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Publishing Repositories with hgwebdir.cgi

Introduction

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

Pre-requisites

The installed software is:

A webserver that can run CGI scripts such as apache2 (apache2, apache2-common, apache2-mpm-prefork, apache2-utils) or lighttpd
- 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)

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

Directory Structure

Create the necessary directories:

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

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

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

Two possibilities

You can either use a separate webserver such as Apache or lighttpd, or use the webserver built into hg.

Using Apache or lighttpd with the hgwebdir.cgi script

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

Configuring apache

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/

Configuring lighttpd

Ok, now it's time for lighttpd.

You can either update the existing /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf file, or create /etc/lighttpd.conf/hg.conf and include that file from lighttpd.conf.

First, you need to check if mod_rewrite and mod_cgi are enabled in the config file, and add them to server.modules if they haven't already been added:

server.modules += ( "mod_cgi" )
server.modules += ( "mod_rewrite" )

Next, configure rewrite rules that map URLs to the hgwebdir.cgi script. With the following added to your config file, URLs starting with either hg or mercurial will map to hgwebdir.cgi:

url.rewrite-once = ( 
  "^/hg([/?].*)?$" => "/hgwebdir.cgi$1",
   "^/mercurial([/?].*)?$" => "/hgwebdir.cgi$1" 
)

Then, configure a URL match that invokes hgwebdir.cgi:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/hgwebdir.cgi([/?].*)?$" {
             server.document-root = "/var/hg/"
             cgi.assign = ( ".cgi" => "/usr/bin/python" )
}

Make sure that everything is OK:

$ sudo lighttpd -t -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf 
Syntax OK

Restart the web server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

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

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.

You are done

Hooray!

Final Bits

Create a new repository

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

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>)

Allow pushing to the repository

By default, nobody is allowed pushing.

To allow pushing to everybody, add the following line to the /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>/.hg/hgrc file:

[web]
allow_push = *

To allow only selected users to push changes, add the following line to the /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>/.hg/hgrc file:

[web]
allow_push = frodo, sam

These are virtual users (for instance, as defined using a .htpasswd file), and not real system users.

Deny pushing to the repository

Most likely you will want to use it together with allow_push = *. If you want allow pushing to everybody, but a selected list of people, add the following line to the /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>/.hg/hgrc file:

[web]
deny_push = saruman

Allow pushing only over a non-secure channel

(I still need to check how it works )

By default, pushes are allowed only over https. If you are certain and do not want to enforce https for pushes, add the following line to the /var/hg/repos/<repository-name>/.hg/hgrc file:

[web]
push_ssl = false

Customize the look