HowTo: Apply client side hook restrictions automatically while cloning the repositories from Bitbucket Data Center

Summary

This document provides a guide to applying client-side hook restrictions automatically while cloning the repositories from the Bitbucket Data Center.

Problem

Git hooks are scripts that run on a cloned system. If they were automatically installed, then any repository that gets cloned would have full control of your system. This would be a security problem. If any person clones the repository and runs a git command, it will start executing the hook scripts.

Environment

Bitbucket Data Center - All versions

Solution

Below are some possible workarounds that will allow users to run client-side hook scripts while the user performs a clone or other git transactions. 

• Users can create a shell script or a custom shell command to use to clone the repository, which both does the clone and sets up the hooks  or

• Alternatively, the user may include a script inside the repository and tell the team to run it after they clone it. For instance, create a git-xyzclone command, which basically just requires putting a shell script named git-xyzclone in any directory on the path. For other repositories, the user can still use the regular git clone.

• If the user maintains all the machines that people are cloning repositories from, the user can setup system-wide templates. From the git-init man page (also works with git-clone if the user is cloning an existing repo instead of creating a new one from scratch):

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 --template=<template_directory>        Provide the directory from which templates will be used. The        default template directory is /usr/share/git-core/templates.        When specified, <template_directory> is used as the source of the        template files rather than the default. The template files include        some directory structure, some suggested "exclude patterns", and        copies of non-executing "hook" files. The suggested patterns and        hook files are all modifiable and extensible.  

• User can modify the system-wide template directory (which defaults to /usr/share/git-core/templates), user can supply --template=<template_directory> on the command line when creating or cloning the repo, or user can configure the default template directory in the config file:

  1 2 [init]  templatedir = /path/to/templates