NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION | ACTIONS, AND URLS | WEBSERVER CONFIGURATION | ADVANCED WEB SERVER SETUP | BUGS | SEE ALSO | GIT | NOTES | COLOPHON

GITWEB(1)                        Git Manual                        GITWEB(1)

NAME         top

       gitweb - Git web interface (web frontend to Git repositories)

SYNOPSIS         top

       To get started with gitweb, run git-instaweb(1) from a Git
       repository. This would configure and start your web server, and run
       web browser pointing to gitweb.

DESCRIPTION         top

       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, see what was changed when, by who.
       ·   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 step
           through revisions one at a time, viewing the history of the
           repository.
       ·   Finding commits which commit messages matches given search term.
       See http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=tree;f=gitweb or
       http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git/tree/HEAD:/gitweb/ for gitweb source
       code, browsed using gitweb itself.

CONFIGURATION         top

       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
       common repository root, i.e. be all under a single parent repository
       (but see also "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 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 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)
           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         top

       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         top

       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         top

       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 browseable 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 folder 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         top

       Please report any bugs or feature requests to git@vger.kernel.org[1],
       putting "gitweb" in the subject of email.

SEE ALSO         top

       gitweb.conf(5), git-instaweb(1)
       gitweb/README, gitweb/INSTALL

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES         top

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

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control system)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
       source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.13.2.556.g5116f7           07/05/2017                        GITWEB(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-instaweb(1)gitweb.conf(5)giteveryday(7)