gitweb
(1)
Name
gitweb - Git web interface (web frontend to Git
repositories)
Synopsis
To get started with gitweb, run git-instaweb(1) from a git
repository. This would configure and start your web server,
and run web browser pointing to gitweb.
Description
Git Manual GITWEB(1)
NAME
gitweb - Git web interface (web frontend to Git
repositories)
SYNOPSIS
To get started with gitweb, run git-instaweb(1) from a git
repository. This would configure and start your web server,
and run web browser pointing to gitweb.
DESCRIPTION
Gitweb provides a web interface to git repositories. It's
features include:
o Viewing multiple Git repositories with common root.
o Browsing every revision of the repository.
o Viewing the contents of files in the repository at any
revision.
o Viewing the revision log of branches, history of files
and directories, see what was changed when, by who.
o Viewing the blame/annotation details of any file (if
enabled).
o Generating RSS and Atom feeds of commits, for any
branch. The feeds are auto-discoverable in modern web
browsers.
o Viewing everything that was changed in a revision, and
step through revisions one at a time, viewing the
history of the repository.
o Finding commits which commit messages matches given
search term.
See http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=tree;f=gitweb or
http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git/tree/HEAD:/gitweb/ for gitweb
source code, browsed using gitweb itself.
CONFIGURATION
Various aspects of gitweb's behavior can be controlled
through the configuration file gitweb_config.perl or
/etc/gitweb.conf. See the gitweb.conf(4) for details.
Repositories
Gitweb can show information from one or more Git
repositories. These repositories have to be all on local
filesystem, and have to share common repository root, i.e.
be all under a single parent repository (but see also
"Advanced web server setup" section, "Webserver
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configuration with multiple projects' root" subsection).
our $projectroot = '/path/to/parent/directory';
The default value for $projectroot is /pub/git. You can
change it during building gitweb via GITWEB_PROJECTROOT
build configuration variable.
By default all git repositories under $projectroot are
visible and available to gitweb. The list of projects is
generated by default by scanning the $projectroot directory
for git repositories (for object databases to be more exact;
gitweb is not interested in a working area, and is best
suited to showing "bare" repositories).
The name of repository in gitweb is path to it's $GIT_DIR
(it's object database) relative to $projectroot. Therefore
the repository $repo can be found at "$projectroot/$repo".
Projects list file format
Instead of having gitweb find repositories by scanning
filesystem starting from $projectroot, you can provide a
pre-generated list of visible projects by setting
$projects_list to point to a plain text file with a list of
projects (with some additional info).
This file uses the following format:
o One record (for project / repository) per line; does not
support line continuation (newline escaping).
o Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.
o Whitespace separated fields; any run of whitespace can
be used as field separator (rules for Perl's "split(" ",
$line)").
o Fields use modified URI encoding, defined in RFC 3986,
section 2.1 (Percent-Encoding), or rather "Query string
encoding" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string#URL_encoding),
the difference being that SP (" ") can be encoded as "+"
(and therefore "+" has to be also percent-encoded).
Reserved characters are: "%" (used for encoding), "+"
(can be used to encode SPACE), all whitespace characters
as defined in Perl, including SP, TAB and LF, (used to
separate fields in a record).
o Currently recognized fields are:
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<repository path>
path to repository GIT_DIR, relative to $projectroot
<repository owner>
displayed as repository owner, preferably full name,
or email, or both
You can generate the projects list index file using the
project_index action (the TXT link on projects list page)
directly from gitweb; see also "Generating projects list
using gitweb" section below.
Example contents:
foo.git Joe+R+Hacker+<joe@example.com>
foo/bar.git O+W+Ner+<owner@example.org>
By default this file controls only which projects are
visible on projects list page (note that entries that do not
point to correctly recognized git repositories won't be
displayed by gitweb). Even if a project is not visible on
projects list page, you can view it nevertheless by
hand-crafting a gitweb URL. By setting $strict_export
configuration variable (see gitweb.conf(4)) to true value
you can allow viewing only of repositories also shown on the
overview page (i.e. only projects explicitly listed in
projects list file will be accessible).
