gitweb

Web frontend that ships with Git. Old. Still works.

🎯 What & why

gitweb is the original CGI-based repository browser bundled with Git. It serves a read-only web view of one or more bare repositories.

🧠 Mental model

Think of gitweb as a Perl CGI that walks your repo filesystem and renders summary, log, tree, blob, and commit pages. It is old, ugly, and reliable.

🛠️ Synopsis

gitweb is configured via gitweb.conf and served by any web server
that can run CGI (Apache, lighttpd, nginx+fcgiwrap).

Quick start without a real web server:
    git instaweb --httpd=lighttpd --port=1234

Production: build from gitweb/ and install the static assets +
gitweb.cgi behind your web server, with GITWEB_PROJECTROOT set.

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`GITWEB_PROJECTROOT`	Filesystem path under which bare repos live (passed at build/config time)
`GITWEB_CONFIG`	Path to gitweb.conf override file
`GITWEB_LIST`	Explicit list file of projects to expose
`GITWEB_HOMETEXT`	Path to indextext.html shown on the front page
`GITWEB_SITENAME`	Header title for your install
`GITWEB_EXPORT_OK`	⚠️ If set, only repos containing this marker file are listed

📦 Subcommands

instaweb — Spin up a temporary local gitweb instance for the current repo

git instaweb --httpd=lighttpd --port=1234 --local

instaweb --stop — Stop the running instaweb server

git instaweb --stop

💡 Use cases

Self-hosted, dependency-light read-only repo browsing on an internal box
Quickly previewing a local repo in a browser via git instaweb
Legacy infra where Gitea/Forgejo/GitLab are too heavy
Auditing what a bare repo actually contains without cloning

🧪 Examples

Run instaweb against the current repo

git instaweb --httpd=lighttpd --port=1234 --local

Visit the running instance

xdg-open http://127.0.0.1:1234/

Mark a bare repo as exportable

touch /srv/git/myrepo.git/git-daemon-export-ok && touch /srv/git/myrepo.git/.gitweb-export-ok

Build gitweb from the Git source tree

make GITWEB_PROJECTROOT=/srv/git GITWEB_SITENAME='RoboDoc Git' gitweb

🎓 Recommendations

Use git instaweb for one-off local browsing; do not expose it to the network.
For real deployments, set GITWEB_EXPORT_OK and require the marker file so a stray repo never leaks.
If you need anything beyond browsing (PRs, issues, auth), pick Forgejo/Gitea instead.

🪤 Common pitfalls

gitweb has no authentication; put it behind your web server's auth or do not expose it.
Permissions matter: the CGI user must be able to read every repo under GITWEB_PROJECTROOT.
instaweb defaults to binding loopback only on modern Git, but always confirm with --local on shared hosts.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.