# Installing simple-gitv

These instructions will setup an Apache server which will serve pages from /var/www/git/ showing information about Git repositories stored in /srv/git/. If you want to use different paths, change those whenever they are shown.

I have only tested this on Fedora. If you're installing on a different distribution like Debian or Arch, you may need different packages (such as apache2 instead of httpd) or put settings in different places. I also assume SystemD. If you're using a different init system, you'll have a different command to run the webserver.

## 0. Do this stuff first
1. Register your domain name.
2. Set up DNS to point your domain to your IP address.
3. Set up port forwarding to forward incoming TCP connections on ports 80 and 443 to your server.
4. Install dependencies:

### Mandatory Dependencies
- A webserver (httpd)[^1]
- PHP
- Git

### Optional Dependencies
- pandoc[^2]

## 1. Download Project
Clone the repository using Git and switch to that directory (for later steps).

## 2. Configure Webserver
A default configuration file has been included. Copy it to /etc/httpd/conf.d/ so you can use it as a virtualhost:

`sudo cp templates/httpd-git.conf.template /etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf`

Edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/git.conf so it shows your domain name instead of example.com.

This file also assumes that you are using a LetsEncrypt certificate stored in /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/ and redirects all HTTP traffic to HTTPS. If this is not the desired behavior for you, change it.

To enable caching, create a directory called "cache" in the root directory of the project:

`mkdir cache`

Set the permissions to 777 to enable httpd to write to the cache directory:

`sudo chmod 777 cache`

## 3. Run Webserver
If you're using SystemD as your init system, run:

`sudo systemctl start httpd`

to start the server, and:

`sudo systemctl enable httpd`

to enable the server to run at startup.

## 4. Add Git Repositories
Create the directory /srv/git/ if it doesn't already exist:

`sudo mkdir -p /srv/git`

You may want to change the owner of /srv/git/ to you so you can more easily modify your repos:

`sudo chown -R myusername:myusername /srv/git`

replacing "myusername" with your username.

Now `cd /srv/git` and put your Git repositories there. If you want to create a new repo:

`git init --bare newrepo`

If you want to clone a repo from somewhere else, you can do so with:

`git clone --bare https://example.com/path/to/project.git`

replacing the URL above with the repo you want to clone.

## 5. Configure SELinux (if you use it)
SELinux will prevent httpd from reading /srv/git/ to view your repositories. If you use SELinux (e.g., if you're on Fedora, CentOS, or RHEL), add an exception for this:

- `semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/srv/git(/.*)?"`
- `restorecon -Rv /srv/git`

Note, we are only giving Apache **read** permission, but not **write** permission on /srv/git. If you want users to be able to git push over HTTP, you will need to also allow write permission.

To enable caching, you will need to enable httpd to read and write to cache:

- `semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/git/cache/*"`
- `restorecon -Rv /var/www/git/cache/`

## 6. Configure
Go back to the project code:

`cd /var/www/git/`

Copy the config.ini template to the root directory of the project:

`cp templates/config.ini.template config.ini`

Edit config.ini to your needs. Lines beginning with a semicolon (;) are comments are will not affect anything.

Set the title of your page. For example, you can use the domain or a name like "Suzan's Code".

If you used a different path for your repositories, change the value of repositories.

If the default theme is not to your liking, you're welcome to change it.

[^1]: Currently I only have a config file for Apache. I hope to add nginx and lighttpd support soon. If you want to write your own configurations for those, please do and let me know how you did it!
[^2]: Pandoc is used to interpret Markdown files as HTML. If pandoc is missing, Markdown files will be previewed as plaintext.