README

   1
   2                        cgit - cgi for git
   3
   4
   5 This is an attempt to create a fast web interface for the git scm, using a
   6 builtin cache to decrease server io-pressure.
   7
   8
   9 Installation
  10
  11 Building cgit involves building a proper version of git. How to do this
  12 depends on how you obtained the cgit sources:
  13
  14 a) If you're working in a cloned cgit repository, you first need to
  15 initialize and update the git submodule:
  16
  17   $ git submodule init     # register the git submodule in .git/config
  18   $ $EDITOR .git/config    # if you want to specify a different url for git
  19   $ git submodule update   # clone/fetch and checkout correct git version
  20
  21 b) If you're building from a cgit tarball, you can download a proper git
  22 version like this:
  23
  24   $ make get-git
  25
  26
  27 When either a) or b) has been performed, you can build and install cgit like
  28 this:
  29
  30   $ make
  31   $ sudo make install
  32
  33 This will install cgit.cgi and cgit.css into "/var/www/htdocs/cgit". You can
  34 configure this location (and a few other things) by providing a "cgit.conf"
  35 file (see the Makefile for details).
  36
  37
  38 Dependencies:
  39   -git 1.5.3
  40   -zip lib
  41   -crypto lib
  42   -openssl lib
  43
  44
  45 Apache configuration
  46
  47 A new Directory-section must probably be added for cgit, possibly something
  48 like this:
  49
  50   <Directory "/var/www/htdocs/cgit/">
  51       AllowOverride None
  52       Options ExecCGI
  53       Order allow,deny
  54       Allow from all
  55   </Directory>
  56
  57
  58 Runtime configuration
  59
  60 The file /etc/cgitrc is read by cgit before handling a request. In addition
  61 to runtime parameters, this file also contains a list of the repositories
  62 displayed by cgit.
  63
  64 A template cgitrc is shipped with the sources, and all parameters and default
  65 values are documented in this file.
  66
  67
  68 The cache
  69
  70 When cgit is invoked it looks for a cachefile matching the request and
  71 returns it to the client. If no such cachefile exist (or if it has expired),
  72 the content for the request is written into the proper cachefile before the
  73 file is returned.
  74
  75 If the cachefile has expired but cgit is unable to obtain a lock for it, the
  76 stale cachefile is returned to the client. This is done to favour page
  77 throughput over page freshness.
  78
  79 The generated content contains the complete response to the client, including
  80 the http-headers "Modified" and "Expires".
  81
  82
  83 The missing features
  84
  85 * Submodule links in the directory listing page have a fixed format per
  86   repository. This should probably be extended to a generic map between
  87   submodule path and url.
  88
  89 * Branch- and tag-lists in the summary page can get very long, they should
  90   probably only show something like the ten "latest modified" branches and
  91   a similar number of "most recent" tags.
  92
  93 * There should be a new page for browsing refs/heads and refs/tags, with links
  94   from the summary page whenever the branch/tag lists overflow.
  95
  96 * The log-page should have more/better search options (author, committer,
  97   pickaxe, paths) and possibly support arbitrary revision specifiers.
  98
  99 * A set of test-scripts is required before cgit-1.0 can be released.
 100
 101 Patches/bugreports/suggestions/comments are always welcome, please feel free
 102 to contact the author: hjemli@gmail.com