Setting up the server dependencies for source installation

To install GitLab from source, we need to install some dependencies on the server. Besides installing the required packages, we will also create the user that will serve our GitLab installation.

How to do it…

The installation procedure is applicable for Debian-based systems only. GitLab also supports other Linux distributions, but the installation process is a bit different. For more information, visit the gitlab.com website. Perform the following steps:

1. Install the required packages using the following command:

   $ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential zlib1g-dev libyaml-dev libssl-dev libgdbm-dev libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev curl openssh-server redis-server checkinstall libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libicu-dev logrotate
   

2. Install Ruby using the following commands:

   $ mkdir /tmp/ruby && cd /tmp/ruby 
   $ curl --progress ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.0/ruby-2.0.0-p481.tar.gz | tar xz cd ruby-2.0.0-p481 
   $ ./configure --disable-install-rdoc 
   $ make 
   $ sudo make install
   

3. Install the Bundler gem:

   $ sudo gem install bundler --no-ri --no-rdoc
   

4. Create the Git user:

   $ sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos 'GitLab' git
   

How it works…

At this point, we have installed the server dependencies and installed Ruby on our system. We also installed the Bundler gem; bundler is the package manager for Ruby, and as GitLab is written in Ruby, this one will be very important later on, so we can download all the dependencies for GitLab.

The Git user was created so that GitLab and all its dependencies can run under its own user; that way, it is possible to sandbox the installation better and make sure that our system stays secure.