Generating projects list using gitweb
We assume that GITWEB_CONFIG has its default Makefile value,
namely gitweb_config.perl. Put the following in
gitweb_make_index.perl file:
read_config_file("gitweb_config.perl");
$projects_list = $projectroot;
Then create the following script to get list of project in
the format suitable for GITWEB_LIST build configuration
variable (or $projects_list variable in gitweb config):
#!/bin/sh
export GITWEB_CONFIG="gitweb_make_index.perl"
export GATEWAY_INTERFACE="CGI/1.1"
export HTTP_ACCEPT="*/*"
export REQUEST_METHOD="GET"
export QUERY_STRING="a=project_index"
perl -- /var/www/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
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Run this script and save its output to a file. This file
could then be used as projects list file, which means that
you can set $projects_list to its filename.
Controlling access to git repositories
By default all git repositories under $projectroot are
visible and available to gitweb. You can however configure
how gitweb controls access to repositories.
o As described in "Projects list file format" section, you
can control which projects are visible by selectively
including repositories in projects list file, and
setting $projects_list gitweb configuration variable to
point to it. With $strict_export set, projects list file
can be used to control which repositories are available
as well.
o You can configure gitweb to only list and allow viewing
of the explicitly exported repositories, via $export_ok
variable in gitweb config file; see gitweb.conf(4)
manpage. If it evaluates to true, gitweb shows
repositories only if this file named by $export_ok
exists in its object database (if directory has the
magic file named $export_ok).
For example git-daemon(1) by default (unless
--export-all option is used) allows pulling only for
those repositories that have git-daemon-export-ok file.
Adding
our $export_ok = "git-daemon-export-ok";
makes gitweb show and allow access only to those
repositories that can be fetched from via git://
protocol.
o Finally, it is possible to specify an arbitrary perl
subroutine that will be called for each repository to
determine if it can be exported. The subroutine receives
an absolute path to the project (repository) as its only
parameter (i.e. "$projectroot/$project").
For example, if you use mod_perl to run the script, and
have dumb HTTP protocol authentication configured for
your repositories, you can use the following hook to
allow access only if the user is authorized to read the
files:
$export_auth_hook = sub {
use Apache2::SubRequest ();
use Apache2::Const -compile => qw(HTTP_OK);
my $path = "$_[0]/HEAD";
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my $r = Apache2::RequestUtil->request;
my $sub = $r->lookup_file($path);
return $sub->filename eq $path
&& $sub->status == Apache2::Const::HTTP_OK;
};
Per-repository gitweb configuration
You can configure individual repositories shown in gitweb by
creating file in the GIT_DIR of git repository, or by
setting some repo configuration variable (in GIT_DIR/config,
see git-config(1)).
You can use the following files in repository:
README.html
A html file (HTML fragment) which is included on the
gitweb project "summary" page inside <div> block
element. You can use it for longer description of a
project, to provide links (for example to project's
homepage), etc. This is recognized only if XSS
prevention is off ($prevent_xss is false, see
gitweb.conf(4)); a way to include a README safely when
XSS prevention is on may be worked out in the future.
description (or gitweb.description)
Short (shortened to $projects_list_description_width in
the projects list page, which is 25 characters by
default; see gitweb.conf(4)) single line description of
a project (of a repository). Plain text file; HTML will
be escaped. By default set to
Unnamed repository; edit this file to name it for gitweb.
from the template during repository creation, usually
installed in /usr/share/git-core/templates/. You can use
the gitweb.description repo configuration variable, but
the file takes precedence.
category (or gitweb.category)
Singe line category of a project, used to group projects
if $projects_list_group_categories is enabled. By
default (file and configuration variable absent),
uncategorized projects are put in the
$project_list_default_category category. You can use the
gitweb.category repo configuration variable, but the
file takes precedence.
The configuration variables
$projects_list_group_categories and
$project_list_default_category are described in
gitweb.conf(4)
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cloneurl (or multiple-valued gitweb.url)
File with repository URL (used for clone and fetch), one
per line. Displayed in the project summary page. You can
use multiple-valued gitweb.url repository configuration
variable for that, but the file takes precedence.
