Couldn't agree more. Gitolite is enough for most use cases, and for technical users which often use other tools there's no need for a web interface (or anything beyond gitweb anyway).

We use it in combination with BugsEverywhere for issue tracking, with the added advantage that bugs are tracked per-branch. You can work offline without issues.

The major complaint with this system is the disconnect for users to report issues. BE includes a web frontend, but it's not great.

We use mantis as a general tracker, but still keep detailed bug tracking in the VCS with BE.

Yep, gitolite is awesome, it's so lightweight you can use pretty much any leftover PC to host repos for an entire company. I also use cgit for a fast and easy git web interface and ReviewBoard for code reviews.

If I remember correctly gitlab initially started as a frontend for gitolite.

I really like gitolite, except how you need to add users and SSH keys through a git repository. I'd prefer just plain configuration files that I could manage with my configuration manager.

gitolite + redmine = sweetness.