groffee

A self-hosted Git platform built with Node.js

Features

• Repository hosting with Smart HTTP and SSH push/pull
• Git LFS (Large File Storage) support
• Pull requests and issues
• Code search (FTS5)
• SSH key and personal access token authentication
• Admin portal with structured logging

Requirements

• Node.js 22+
• pnpm 10+
• git
• git-lfs

Getting Started

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Start development server (port 3000)
pnpm dev

The first registered user is automatically promoted to admin.

Git LFS

Groffee supports the Git LFS Batch API for storing large files outside the Git repository.

Setup

Ensure git-lfs is installed on both the server and client:

# macOS
brew install git-lfs

# Debian/Ubuntu
apt-get install git-lfs

Usage

# In your repository, track large files by extension
git lfs track "*.bin"
git lfs track "*.psd"
git lfs track "*.zip"

# Commit and push as normal
git add .gitattributes
git add large-file.bin
git commit -m "add large file"
git push origin main

LFS objects are stored on disk at data/lfs-objects/ using content-addressable storage. Authentication uses the same credentials as regular git operations (password or personal access token via HTTP Basic Auth).

LFS over SSH is also supported. When pushing via an SSH remote, Groffee handles git-lfs-authenticate to issue short-lived tokens automatically. This requires the EXTERNAL_URL environment variable so the SSH server knows the HTTP endpoint to advertise to the LFS client:

EXTERNAL_URL=https://groffee.example.com pnpm start

Endpoints

Method	Path	Description
POST	/:owner/:repo.git/info/lfs/objects/batch	Batch API (negotiate uploads/downloads)
PUT	/:owner/:repo.git/info/lfs/objects/:oid	Upload an LFS object
GET	/:owner/:repo.git/info/lfs/objects/:oid	Download an LFS object
POST	/:owner/:repo.git/info/lfs/verify	Verify an upload completed

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3000	HTTP server port
SSH_PORT	2223	SSH server port
DATA_DIR	./data	Directory for database, repositories, and LFS objects
EXTERNAL_URL	http://localhost:$PORT	Public-facing URL (required for Git LFS over SSH)

Docker

docker build -t groffee .
docker run -p 3000:3000 -p 2223:2223 \
  -e EXTERNAL_URL=https://groffee.example.com \
  -v groffee-data:/app/data groffee

Project Structure

packages/
  web/    React 19 + Hono + Vite (frontend + API + SSH server)
  db/     Drizzle ORM + SQLite (schema, migrations, queries)
  git/    Git operations (isomorphic-git reads, git CLI for protocol)
data/
  groffee.sqlite       Database
  repositories/        Bare git repositories
  lfs-objects/         Git LFS object storage