Go4Expert - cgit: A Web Interface for Git

Git is popular distributed version control system, it was developed by inventor of Linux, Linus Torvalds. Git has been gaining huge popularity in the ope-source community as well as in the corporate world due to it's distributed nature and efficiency.

I had a written a few articles on Git to in introduce people to Git, Introduction to Git VCS and Git VCS - Cloning & Workflow, you should read those too if you are completely new to Git.

In this article we'll be looking a installing a popular web interface for git repositories - cgit. cgit is a fast web interface for Git repositories, it is better than gitweb - another web interface for git - which is written in Perl, primarily because it's written in C and runs as a binary.

Installing cgit

I am assuming you already have git installed, here is the flow of commands that need to be issued to get the stable source of cgit.

Code:

# git clone git://hjemli.net/pub/git/cgit
# cd cgit
# git submodule init
# git submodule update

Now, we'll need to customize the install like the directory where CGI files would be installed, the config for the cgit binary, etc. Following are the defaults for cgit:

Code:

CGIT_SCRIPT_NAME = cgit.cgi
CGIT_SCRIPT_PATH = /var/www/htdocs/cgit
CGIT_CONFIG = /etc/cgitrc
CACHE_ROOT = /var/cache/cgit
SHA1_HEADER = <openssl/sha.h>
GIT_VER = 1.6.0.3
GIT_URL = http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-$(GIT_VER).tar.bz2

In case you want to change any of these (most likely you will, like I did), create a cgit.conf file in the same directory with variables you want to modify and their appropriate values, mine looks something like this:

Code:

CGIT_SCRIPT_PATH = /var/www/html/cgit
CGIT_CONFIG = /home/root/cgitrc
CACHE_ROOT = /var/cache/cgit

Now, we'll need to compile & install cgit.

Code:

# make
# make install

Next we would need to add some configuration in Apache for cgit to run.

Code:

<Directory "/var/www/html/cgit/">
      AllowOverride None
      AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
      Options +ExecCGI
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
</Directory>

Next comes creating and population cgitrc file with the list of repositories & their path. Look at the following cgitrc file, it's pretty simple.

Code:

local-time=1
root-desc=Pradeep Local Dev
enable-index-links=1
enable-log-filecount=1
enable-log-linecount=1
snapshots=tar.gz tar.bz zip

## List of repositories

repo.group=Python
repo.url=Python-DBus
repo.path=/var/www/git/python_dbus.git
repo.desc=Python Programs to access DBus
repo.owner=Pradeep

repo.group=Perl
repo.url=RoundRobinShared
repo.path=/var/www/git/roundrobin_shared.git
repo.desc=Test Programs for Shared Mem
repo.owner=Pradeep

repo.group=Perl
repo.url=KidsMaths
repo.path=/var/www/git/kids_maths.git
repo.desc=Kids Maths Programs
repo.owner=Anjali

repo.group=ASP
repo.url=Slambook
repo.path=/var/www/git/slambook.git
repo.desc=ASP learning Code
repo.owner=Pradeep

That's it, restart Apache and go to the URL http://<your-server-ip>/cgit/cgit.cgi.

References

http://hjemli.net/git/cgit/tree/README