Repositories

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 the repository in gitweb is the path to its $GIT_DIR (its object database) relative to $projectroot. Therefore the repository $repo can be found at "$projectroot/$repo".

Projects list file format

This file uses the following format:

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(5)) 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

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

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

our $export_ok = "git-daemon-export-ok";

$export_auth_hook = sub {
        use Apache2::SubRequest ();
        use Apache2::Const -compile => qw(HTTP_OK);
        my $path = "$_[0]/HEAD";
        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 use the following files in repository:

README.html

description (or gitweb.description)

Unnamed repository; edit this file to name it for gitweb.

category (or gitweb.category)

cloneurl (or multiple-valued gitweb.url)

gitweb.owner

various gitweb.* config variables (in config)

Actions:

project_list

summary

heads, remotes

tags

blob, tree

blob_plain

blobdiff

blame, blame_incremental

commit, commitdiff

patch

tag

log, shortlog

history

rss, atom

Apache as CGI

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

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

Apache with FastCGI

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

Single URL for gitweb and for fetching

<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 clonable Git URL and as browseable gitweb interface. If you then start your git-daemon(1) with --base-path=/pub/git --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(5) 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

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 directory 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 \
                 [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.

PATH_INFO usage

$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
        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.