## page was renamed from CGI Install
= Setting up a Mercurial CGI Server =

{{{#!wiki tip
The single repository CGI server is now described [[PublishingRepositories#single|in the Publishing Repositories document]] together with other related information.
}}}

If you would like to publish your repository to the world, it must be made available via a web server.  [[Mercurial]] does have a built-in web server which can be used for this, which can be accessed via {{{hg serve}}}.  However, it will only allow one connection at a time, and it is not very robust; a broken connection at the wrong time can cause the {{{hg serve}}} to exit.   A much better way to do things is to access Mercurial from a CGI script using an Apache web server.  

If you think you may want to serve several repositories from the same server, you should check out HgWebDirStepByStep.

The following example shows you one way of making a repository named {{{repo-name}}} available on the host {{{example.org}}}. 

== Create a user and setup a repository ==

Create a user {{{hg}}} and setup a repository in {{{/home/hg/repo-name}}}:
{{{
# adduser hg
# su - hg
$ mkdir /home/hg/repo-name; cd /home/hg/repo-name
$ hg init
}}}

You can add information to the web page about your hg repository by setting following
lines in the config file {{{repo-name/.hg/hgrc}}} are set:
{{{
[web]
description = short description of repo-name
author = Example User <hg@example.com>
}}}

The repository can be remotely updated over ssh.  If you want to be able to do this without
explicitly typing a password each time you can create a directory {{{/home/hg/.ssh}}} and set up
its {{{authorized_keys}}} file appropriately (See [[SharedSSH]]). You will be able to remotely
update the repository via the command:
{{{
$ hg push ssh://hg@example.org/repo-name
}}}


== Setup a cgi script to refer to your repository ==

Most people adding new content to the repository don't need to change the cgi script, so keeping that
separate (maybe even protected by root permissions) is best. Copy the {{{hgweb.cgi}}} script from the
mercurial sources to {{{/var/www/cgi-hg/index.cgi}}} and change the call to {{{hgweb.hgweb()}}} so that the
first argument lists the path to the repository and the second argument gives the name of the repository.

Using the example names as used above, the {{{index.cgi}}} file might look like this:

{{{
#!/usr/bin/env python

import cgitb, os, sys
cgitb.enable()

# sys.path.insert(0, "/path/to/python/lib") # if not a system-wide install
from mercurial import hgweb

h = hgweb.hgweb("/home/hg/repo-name", "name of repository")
h.run()
}}}
Make sure the {{{index.cgi}}} file is executable:

{{{
$ chmod a+x index.cgi
}}}


== Edit your apache configuration file ==

Place the following in your apache configuration file and reload the apache server so that the configuration changes take effect:

{{{
Alias /hg /var/www/cgi-hg
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-hg">
    DirectoryIndex index.cgi
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
    Options ExecCGI
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>
}}}

In case you also want to make the repository available as static html files (which should normally
not be necessary), you could add:

{{{
Alias /hg-static /home/hg/repo-name
<Directory "/home/hg/repo-name">
    Options Indexes
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>
}}}


== That's it! ==

Once you have populated the repository, users will be able to access the repositry using the URL: {{{http://example.org/hg/}}}.


== Multiple repositories ==
<<Anchor(multiple_repos)>>

You'll probably setup several repositories and not only one. The apache configuration can stay the same,
but you then copy the file {{{hgwebdir.cgi}}} to {{{/var/www/cgi-hg/index.cgi}}} and for each repository
the file {{{hgweb.cgi}}} to {{{/var/www/cgi-hg/repo-name/index.cgi}}}.

A better solution is documented in HgWebDirStepByStep.
----
CategoryWeb