gitweb(1) 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 will configure and start your web server, and run a web browser
pointing to gitweb.
DESCRIPTION
Gitweb provides a web interface to Git repositories. Its 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, seeing what was changed, when, and by whom.
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 stepping
through revisions one at a time, viewing the history of the
repository.
o Finding commits whose commit messages match a given search term.
See https://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(5) 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 a
common repository root, i.e. be all under a single parent repository
(but see also the "Advanced web server setup" section, "Webserver
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 the 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
Instead of having gitweb find repositories by scanning the 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
https://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:
<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(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
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
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(5) 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";
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(5)); 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(5)) 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(5)
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(5)).
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(5)
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.
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.
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, 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
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 clonable Git URL and
as browsable 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 = "/";
$per_request_config = 1;
Nowadays though gitweb should create HTML base tag when needed (to set
base URI for relative links), so it should work automatically.
Webserver configuration with multiple projects' root
If you want to use gitweb with several project roots you can edit your
Apache virtual host and gitweb configuration files in the following
way.
The virtual host configuration (in Apache configuration file) should
look like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName git.example.org
DocumentRoot /pub/git
SetEnv GITWEB_CONFIG /etc/gitweb.conf
# turning on mod rewrite
RewriteEngine on
# make the front page an internal rewrite to the gitweb script
RewriteRule ^/$ /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi [QSA,L,PT]
# look for a public_git 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
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 $home_link, but you lose "dumb client" access
to your project .git dirs (described in "Single URL for gitweb and for
fetching" section). A possible workaround for the latter is the
following: in your project root dir (e.g. /pub/git) have the projects
named without a .git extension (e.g. /pub/git/project instead of
/pub/git/project.git) and configure Apache as follows:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias git.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/gitweb
AliasMatch ^(/.*?)(\.git)(/.*)?$ /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.
SEE ALSO
gitweb.conf(5), 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
Git 2.44.0 2024-02-22 gitweb(1)
git 2.44.0 - Generated Sat Feb 24 14:49:09 CST 2024