fogwall

A git-aware gateway that sits between developers and the upstream host (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Forgejo). Every push — any branch, any tag — is policy-checked, content-scanned, identity-verified, and gated behind review before it reaches upstream; every fetch is audited. Feedback streams to the developer's terminal, over HTTP(S) or SSH.

Built on JGit for native git protocol handling, Jetty for the HTTP layer, Apache MINA SSHD for the SSH server, and Spring (Web, Security) with React & Tailwind for the dashboard.

📚 Documentation — https://rbc.github.io/fogwall/

Getting Started

fogwall is distributed as a container image.

docker pull ghcr.io/rbc/fogwall:latest
docker run -p 8080:8080 ghcr.io/rbc/fogwall:latest

fogwall is the dashboard + REST API image; fogwall-server is the standalone proxy-only variant (no dashboard, no Spring) — swap the image name to use it instead.

Tag	What it is
:latest	The newest stable release. Use this unless you have a reason not to.
:X.Y	The newest patch release on the X.Y line.
:X.Y.Z	A specific pinned release.
:edge	Built from main on every merge — newer, less battle-tested. Not for production use.

For Kubernetes, there is a Helm chart. If you'd rather build and run from source (or need the Docker Compose dev environment, test scripts, or to contribute), see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Features

Policy

Both proxy modes enforce the same rules:

• 🔀 Proxy push and fetch over HTTPS and SSH — branches and tags alike, as a transparent proxy or as a receive-validate-forward server
• 🪪 Link public SCM accounts (GitHub, GitLab, …) to internal corporate identities, checked on every push
• 🛡️ One permission model across every upstream, whoever hosts the repo
• 🔍 Diff and commit message scanning — custom patterns plus built-in PII bundles
• 🔑 Secret scanning (gitleaks); findings redacted at rest
• 💬 Proxy the SCM CLIs (gh, glab, tea, fj) — outbound PR/MR and comment content, inspected the same way
• 🧊 Binary blob detection by magic-byte signature, with MIME-type allow/deny
• ✍️ GPG commit signature verification
• 📝 Commit attribution policy — author, committer, Co-authored-by and DCO trailers, against allowed email domains
• 🔒 Proxy-wide URL allow/deny rules
• 🕵️ Git-level guards — rejects hidden commits, empty branch pushes, Git LFS and push options
• 📊 Audit trail — every push state transition recorded, and every clone and fetch decision counted, in both modes

Dashboard

Push management and approval, URL rules and per-user permissions, a lifecycle timeline with an inline diff viewer, provider connectivity diagnostics, and live config reload.

Supported Providers

Three public hosts are enabled out of the box; Gitea and Bitbucket ship configured but switched off. Pinned SSH host keys are included for every built-in host either way.

Provider	Default upstream	Out of the box	Transports	Also works with
GitHub	github.com	Enabled	HTTPS, SSH	GitHub Enterprise
GitLab	gitlab.com	Enabled	HTTPS, SSH	Self-hosted instances
Forgejo	codeberg.org, gitea.com	Codeberg on, Gitea off	HTTPS, SSH	Any Forgejo or Gitea instance
Bitbucket	bitbucket.org	Built in, off	HTTPS	Bitbucket Data Center
Anything else	—	type: generic	HTTPS	Anything speaking git over HTTP

Generic git servers do not support every feature — see Providers for details.

Documentation

Everything lives at https://rbc.github.io/fogwall/.

Section	For
User Guide	Developers pushing through the proxy
Administrator Guide	Operators deploying, configuring and running it
Configuration Reference	Every YAML key, what it does, what it defaults to
Architecture	Contributors: modules, proxy modes, request flow, core abstractions
Internals	Contributor notes on git, JGit and SCM API behaviour

Roadmap

The backlog is tracked in GitHub Issues. The following gists cover design rationale and reference material:

Document	Description
Background & architecture	Project background, relationship to finos/git-proxy, server mode vs transparent proxy, near-term and moonshot roadmap
Programming model comparison	JGit + Jetty vs Express + child-process git: stack comparison, capability deep-dive, honest assessment of both sides
Performance benchmarks	Side-by-side comparison vs finos/git-proxy: sequential and concurrent clone, fetch, push throughput against a shared Gitea backend

Acknowledgments

This project would not exist without FINOS git-proxy and its contributors, who designed the original push validation model, approval lifecycle, and multi-provider architecture. The Node.js implementation remains the reference for the Action/Step pipeline, Sink interface, and filter chain patterns that fogwall builds on. If you're in a Node.js environment, check out the original.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to build, run tests, use the manual test scripts in test/, and set up the Docker Compose environment.