GITWEB

Once we have the GIT server up and running with the repository structures in place, we need to explore more about GITWEB, so as to make browsing of repositories easier. This post will provide pointers related to setting up GITWEB and its configuration.

 

What is GITWEB??

• 'Gitweb' is a Git web interface, the one working on http://www.kernel.org/git
• It is written in Perl, and can be used as a CGI script, or as a mod_perl legacy script
• It allows browsing a git repository (or a set of git repositories) using a web browser.
• Using gitweb we can browse directory trees at arbitrary revisions, view contents of files, see log or examine commits, commit messages and changes made by a given commit.
• We can search for commits by an author, added to repository by a comitter, commit with commit message (commit description) which includes some text.

GITWEB CONFIGURATION

Install Apache

First, you need to ensure apache2 is installed. Check to see if you have an /etc/apache2 folder. If you do, you should be okay. If you don’t, you need to install it.  sudo apt-get install apache2

Once you have that installed and the daemon is restarted, type the ip address in the browser and you should something like “It Works” 

Issues related to Apache

There can be lot of issues related to apache configuration, some are listed below:-

There may be a firewall running on your server, and it might be blocking traffic to the standard web server ports, port 80 (for regular connections) and port 443 (for secure connections).

Check the current firewall rule:-

sudo  /sbin/iptables –L

IP table rules to open the ports

sudo /sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 80 -m state --state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
sudo /sbin/iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 443 -m state --state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

Logs

Apache logs are stored under:- /var/log/apache2     

Test the server

If you navigate to your server's IP address in a web browser: http://<ip address>

You should see a default page telling you apache is working

INSTALL GITWEB

sudo apt-get install gitweb

This will install gitweb into /var/www/gitweb, create a conf file at /etc/gitweb.conf, and add three files to /usr/share/gitweb (git-favicon.png, git-logo.png, gitweb.css).

If for some reason, the /var/www/gitweb folder is not created, you can clone the git source (git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git) and then just copy the git/gitweb folder to /var/www/gitweb

cp –R git/gitweb /var/www/

You only need to edit the $projectroot variable in the /etc/gitweb.conf to point to your repositories folder:

/etc/gitweb.conf

=============================== 

# path to git projects (<project>.git)
$projectroot = "/project";
# directory to use for temp files
$git_temp = "/tmp";
# target of the home link on top of all pages
#$home_link = $my_uri || "/";
# html text to include at home page
$home_text = "indextext.html";
# file with project list; by default, simply scan the projectroot dir.
$projects_list = $projectroot;
# stylesheet to use
$stylesheet = "/gitweb/gitweb.css";
# logo to use
$logo = "/gitweb/git-logo.png";
# the 'favicon'
$favicon = "/gitweb/git-favicon.png";
#enable human readable URLs
$feature{'pathinfo'}{'default'} = [1];

===============================

Since Ubuntu includes the entire /etc/apache2/conf.d directory, so we just added the following information into /etc/apach2/conf.d/gitweb:-

 /etc/apache2/conf.d/gitweb.conf

===============================
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
#</Directory>
ServerName hostname1
<Directory /var/www/gitweb>
RewriteRule ^/gitweb/([a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+\.git)/?(\?.*)?$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi/$1 [L,PT]
Options Indexes FollowSymlinks ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

 /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-defaul

===============================
 Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    <Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    </Directory>

ScriptAlias /git "/usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi"
        <Directory "/var/www/gitweb">
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
===============================

Restart Apache to make sure everything works....

Congratulation, the gitweb is up and running on your system now. Hope you find this article useful, If there are any issues or concerns feel free to share your feedback.