|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
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)
gitweb - Git web interface (web frontend to Git repositories)
To get started with gitweb, run git-instaweb(1) from a Git
repository. This will configure and start your web server, and run
a web browser pointing to gitweb.
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, seeing what was changed, when, and by whom.
• 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
stepping through revisions one at a time, viewing the history
of the repository.
• Finding commits whose commit messages match a given search
term.
See https://repo.or.cz/w/git.git/tree/HEAD:/gitweb/ for gitweb
source code, browsed using gitweb itself.
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 a common repository root, i.e. be all under a single parent
repository (but see also the "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 the 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 the
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+<[email protected]>
foo/bar.git O+W+Ner+<[email protected]>
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)
Single 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)
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.
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
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 browsable 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 directory 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.
Please report any bugs or feature requests to
[email protected][1], putting "gitweb" in the subject of email.
gitweb.conf(5), git-instaweb(1)
gitweb/README, gitweb/INSTALL
Part of the git(1) suite
1. [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version 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 manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GITWEB(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-config(1), git-instaweb(1), gitweb.conf(5), giteveryday(7)
|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|