Installing GitWeb - How to

Question

I've just installed Git on my production server and am hoping to get GitWeb working with it. I became very interested in getting it to work when I stumbled across a tutorial showing how to make git web work using...

git instaweb -d webrick --start

It works exactly as described in the tutorial at ... http://lostechies.com/jasonmeridth/2009/09/27/git-instaweb/

However after reading other forums it seems like instaweb is not really meant to be used and instead I should set up GitWeb to run on Apache.

I am fairly new to Apache so am not very familiar with what I should be doing. I've been following the tutorial at http://unix-heaven.org/node/31 . But i don't think I need all of it. I think the only thing I need to do is put the following in my httpd.conf file...

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin <a href="mailto:admin@example.org">admin@example.org</a>
    ServerName git.example.org
    ServerAlias git-pub.example.org
    RedirectMatch ^/$ /gitweb.cgi
    SetEnv GITWEB_PROJECTROOT /cvs/codeRepository/git

    Alias /gitweb.js                /srv/www/gitweb/static/gitweb.js
    Alias /gitweb.css               /srv/www/gitweb/static/gitweb.css
    Alias /git-logo.png             /srv/www/gitweb/static/git-logo.png
    Alias /git-favicon.png           /srv/www/gitweb/static/git-favicon.png

    ScriptAlias / "/srv/www/gitweb/"

    <Directory "/srv/www/gitweb/">
        AllowOverride None
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/httpd-git-pub.example.org-access.log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/httpd-git-pub.example.org-error.log" common
</VirtualHost>

Where /srv/www/gitweb/ contains....

$:/srv/www/gitweb # ls -ltr
total 252
-rwx------ 1 root root 247917 Feb 27 15:02 gitweb.cgi
drwx------ 2 root root   4096 Feb 27 15:03 static

Will the config I've specified above work or I need to specify ? And if so what url will I access GitWeb at? Do I need serverName, serverAlias and serverAdmin?

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

The url you would use would be

http://git.example.org

But I am not so sure about your config. Mine is simpler, and I always recommend an address like http(s)://yourServer/gitweb, instead of just http(s)://yourServer/: if you need to add more services, you can add more root url (like /gitweb).

For a quick http access without authentication:

# GitWeb on 80
Listen 80
<VirtualHost *:80>

  ServerName git.example.org
  ServerAlias git-pub.example.org

  SetEnv GITWEB_PROJECTROOT /cvs/codeRepository/git
  SetEnv GIT_HTTP_BACKEND "/usr/local/apps/git/libexec/git-core/git-http-backend"

  DocumentRoot /srv/www/gitweb
  Alias /gitweb /srv/www/gitweb

  <Directory /srv/www/gitweb>

    Options ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    AllowOverride All
    order allow,deny
    Allow from all

    AddHandler cgi-script cgi
    DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi

  </Directory>

  BrowserMatch ".*MSIE.*" \
    nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
    downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

  LogLevel Info
  ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/gitweb_error_log"
  TransferLog "/var/log/apache2/gitweb_access_log"

</VirtualHost>

Note: in my original config file (which is a template, with placeholder values like @PORT_HTTP_GITWEB@), I didn't use GITWEB_PROJECTROOT because I am calling Gitolite, which knows where the Git repos are.

I do set a variable in the gitweb.conf file, though, which plays the same role than GITWEB_PROJECTROOT, according to the gitweb documentation:

 $projectroot::

Absolute filesystem path which will be prepended to project path; the path to repository is $projectroot/$project.
Set to $GITWEB_PROJECTROOT during installation.
This variable has to be set correctly for gitweb to find repositories.

For example, if $projectroot is set to "/srv/git" by putting the following in gitweb config file:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
our $projectroot = "/srv/git";
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

then:

------------------------------------------------
http://git.example.com/gitweb.cgi?p=foo/bar.git
------------------------------------------------

and its path_info based equivalent

------------------------------------------------
http://git.example.com/gitweb.cgi/foo/bar.git
------------------------------------------------

will map to the path '/srv/git/foo/bar.git' on the filesystem.

---

Update August 2018, for Git 2.19 (Q3 2018, five years later)

"git instaweb" has been adjusted to run better with newer Apache on RedHat based distros.

See commit 757b124 (07 Aug 2018), and commit 1976311 (08 Aug 2018) by Sebastian Kisela (skisela).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 93ded33, 20 Aug 2018)}

git-instaweb: fix apache2 config with apache >= 2.4

The generated apache2 config fails with apache >= 2.4. The error log states:

AH00136: Server MUST relinquish startup privileges before accepting connections.  
Please ensure mod_unixd or other system security module is loaded.
AH00016: Configuration Failed

Fix this by loading the unixd module.
This works with older httpd as well, so no IfVersion conditional is needed. (Tested with httpd-2.2.15 on CentOS-6.)