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cgit - CGI for Git

This is an attempt to create a fast web interface for the Git SCM, using a built-in cache to decrease server I/O pressure.

Dependencies

Ensure the following dependencies are installed:

  • libzip
  • libcrypto (OpenSSL)
  • libssl (OpenSSL)
  • optional: luajit or lua, most reliably used when pkg-config is available

Build

Building cgit involves building a proper version of Git. How to do this depends on how you obtained the cgit sources:

From Repository

If you're working in a cloned cgit repository, you first need to initialize and update the Git submodule.

If you want to specify a different URL for the git submodule, edit the .git/config file.

Register and download the Git submodule found in .git/config:

git submodule init && git submodule update

From Tarball

If you're building from a cgit tarball, you can download a proper git version like this:

make get-git

Install

Whether building from the repository or tarball, you can build and install cgit like this:

make
sudo make install

Cgit will install cgit.cgi and cgit.css into /usr/lib/cgit and /usr/share/cgit. You can configure this location (and a few other things) by providing a cgit.conf file to override the default locations (see the Makefile for details).

To install the man page run:

sudo make install-man

If you want the man page, HTML and PDF documentation run:

sudo make install-doc

If you'd like to compile without Lua support, you may use:

make NO_LUA=1

And if you'd like to specify a Lua implementation, you may use:

make LUA_PKGCONFIG=lua5.1

If this is not specified, the Lua implementation will be auto-detected, preferring LuaJIT if many are present. Acceptable values are generally "lua", "luajit", "lua5.1", and "lua5.2".

Apache configuration

A new Directory section must probably be added for cgit, possibly something like this:

<Directory "/var/www/htdocs/cgit/">
    AllowOverride None
    Options +ExecCGI
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Runtime configuration

The file /etc/cgitrc is read by cgit before handling a request. In addition to runtime parameters, this file may also contain a list of repositories displayed by cgit (see cgitrc.5.txt for further details).

The cache

When cgit is invoked it looks for a cache file matching the request and returns it to the client. If no such cache file exists (or if it has expired), the content for the request is written into the proper cache file before the file is returned.

If the cache file has expired but cgit is unable to obtain a lock for it, the stale cache file is returned to the client. This is done to favour page throughput over page freshness.

The generated content contains the complete response to the client, including the HTTP headers Modified and Expires.

Online presence

generated by cgit (git 2.46.0) at 2025-12-06 04:03:57 +0000