git daemon with LFS?

Question

Is it possible to use git daemon with a repository that has LFS setup on it? I have a machine that isn't able to connect to my corporate VPN (no Linux client), and I must share a repository with it to try out Linux specific changes to my code.

I have:

1. Mirrored the repository locally on the Windows machine.
2. Run git daemon --export-all --enable=receive-pack --reuseaddr (one directory up from the mirror)
3. Added a remote for this on the Linux computer, cloned, and made some changes to files tracked with git lfs track.
4. When I try to git push <remote> back to the Window machine, I get errors with LFS.

The errors:

 Git LFS: (0 of 1 files) 0 B / 981.15 KB                                
 Post https://192.168.2.12/repository.git/info/lfs/objects/batch: dial tcp 192.168.2.12:443: i/o timeout 
 Post https://192.168.2.12/repository.git/info/lfs/objects/batch: dial tcp 192.168.2.12:443: i/o timeout 
 error: failed to push some refs to 'git://192.168.2.12/repository.git'

If I make edits to files that are not tracked under LFS, that works just fine. I'm assuming this is because git is also expecting some sort of LFS server on the Windows machine. Is there some way to get LFS to work in this case, or is this just unsupported with git daemon?

Answer 1

Currently git daemon does not offer integrated LFS server support.

I could not find anything related in the git mailing list (and it might be worth trying there), but there's an official answer on a git-lfs repo issue:

The LFS server currently runs as a separate process outside of your git-daemon(1). To add LFS support to your own Git server, you'll need to run one of the LFS-compliant servers listed in the implementations page of our Wiki.

As long as the default url/port for the LFS server is different from the GIT one, you can run the reference LFS server. If it's not of course it's more trouble. In that issue discussion you'll find some details, but in summary:

you can always set the LFS url: git config lfs.url LFSURL yourself to point to your LFS server. It can even be done directly on the clone: git -c 'lfs.url=yourlocallfsserver' clone yourlocalgitserver/repo.

It would be nice if either git daemon or the lfs server could offer a 'routing' service (as suggested by ttaylorr) to redirect requests to the appropriate server, but it's not possible right now with those tools.

There are though a few tools listed on the git-lfs implementations page that seem to offer combined git and lfs support, for instance gitbucket.

I haven't tried them, but one could be a valid alternative to git daemon.