Geting an Xfce Contributor Account

There are two ways of getting or creating an account on gitlab.xfce.org:

  1. Sign in via an allowed external service(e.g. GitHub or GitLab SSO)
  2. Apply for an (internal) account

Signing in via SSO(Single Sign-On)

If you sign in with either GitLab or GitHub, your account will be immediately created and you can browse all repositories that are public or internal, create issues etc. However, you cannot create or fork projects yet! In order to get full access you have to contact an Admin - see “Apply for an account”.

Apply for an account

The easy way to get a local contributor account is to ask the developers on the Matrix channel #xfce-dev or send an email to the xfce4-dev mailing list.

See Xfce GitLab Sign-up information for additional details for the rationale behind restricting manual account creation on the Xfce GitLab repository.

SSH

To be able to push to gitlab.xfce.org you need to either use the HTTPS link and enter your credentials for every push or you create an SSH key and add it to your user profile.

Generating a SSH key

If you already have an SSH key, you can just use the existing key instead of creating a new one

SSH keys are stored in your home directory in the ~/.ssh directory. To generate a key pair use the following command: 

ssh-keygen -b 4096 -t rsa

When the command asks for the passphrase it is advised to set a relatively simple password. This password is used to unlock the key when you use it. For more information on how to create a pair of SSH keys, please refer to a SSH documentation or book.

Using a key without a passphrase is basically the same as writing down that random password. Anyone who gains access to your computer has gained access to every system you use that key with. The solution is to add a passphrase to the SSH key, for an extra layer of security.

See also: How to work with ssh-agent.

Now that you are finished generating your SSH key pair, you will have two files: a private key and a public key. If you have accepted the default filename, they will be respectively $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa and $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, depending on the type of key you have specified.

The private key must remain secret, Do not publish it anywhere under any circumstance.

The public key is what will be used to upload code to the Xfce GitLab server.

Setting up the SSH key so Git uses it

In ~/.ssh/config, add: 

host gitlab.xfce.org
  HostName gitlab.xfce.org
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

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