This is per-repository enhancement / version of global
prefix-based @git_base_url_list gitweb configuration
variable (see gitweb.conf(4)).
gitweb.owner
You can use the gitweb.owner repository configuration
variable to set repository's owner. It is displayed in
the project list and summary page.
If it's not set, filesystem directory's owner is used
(via GECOS field, i.e. real name field from getpwuid(3))
if $projects_list is unset (gitweb scans $projectroot
for repositories); if $projects_list points to file with
list of repositories, then project owner defaults to
value from this file for given repository.
various gitweb.* config variables (in config)
Read description of %feature hash for detailed list, and
descriptions. See also "Configuring gitweb features"
section in gitweb.conf(4)
ACTIONS, AND URLS
Gitweb can use path_info (component) based URLs, or it can
pass all necessary information via query parameters. The
typical gitweb URLs are broken down in to five components:
.../gitweb.cgi/<repo>/<action>/<revision>:/<path>?<arguments>
repo
The repository the action will be performed on.
All actions except for those that list all available
projects, in whatever form, require this parameter.
action
The action that will be run. Defaults to projects_list
if repo is not set, and to summary otherwise.
revision
Revision shown. Defaults to HEAD.
path
The path within the <repository> that the action is
performed on, for those actions that require it.
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arguments
Any arguments that control the behaviour of the action.
Some actions require or allow to specify two revisions, and
sometimes even two pathnames. In most general form such
path_info (component) based gitweb URL looks like this:
.../gitweb.cgi/<repo>/<action>/<revision_from>:/<path_from>..<revision_to>:/<path_to>?<arguments>
Each action is implemented as a subroutine, and must be
present in %actions hash. Some actions are disabled by
default, and must be turned on via feature mechanism. For
example to enable blame view add the following to gitweb
configuration file:
$feature{'blame'}{'default'} = [1];
Actions:
The standard actions are:
project_list
Lists the available Git repositories. This is the
default command if no repository is specified in the
URL.
summary
Displays summary about given repository. This is the
default command if no action is specified in URL, and
only repository is specified.
heads, remotes
Lists all local or all remote-tracking branches in given
repository.
The latter is not available by default, unless
configured.
tags
List all tags (lightweight and annotated) in given
repository.
blob, tree
Shows the files and directories in a given repository
path, at given revision. This is default command if no
action is specified in the URL, and path is given.
blob_plain
Returns the raw data for the file in given repository,
at given path and revision. Links to this action are
marked raw.
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blobdiff
Shows the difference between two revisions of the same
file.
blame, blame_incremental
Shows the blame (also called annotation) information for
a file. On a per line basis it shows the revision in
which that line was last changed and the user that
committed the change. The incremental version (which if
configured is used automatically when JavaScript is
enabled) uses Ajax to incrementally add blame info to
the contents of given file.
This action is disabled by default for performance
reasons.
commit, commitdiff
Shows information about a specific commit in a
repository. The commit view shows information about
commit in more detail, the commitdiff action shows
changeset for given commit.
patch
Returns the commit in plain text mail format, suitable
for applying with git-am(1).
tag
Display specific annotated tag (tag object).
log, shortlog
Shows log information (commit message or just commit
subject) for a given branch (starting from given
revision).
The shortlog view is more compact; it shows one commit
per line.
history
Shows history of the file or directory in a given
repository path, starting from given revision (defaults
to HEAD, i.e. default branch).
This view is similar to shortlog view.
rss, atom
Generates an RSS (or Atom) feed of changes to
repository.
WEBSERVER CONFIGURATION
This section explains how to configure some common
webservers to run gitweb. In all cases, /path/to/gitweb in
the examples is the directory you ran installed gitweb in,
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and contains gitweb_config.perl.
If you've configured a web server that isn't listed here for
gitweb, please send in the instructions so they can be
included in a future release.
Apache as CGI
Apache must be configured to support CGI scripts in the
directory in which gitweb is installed. Let's assume that it
is /var/www/cgi-bin directory.
