How to set up Gitweb

I have set up Git on a server, using gitosis to control commit access. I would like to configure my Git system so that anyone inside our firewall can have read access to the Git repository, and I would like to set up Gitweb as well.

I have found several Gitweb setup tutorials on various blogs, but they differ in various details and some of them are out-of-date. I'd like this question to have an up-to-date answer.

My specific setup is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I have successfully installed Git, gitosis, and the Gitweb and Apache packages. However, I have not figured out how to configure Apache to actually grant access to Gitweb.

How do I set up my server to allow read-only access to Git, and to allow Gitweb to work?


After you install gitweb (on RHEL $ yum install gitweb), it should create a directory var/www/git and put a file in etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf. If these don't exist, create them. Put all your git repos in var/www/git and edit git.conf to let it execute cgi scripts and rewrite URLs for gitweb. Here's what I have:

<Directory /var/www/git>
SetEnv  GITWEB_CONFIG  /etc/gitweb.conf
DirectoryIndex gitweb.cgi
Allow from all
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
<Files gitweb.cgi>
  SetHandler cgi-script
</Files>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+.git/?(\?.)?$ /gitweb.cgi%{REQUESTURI} [L,PT]
</Directory>

There is also a gitweb.conf file in /etc/gitweb.conf which points to things like css, favicons and logos. I'm pretty sure those will work if you leave your projects in /var/www/git, but if you change that directory, you'll probably need to put it in gitweb.conf.


Tested out on Ubuntu 8.04:

sudo apt-get install apache2 git-core gitweb
sudo a2enmod rewrite

Assuming that you git projects are in /pub/git, edit the file: /etc/gitweb.conf

$projectroot = "/pub/git";
$git_temp = "/tmp";
#$home_link = $my_uri || "/";
$home_text = "indextext.html";
$projects_list = $projectroot;
$stylesheet = "/gitweb.css";
$logo = "/git-logo.png";
$favicon = "/git-favicon.png";
# enable human readable URLs
$feature{'pathinfo'}{'default'} = [1];

Now, setup a new virtual host in Apache config directory. Edit a new file called: /etc/apache2/sites-available/gitweb

<VirtualHost *>
   ServerName     git.mydomain.com
   ServerAlias    git

   DocumentRoot /pub/git
   SetEnv GITWEB_CONFIG /etc/gitweb.conf

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^/$                                            /gitweb [PT]
   RewriteRule ^/(.*\.git/(?!/?(HEAD|info|objects|refs)).*)?$ /gitweb%{REQUEST_URI}  [L,PT]

   # Aliases
   ScriptAlias /gitweb           /usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
   Alias       /gitweb.css       /usr/share/gitweb/gitweb.css
   Alias       /git-logo.png     /usr/share/gitweb/git-logo.png
   Alias       /git-favicon.png  /usr/share/gitweb/git-favicon.png

   # Logfiles
   ErrorLog  /var/log/apache2/gitweb.error.log
   CustomLog /var/log/apache2/gitweb.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Enable the new site:

sudo a2ensite gitweb

Restart Apache:

sudo invoke-rc.d apache2 restart