# gitweb

## 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:
    
           •   Viewing multiple Git repositories with common root.
    
           •   Browsing every revision of the repository.
    
           •   Viewing the contents of files in the repository at any
               revision.
    
           •   Viewing the revision log of branches, history of files and
               directories, seeing what was changed, when, and by whom.
    
           •   Viewing the blame/annotation details of any file (if enabled).
    
           •   Generating RSS and Atom feeds of commits, for any branch. The
               feeds are auto-discoverable in modern web browsers.
    
           •   Viewing everything that was changed in a revision, and
               stepping through revisions one at a time, viewing the history
               of the repository.
    
           •   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:
    
           •   One record (for project / repository) per line; does not
               support line continuation (newline escaping).
    
           •   Leading and trailing whitespace are ignored.
    
           •   Whitespace separated fields; any run of whitespace can be used
               as field separator (rules for Perl’s "**split**(" ", **$line**)").
    
           •   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).
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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.
    
           •   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**)
               Single 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.


## GIT



           Part of the git(1) suite
    


## NOTES



            1. git@vger.kernel.org
               mailto:git@vger.kernel.org
    


* * *