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/"
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
Options Indexes FollowSymlinks ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
With that configuration the full path to browse repositories
would be:
http://server/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
Apache with mod_perl, via ModPerl::Registry
You can use mod_perl with gitweb. You must install
Apache::Registry (for mod_perl 1.x) or ModPerl::Registry
(for mod_perl 2.x) to enable this support.
Assuming that gitweb is installed to /var/www/perl, the
following Apache configuration (for mod_perl 2.x) is
suitable.
Alias /perl "/var/www/perl"
<Directory "/var/www/perl">
SetHandler perl-script
PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
Options Indexes FollowSymlinks +ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
With that configuration the full path to browse repositories
would be:
http://server/perl/gitweb.cgi
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Apache with FastCGI
Gitweb works with Apache and FastCGI. First you need to
rename, copy or symlink gitweb.cgi to gitweb.fcgi. Let's
assume that gitweb is installed in /usr/share/gitweb
directory. The following Apache configuration is suitable
(UNTESTED!)
FastCgiServer /usr/share/gitweb/gitweb.cgi
ScriptAlias /gitweb /usr/share/gitweb/gitweb.cgi
Alias /gitweb/static /usr/share/gitweb/static
<Directory /usr/share/gitweb/static>
SetHandler default-handler
</Directory>
With that configuration the full path to browse repositories
would be:
http://server/gitweb
ADVANCED WEB SERVER SETUP
All of those examples use request rewriting, and need
mod_rewrite (or equivalent; examples below are written for
Apache).
Single URL for gitweb and for fetching
If you want to have one URL for both gitweb and your http://
repositories, you can configure Apache like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName git.example.org
DocumentRoot /pub/git
SetEnv GITWEB_CONFIG /etc/gitweb.conf
# turning on mod rewrite
RewriteEngine on
# make the front page an internal rewrite to the gitweb script
RewriteRule ^/$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
# make access for "dumb clients" work
RewriteRule ^/(.*\.git/(?!/?(HEAD|info|objects|refs)).*)?$ \
/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi%{REQUEST_URI} [L,PT]
</VirtualHost>
The above configuration expects your public repositories to
live under /pub/git and will serve them as
http://git.domain.org/dir-under-pub-git, both as cloneable
GIT URL and as browseable gitweb interface. If you then
start your git-daemon(1) with --base-path=/pub/git
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--export-all then you can even use the git:// URL with
exactly the same path.
Setting the environment variable GITWEB_CONFIG will tell
gitweb to use the named file (i.e. in this example
/etc/gitweb.conf) as a configuration for gitweb. You don't
really need it in above example; it is required only if your
configuration file is in different place than built-in
(during compiling gitweb) gitweb_config.perl or
/etc/gitweb.conf. See gitweb.conf(4) for details, especially
information about precedence rules.
If you use the rewrite rules from the example you might also
need something like the following in your gitweb
configuration file (/etc/gitweb.conf following example):
@stylesheets = ("/some/absolute/path/gitweb.css");
$my_uri = "/";
$home_link = "/";
$per_request_config = 1;
Nowadays though gitweb should create HTML base tag when
needed (to set base URI for relative links), so it should
work automatically.
Webserver configuration with multiple projects' root
If you want to use gitweb with several project roots you can
edit your Apache virtual host and gitweb configuration files
in the following way.
