Gitweb Integration

Gerrit Code Review can manage and generate hyperlinks to gitweb, allowing users to jump from Gerrit content to the same information, but shown by gitweb.

Internal/Managed gitweb

In the internal configuration, Gerrit inspects the request, enforces its project level access controls, and directly executes gitweb.cgi if the user is authorized to view the page.

To enable the internal configuration, set gitweb.cgi with the path of the installed CGI. This defaults to /usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi, which is a common installation path for the gitweb package on Linux distributions.

  git config --file $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.cgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
  git config --file $site_path/etc/gerrit.config --unset gitweb.url

Alternatively, if Gerrit is served behind reverse proxy, it can generate different URLs for gitweb’s links (they need to be rewritten to <gerrit>/gitweb?args on the web server). This allows for serving gitweb under a different URL than the Gerrit instance. To enable this feature, set both: gitweb.cgi and gitweb.url.

  git config --file $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.cgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
  git config --file $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.url /pretty/path/to/gitweb

After updating '$site_path'/etc/gerrit.config, the Gerrit server must be restarted and clients must reload the host page to see the change.

Configuration

Most of the gitweb configuration file is handled automatically by Gerrit Code Review. Site specific overrides can be placed in '$site_path'/etc/gitweb_config.perl, as this file is loaded as part of the generated configuration file.

Logo and CSS

If the package-manager installed CGI (/usr/lib/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi) is being used, the stock CSS and logo files will be served from either /usr/share/gitweb or /var/www.

Otherwise, Gerrit expects gitweb.css and git-logo.png to be found in the same directory as the CGI script itself. This matches with the default source code distribution, and most custom installations.

Access Control

Access controls for internally managed gitweb page views are enforced using the standard project READ +1 permission.

Also, in order for a user to be able to view any gitweb information for a project, the user must be able to read all references (including refs/meta/config, refs/meta/dashboards/*, etc.). If you have exclusive read permissions for any references, make sure to include all parties that should be able to read the gitweb info for any of the branches in that project.

External/Unmanaged gitweb

For the external configuration, gitweb runs under the control of an external web server, and Gerrit access controls are not enforced. Gerrit provides configuration parameters for integration with gitweb.

Linux Installation

Install Gitweb

On Ubuntu:

  $ sudo apt-get install gitweb

With Yum:

  $ yum install gitweb

Configure Gitweb

Update /etc/gitweb.conf, add the public GIT repositories:

$projectroot = "/var/www/repo/";

# directory to use for temp files
$git_temp = "/tmp";

# target of the home link on top of all pages
#$home_link = $my_uri || "/";

# html text to include at home page
$home_text = "indextext.html";

# file with project list; by default, simply scan the projectroot dir.
$projects_list = $projectroot;

# stylesheet to use
# I took off the prefix / of the following path to put these files inside gitweb directory directly
$stylesheet = "gitweb.css";

# logo to use
$logo = "git-logo.png";

# the favicon
$favicon = "git-favicon.png";

Configure & Restart Apache Web Server

Configure Apache

Link gitweb to /var/www/gitweb, check /etc/gitweb.conf if unsure of paths:

  $ sudo ln -s /usr/share/gitweb /var/www/gitweb

Add the gitweb directory to the Apache configuration by creating a “gitweb” file inside the Apache conf.d directory:

  $ touch /etc/apache/conf.d/gitweb

Add the following to /etc/apache/conf.d/gitweb:

Alias /gitweb /var/www/gitweb

Options Indexes FollowSymlinks ExecCGI
DirectoryIndex /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
AllowOverride None

Note

This may have already been added by yum/apt-get. If that’s the case, leave as is.

Restart the Apache Web Server

  $ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now you should be able to view your repository projects online:

http://localhost/gitweb

Windows Installation

Instructions are available for installing the gitweb module distributed with MsysGit:

GitWeb

If you don’t have Apache installed, you can download the appropriate build for Windows from apachelounge.org.

After you have installed Apache, you will want to create a new service user account to use with Apache.

If you’re still having difficulty setting up permissions, you may find this tech note useful for configuring Apache Service to run under another account. You must grant the new account “run as service” permission:

The gitweb version in msysgit is missing several important and required perl modules, including CGI.pm. The perl included with the msysgit distro 1.7.8 is broken.. The unicore folder is missing along with utf8_heavy.pl and CGI.pm. You can verify by checking for perl modules. From an msys console, execute the following to check:

$ perl -mCGI -mEncode -mFcntl -mFile::Find -mFile::Basename -e ""

You may encounter the following exception:

$ perl -mCGI -mEncode -mFcntl -mFile::Find -mFile::Basename -e ""
Can't locate CGI.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/msys
/usr/lib/p erl5/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/msys
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /u sr/lib/perl5/site_perl .). BEGIN
failed--compilation aborted.

If you’re missing CGI.pm, you’ll have to deploy the module to the msys environment: You will have to retrieve them from the 5.8.8 distro on :

http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html

File: strawberry-perl-5.8.8.3.zip

contents: bin/ lib/ site/

copy the contents of lib into msysgit/lib/perl5/5.8.8 and overwrite existing files.

Enable Gitweb Integration

To enable the external gitweb integration, set gitweb.url with the URL of your gitweb CGI.

The CGI’s $projectroot should be the same directory as gerrit.basePath, or a fairly current replica. If a replica is being used, ensure it uses a full mirror, so the +refs/changes/*+ namespace is available.

$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config --unset gitweb.cgi
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.url https://gitweb.corporation.com

If you’re not following the traditional {projectName}.git project naming conventions, you will want to customize Gerrit to read them. Add the following:

$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.type custom
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.project ?p=\${project}\;a=summary
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.revision ?p=\${project}\;a=commit\;h=\${commit}
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.branch ?p=\${project}\;a=shortlog\;h=\${branch}
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.roottree ?p=\${project}\;a=tree\;hb=\${commit}
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.file ?p=\${project}\;hb=\${commit}\;f=\${file}
$ git config -f $site_path/etc/gerrit.config gitweb.filehistory ?p=\${project}\;a=history\;hb=\${branch}\;f=\${file}

After updating '$site_path'/etc/gerrit.config, the Gerrit server must be restarted and clients must reload the host page to see the change.

Note that when using a custom gitweb configuration, values must be specified for all of the project, revision, branch, roottree, file, and filehistory settings, otherwise the configuration will not be used.

Access Control

Gitweb access controls can be implemented using standard web server access controls. This isn’t typically integrated with Gerrit’s own access controls. Caution must be taken to ensure the controls are consistent if access needs to be restricted.

Caching Gitweb

If your repository set is large and you are expecting a lot of users, you may want to look at the caching forks used by high-traffic sites like kernel.org or repo.or.cz.

Alternatives to gitweb

There are other alternatives to gitweb that can also be used with Gerrit, such as cgit.

cgit can be used by specifying gitweb.type to be cgit.

It is also possible to define custom patterns.

GERRIT

Part of Gerrit Code Review

Gitweb Integration