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Publishing Repositories with hgwebdir.cgi

1. Introduction

Well, we have a certain setup with subversion. I'd like to reproduce it using Mercurial.

2. Pre-requisites

The installed software is:

apache2 (apache2, apache2-common, apache2-mpm-prefork, apache2-utils)
- But it is not necessary (see below)
some version of mercurial (mine was 0.9 taken from Debian/unstable)
python:
- Ubuntu/Edgy comes with python 2.4
- you will need python2.4-dev package as well
sudo (in general, I prefer sudo to su)

3. Getting proper Mercurial

The whole point was to try pull/push over http. So the following was done (I'm a real newbie for hg, so please bear with me :)):

$ cd working-directory
$ hg clone http://selenic.com/hg/
$ cd hg
$ python setup.py build
$ sudo python setup.py install

4. Directory Structure

Create the necessary directories:

$ sudo mkdir -p /var/hg/repos
$ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/hg

It's usually a good idea to keep special directories out of the tree served by apache.

5. Preparing the config

$ cat > /tmp/hgweb.config
[collections]
repos/ = repos/
^D
$ sudo -u www-data cp /tmp/hgweb.config /var/hg
$ rm /tmp/hgweb.config

6. Two possibilities

Either choose Apache or a standalone install.

6.1. Apache

6.1.1. Putting the right stuff in place

Put the script in place (remember, we are still in that working-directory/hg :)):

$ sudo -u www-data cp hgwebdir.cgi /var/hg
$ sudo -u www-data chmod +x /var/hg/hgwebdir.cgi

6.1.2. Making it accessible

Ok, now it's time for apache.

First of all, do not really change the config of apache directly:

$ sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/hg

Create the config with the following contents (e.g by using sudo vim /etc/apache2/hg/main.conf):

ScriptAliasMatch        ^/hg(.*)        /var/hg/hgwebdir.cgi$1

<Directory /var/hg>
  Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks

  AllowOverride None
</Directory>

This config says that we are going to serve our repositories through '<yourhost>/hg/'.

Now make it really available, by changing your favourite site in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled. For this experiment I used /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default:

  ...
  Include /etc/apache2/hg/main.conf
</VirtualHost>

Make sure that everything is OK:

$ sudo apache2ctl configtest
Syntax is OK

Restart your web server:

$ sudo apache2ctl stop
$ sudo apache2ctl start

Check if it works by directing your browser to <yourhost>/hg/

6.2. Standalone

Simply run

sudo -u www-data hg serve --webdir-conf /var/hg/hgweb.config

and enjoy this speedy method of serving multiple repos. It should be faster than using Apache.

7. You are done

Hooray!

8. Final Bits

8.1. Create a new repository

$ sudo -u www-data hg init /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>

8.2. Provide more information about it

Add the following to the /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>/.hg/hgrc file:

[web]
contact = Bilbo Baggins       # Whom to contact, plain text,
                              # no fancy stuff
description = My precious!    # Nice description what this is about,
                              # you can include HTML (like <a>)

8.3. Customize the look