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
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)
