HgWebDirStepByStepFtpOnly

This page describes how to setup the hgwebdir.cgi-skript on a (unix-)server to which you only have ftp-access. See also HgWebDirStepByStep.

Prequesites

FTP-access, Python, a cgi-bin directory, but mercurial not installed on the server.

Consider using a webshell like http://phpshell.sourceforge.net/

How to do it

1. make a directory '/path/to/repos' to which the webserver may write
2. test whether its writeable
   • by uploading test.sh

     echo test > /path/to/repos/test

     to your cgi-bin/ and make it executable chmod a+x test.sh.

   • open http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/test.sh, you'll get an server error, but that's okay

   • now there should be a file /path/to/repos/test

   • delete the file and test.sh

3. upload a recent version of mercurical to the server (e.g. the whole /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mercurial/)

   • into /path/to/private_python_libs/mercurial

4. make a new subdir cgi-bin/hg/

5. change hgwebdir.cgi locally to load mercurial on the server:

   # adjust python path if not a system-wide install:
   import sys
   sys.path.insert(0, "/path/to/private_python_libs/") #note that this is one dir up from mercurial

   and upload it into cgi-bin/hg/}. Make it executable.

6. make locally a hgweb.config:

   [collections]
   /path/to/repos/ = /path/to/repos/

   and upload it to cgi-bin/hg/.

7. upload an existing repository myrep into /path/to/repos/myrep and make it writeable by the server.

8. you should now be able to access it at http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/hg/hgwebdir.cgi

9. probably you want to change /path/to/repos/myrep/.hg/hgrc to contain something like:

   [web]
   contact     = John Doe
   description = This my rep
   push_ssl = false
   allow_archive = gz zip bz2
   style = gitweb
   
   #everybody may change it!
   allow_push   = *