gitlab-workhorse

Gitlab-workhorse is a smart reverse proxy for GitLab. It handles "large" HTTP requests such as file downloads, file uploads, Git push/pull and Git archive downloads.

Quick facts (how does Workhorse work)

• Workhorse can handle some requests without involving Rails at all: for example, Javascript files and CSS files are served straight from disk.
• Workhorse can modify responses sent by Rails: for example if you use send_file in Rails then gitlab-workhorse will open the file on disk and send its contents as the response body to the client.
• Workhorse can take over requests after asking permission from Rails. Example: handling git clone.
• Workhorse can modify requests before passing them to Rails. Example: when handling a Git LFS upload Workhorse first asks permission from Rails, then it stores the request body in a tempfile, then it sends a modified request containing the tempfile path to Rails.
• Workhorse can manage long-lived WebSocket connections for Rails. Example: handling the terminal websocket for environments.
• Workhorse does not connect to Redis or Postgres, only to Rails.
• We assume that all requests that reach Workhorse pass through an upstream proxy such as NGINX or Apache first.
• Workhorse does not accept HTTPS connections.
• Workhorse does not clean up idle client connections.
• We assume that all requests to Rails pass through Workhorse.

For more information see 'A brief history of gitlab-workhorse'.

Usage

  gitlab-workhorse [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -apiLimit uint
        Number of API requests allowed at single time
  -apiQueueDuration duration
        Maximum queueing duration of requests (default 30s)
  -apiQueueLimit uint
        Number of API requests allowed to be queued
  -authBackend string
    	Authentication/authorization backend (default "http://localhost:8080")
  -authSocket string
    	Optional: Unix domain socket to dial authBackend at
  -developmentMode
    	Allow to serve assets from Rails app
  -documentRoot string
    	Path to static files content (default "public")
  -listenAddr string
    	Listen address for HTTP server (default "localhost:8181")
  -listenNetwork string
    	Listen 'network' (tcp, tcp4, tcp6, unix) (default "tcp")
  -listenUmask int
    	Umask for Unix socket
  -pprofListenAddr string
    	pprof listening address, e.g. 'localhost:6060'
  -proxyHeadersTimeout duration
    	How long to wait for response headers when proxying the request (default 5m0s)
  -secretPath string
    	File with secret key to authenticate with authBackend (default "./.gitlab_workhorse_secret")
  -version
    	Print version and exit

The 'auth backend' refers to the GitLab Rails application. The name is a holdover from when gitlab-workhorse only handled Git push/pull over HTTP.

Gitlab-workhorse can listen on either a TCP or a Unix domain socket. It can also open a second listening TCP listening socket with the Go net/http/pprof profiler server.

Relative URL support

If you are mounting GitLab at a relative URL, e.g. example.com/gitlab, then you should also use this relative URL in the authBackend setting:

gitlab-workhorse -authBackend http://localhost:8080/gitlab

Installation

To install gitlab-workhorse you need Go 1.5 or newer and GNU Make.

To install into /usr/local/bin run make install.

make install

To install into /foo/bin set the PREFIX variable.

make install PREFIX=/foo

On some operating systems, such as FreeBSD, you may have to use gmake instead of make.

Error tracking

GitLab-Workhorse supports remote error tracking with Sentry. To enable this feature set the GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN environment variable.

Omnibus (/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb):

gitlab_workhorse['env'] = {'GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN' => 'https://foobar'}

Source installations (/etc/default/gitlab):

export GITLAB_WORKHORSE_SENTRY_DSN='https://foobar'

Tests

Run the tests with:

make clean test

Coverage / what to test

Each feature in gitlab-workhorse should have an integration test that verifies that the feature 'kicks in' on the right requests and leaves other requests unaffected. It is better to also have package-level tests for specific behavior but the high-level integration tests should have the first priority during development.

It is OK if a feature is only covered by integration tests.

License

This code is distributed under the MIT license, see the LICENSE file.