Portainer has the ability to integrate with a git repository for storing the Docker Compose configurations used in its stack deploy feature. This can be a handy way to maintain the YAML that defines the containers you’re running, particularly when the number of apps starts to grow. Besides Portainer’s stacks, you can also use git to centrally store your own coding projects.
You don’t have to run a git server on your home network. You can integrate Portainer with a public git server, like GitHub. You can also store your YAML files as plain text and use Portainer’s built-in web editor for deployment. Not running your own git server doesn’t really have any downsides. It just one of those things you do… because you can.
There are several options for git hosting, some public and some self-hosted. Of the self-hosted options, Gitea seems to require the least amount of server resources to run, making it ideal for a small server like the Raspberry Pi.
The Gitea container is configured to run with a particular user ID and group ID. Ideally, these are set to the git user with a UID of 1001 and GID of 1001. None of this is set up on the Raspberry Pi OS. But, there is an Ansible playbook that takes care of it. You can find it under gitea/pre-deploy.yml. Run this with ansible-playbook pre-deploy.yml and the user account will be created along with a /srv/git directory to store any repositories you create.
Here’s what the output of the playbook looks like when it’s successful:
pi@mypi:~/cloudpi/gitea $ ansible-playbook pre-deploy.yml
PLAY [Gitea in a Docker Container] **********************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Creating git group] *******************************************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Creating git user account] ************************************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Creating configuration directory] *****************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************
localhost : ok=4 changed=3 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
After the pre-deploy tasks are done, you can deploy the Gitea application with the file gitea/docker-compose.yml You can do this from the command-line using docker-compose or you can log into Portainer and use the Stacks menu selection to paste the contents of the docker-compose.yml file and deploy the stack that way.
If you deploy with Docker Compose, it looks like this:
pi@anubis:~/cloudpi/gitea $ docker-compose up -d
Creating network "gitea_default" with the default driver
Pulling gitea (kunde21/gitea-arm:latest)...
latest: Pulling from kunde21/gitea-arm
...
Digest: sha256:6ea533577b1ac996a28a0cba5d66625bc3f7dfb8bc882a2e0b5a932a83603c8e
Status: Downloaded newer image for kunde21/gitea-arm:latest
Creating gitea ... done
Some lines have been removed to aid clarity.
When deploying from Portainer, simply copy the contents of docker-compose.yml and paste it into the web editor on the Stacks page.
There one task left, and that is contained in the post-deploy.yml file. Here’s what it looks like when you run it:
pi@mypi:~/cloudpi/gitea $ ansible-playbook post-deploy.yml
PLAY [Run Gitea post-deployment tasks] ******************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Checking for Nginx installation] ******************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Creating Gitea reverse proxy config] **************************************
skipping: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************
localhost : ok=2 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=1 rescued=0 ignored=0
Finally, in gitea/post-deploy.txt you’ll find a few basic hints for configuring the Gitea application. These are intentionally brief and serve only as hints. You should use the official Gitea documentation as your guide.
If you deployed the Gitea application using Portainer’s Stacks menu, you may have noticed a build method of Git Repository. If you create a repository to store the YAML from the various application docker-compose.yml files, you can link it to Portainer and deploy the applications that way. Without going into too much detail, the basic procedure goes like this:
You can even automate the process using webhooks, so that any changes made in the git repository will redeploy the stack in Portainer. Refer to the Portainer webhooks documentation for more information.
At this point in the project, Docker is running, Portainer is there to ease the administration of Docker, and you might have a git repository to store your Docker Compose YAML. Congratulations! It’s time to start running some more applications in Docker. Start with sharing files with NextCloud and Samba.
If it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet. —Scott Adams