Hello Kulbir,
I saw your article about installing Gitweb and i decided to send this shameless self-promotion. Maybe you could try my open-source project, GitList https://github.com/klaussilveira/gitlist

I’m looking for beta testers and supporters. FLOSS.

So, I thought I’ll just give it a try. Today, I got it working and was blown away by the amazing interface! It’s almost like a super simplified version of GitHub. I was so impressed that I immediately setup a demo website at git.gofedora.com for others to look at and fall in love :-)Another good thing about GitList is that it’s very simple to setup. Below is a step by step process to install and configure GitList to expose your public Git repositories to the internet.

What You Need?

You need the following packages before you can setup GitList.

• Apache (with mod_rewrite)
• Git
• PHP

Installing Required Packages

Most modern operating systems have the above mentioned packages installed by default. Even if you don’t have them already, you can use your OS package manager to install them quickly. To install on Fedora/RedHat/CentOS using yum, use the following command

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ yum install php git httpd

For Ubuntu/Debian, use the following command

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ apt-get install php git apache2

Assumptions

For setting up GitList, I am assuming the following directory paths and other variables.

• Path to public Git repositories : /home/saini/code/public/
• Path to Apache document root : /var/www/html/
• Path to Git executable : /usr/bin/git (Use “which git” to find out for your OS)
• Web URL for browsing git repos : mygit.example.com/gitlist/

Installing and Configuring GitList

Follow the following simple steps to install and configure GitList.

Step 1 : Clone GitList repository from GitHub to /var/www/html/gitlist/

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ cd /var/www/html/
[root@whitemagnet.com html]$ git clone git://github.com/klaussilveira/gitlist.git gitlist

Step 2 : Create cache directory and make it globally writable

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ cd gitlist
[root@whitemagnet.com gitlist]$ mkdir cache
[root@whitemagnet.com gitlist]$ chmod 777 cache

Step 3 : Configure GitList using config.ini

Open the config.ini (in gitlist directory) and set the option properly. Refer the sample shown below.

[git]
client = '/usr/bin/git' ; Your git executable path
repositories = '/home/saini/code/public/' ; Path to your repositories (with ending slash)

[app]
baseurl = 'http://mygit.exmaple.com/gitlist' ; Base URL of the application (without ending slash)

Step 4 : Make sure your Apache can read your .htaccess file in gitlist directory

GitList utilizes Apache’s mod_rewrite module to  provide nice URLs. Make sure your Apache is configured to read .htaccess from the gitlist directory. Open your Apache config file (generally located at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf or /etc/apache2/ports.conf) and look for the following

In this segment, make sure you have AllowOverride All as below.

# Other lines omitted
AllowOverride All
# Other lines omitted

Step 5 : Reload or restart Apache daemon if needed

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ apachctl -k restart (or apache2ctl -k restart for Ubuntu/Debian)

Step 6 : Get some sample repositories in your public repo directory

Get some sample repositories in your public repo directory from GitHub.

[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ cd /home/saini/code/public/
[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ git clone git://github.com/kulbirsaini/intelligentmirror.git
[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ git clone git://github.com/kulbirsaini/Railscasts-Sync.git
[root@whitemagnet.com ~]$ git clone git://github.com/zilkey/active_hash.git

That’s all! Now, go to http://mygit.example.com/gitlist to discover your public git repos via a cool web interface! Leave a comment if you face any issues.

Goal

Setting up gitweb (web interface for SCM software git) for your project’s git repository for public access and developer commits via ssh.

Assumptions

1. You already have your project’s git repository.
2. You have hosting space somewhere to host gitweb.
3. You have root access.
4. You are using Apache as webserver.

Example for this howto

Project : VideoCache
Domain for gitweb : git.cachevideos.com
URL for git access for videocache : http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git
Actual path on server : /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git
Git repository : /home/saini/projects/videocache/

Installation

Installation is pretty easy. Just one single command would do everything.

[root@localhost ~]# yum install gitweb (do as root)

This will create a directory /var/www/git which is default for gitweb.

Copy the directory /var/www/git/ to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git

[root@localhost ~]# cp -r /var/www/git /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git

Configuration

1. GitWeb

Open the file /etc/gitweb.conf (it may or may not be there) and add the following lines to it.

# Change This
$projectroot = '/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git';
# Change This
$site_name = "Kulbir Saini's git trees.";
# Don't Change the variables below
$my_uri = "/";
$home_link = '/';
@stylesheets = ("/gitweb.css");
$favicon = "/git-favicon.png";
$logo = "/git-logo.png";

2. Apache

Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf and clear all the lines that are already there and add the following lines to it

  DocumentRoot /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git
  ServerName git.cachevideos.com
  ErrorLog "/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/logs/error_log"
  CustomLog "/home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/logs/access_log" combined
  SetEnv  GITWEB_CONFIG  /etc/gitweb.conf
  DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi

    Allow from all
    AllowOverride all
    Order allow,deny
    Options +ExecCGI
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

      SetHandler cgi-script

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9_\-]+\.git/?(\?.*)?$ /gitweb.cgi%{REQUEST_URI} [L,PT]

3. Git repository configuration

Go to your git repository (/home/saini/projects/videocache/) and make the following changes.

(a). Open file .git/description and add a short nice description for your project.

videocache is a squid url rewriter plugin written in Python to facilitate youtube, metacafe, dailymotion, google, vimeo, msn soapbox, tvuol.uol.com.br, blip.tv, break.com videos and wrzuta.pl audio caching.

(b). Open file .git/config and append the following lines

[gitweb]
  owner = "Kulbir Saini"

Copy project’s git repository for gitweb

Copy the /home/saini/projects/videocache/.git directory to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

[root@localhost ~]# cp -r /home/saini/projects/videocache/.git /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

Finishing Step

Restart Apache webserver.

[root@localhost ~]# service httpd restart

Now you can browser a list of your projects’ git repositories at http://git.cachevideos.com/ .

Adding another project repository

Just copy the project repository’s .git directory to /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/prjoect_name.git. And it’ll be shown on the list.

Committing (pushing) to the repository

For committing to the repository via ssh use the following command.

# Pushing everything (Please see the username)
[root@localhost videocache]# git push --all ssh://saini@git.cachevideos.com/~saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

To update tags on the remote repository use this command.

# Pushing all tags
[root@localhost videocache]# git push --tags ssh://saini@git.cachevideos.com/~saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git

Well, if you consider just the web interface and committing part for your project, thats all. But things can be fine tuned further. Below are few hacks!

1. Enabling nice urls.

By default the urls for browsing repository via git web are pretty crappy and difficult to remember. The RewriteRule and RewriteEngine lines in your Apache configuration file (/etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf) takes care of that and produce nice and clean urls.

So you can browser the repository via http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git instead of http://git.cachevideos.com/?p=videocache.git;a=summary.

2. Enabling remote ls (git-ls-remote or git ls-remote)

This is the most trickiest part. If you try the command below, it won’t produce any output

[root@localhost ~]# git-ls-remote http://git.cachevideos.com/videocache.git

You need to go to project’s repository in gitweb and then run the following command to update the server info for git.

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git/
[root@localhost ~]# git-update-server-info

Try the ls-remote command now and it should succeed by producing all the branches and tags in the remote repository.

But there is a problem, you have to run the above command after every commit to the remote repository. To solve this issue, you can enable post-update hook for the project’s repository in gitweb. Use the following command to enable it.

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/saini/domains/cachevideos.com/git/videocache.git/
[root@localhost ~]# chmod +x post-update

The above command will update the server info automatically every time you commit.

Thats all you need to do for setting up gitweb. I hope this will be helpful.

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