docker compose up gerrit

Wait until you see in the output the message Initialized /var/gerrit and then the container will exit.

Step-2: Start Gerrit in daemon mode

Comment out the command: init option in docker-compose.yaml and start all the nodes:

docker compose up -d

Registering users in OpenLDAP with PhpLdapAdmin

The sample docker compose project includes a node with PhpLdapAdmin connected to OpenLDAP and exposed via Web UX at https://localhost:6443.

The first user that logs in Gerrit is considered the initial administrator, it is important that you configure it on LDAP to login and having the ability to administer your Gerrit setup.

Define the Gerrit administrator in OpenLDAP

Login to PhpLdapAdmin using cn=admin,dc=example,dc=org as username and secret as password and then create a new child node of type "Courier Mail Account" for the Gerrit Administrator

Example:

Given Name: Gerrit
Last Name: Admin
Common Name: Gerrit Admin
User ID: gerritadmin
Email: gerritadmin@localdomain
Password: secret

Verify that your data is correct and then commit the changes to LDAP.

Login to Gerrit as Administrator