The virtual host configuration (in Apache configuration
file) should look like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName git.example.org
DocumentRoot /pub/git
SetEnv GITWEB_CONFIG /etc/gitweb.conf
# turning on mod rewrite
RewriteEngine on
# make the front page an internal rewrite to the gitweb script
RewriteRule ^/$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi [QSA,L,PT]
# look for a public_git folder in unix users' home
# http://git.example.org/~<user>/
RewriteRule ^/\~([^\/]+)(/|/gitweb.cgi)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi \
[QSA,E=GITWEB_PROJECTROOT:/home/$1/public_git/,L,PT]
# http://git.example.org/+<user>/
#RewriteRule ^/\+([^\/]+)(/|/gitweb.cgi)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi \
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[QSA,E=GITWEB_PROJECTROOT:/home/$1/public_git/,L,PT]
# http://git.example.org/user/<user>/
#RewriteRule ^/user/([^\/]+)/(gitweb.cgi)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi \
[QSA,E=GITWEB_PROJECTROOT:/home/$1/public_git/,L,PT]
# defined list of project roots
RewriteRule ^/scm(/|/gitweb.cgi)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi \
[QSA,E=GITWEB_PROJECTROOT:/pub/scm/,L,PT]
RewriteRule ^/var(/|/gitweb.cgi)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi \
[QSA,E=GITWEB_PROJECTROOT:/var/git/,L,PT]
# make access for "dumb clients" work
RewriteRule ^/(.*\.git/(?!/?(HEAD|info|objects|refs)).*)?$ \
/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi%{REQUEST_URI} [L,PT]
</VirtualHost>
Here actual project root is passed to gitweb via
GITWEB_PROJECT_ROOT environment variable from a web server,
so you need to put the following line in gitweb
configuration file (/etc/gitweb.conf in above example):
$projectroot = $ENV{'GITWEB_PROJECTROOT'} || "/pub/git";
Note that this requires to be set for each request, so
either $per_request_config must be false, or the above must
be put in code referenced by $per_request_config;
These configurations enable two things. First, each unix
user (<user>) of the server will be able to browse through
gitweb git repositories found in ~/public_git/ with the
following url:
http://git.example.org/~<user>/
If you do not want this feature on your server just remove
the second rewrite rule.
If you already use `mod_userdir` in your virtual host or you
don't want to use the '~' as first character, just comment
or remove the second rewrite rule, and uncomment one of the
following according to what you want.
Second, repositories found in /pub/scm/ and /var/git/ will
be accessible through http://git.example.org/scm/ and
http://git.example.org/var/. You can add as many project
roots as you want by adding rewrite rules like the third and
the fourth.
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PATH_INFO usage
If you enable PATH_INFO usage in gitweb by putting
$feature{'pathinfo'}{'default'} = [1];
in your gitweb configuration file, it is possible to set up
your server so that it consumes and produces URLs in the
form
http://git.example.com/project.git/shortlog/sometag
i.e. without gitweb.cgi part, by using a configuration such
as the following. This configuration assumes that
/var/www/gitweb is the DocumentRoot of your webserver,
contains the gitweb.cgi script and complementary static
files (stylesheet, favicon, JavaScript):
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias git.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/gitweb
<Directory /var/www/gitweb>
Options ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script cgi
DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.* /gitweb.cgi/$0 [L,PT]
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The rewrite rule guarantees that existing static files will
be properly served, whereas any other URL will be passed to
gitweb as PATH_INFO parameter.
Notice that in this case you don't need special settings for
@stylesheets, $my_uri and $home_link, but you lose "dumb
client" access to your project .git dirs (described in
"Single URL for gitweb and for fetching" section). A
possible workaround for the latter is the following: in your
project root dir (e.g. /pub/git) have the projects named
without a .git extension (e.g. /pub/git/project instead of
/pub/git/project.git) and configure Apache as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias git.example.com
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DocumentRoot /var/www/gitweb
AliasMatch ^(/.*?)(\.git)(/.*)?$ /pub/git$1$3
<Directory /var/www/gitweb>
Options ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script cgi
DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.* /gitweb.cgi/$0 [L,PT]
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The additional AliasMatch makes it so that
http://git.example.com/project.git
will give raw access to the project's git dir (so that the
project can be cloned), while
http://git.example.com/project
will provide human-friendly gitweb access.
This solution is not 100% bulletproof, in the sense that if
some project has a named ref (branch, tag) starting with
git/, then paths such as
http://git.example.com/project/command/abranch..git/abranch
will fail with a 404 error.
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests to
git@vger.kernel.org[1], putting "gitweb" in the subject of
email.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
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+---------------+--------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Availability | developer/versioning/git |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------------+
SEE ALSO
gitweb.conf(4), git-instaweb(1)
gitweb/README, gitweb/INSTALL
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
NOTES
1. git@vger.kernel.org
mailto:git@vger.kernel.org
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://git-
core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.9.2.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://git-scm.com/.
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