Having some problem with instaweb

I am on Linux Mint 10 and I tried the following command:

$ git instaweb -d apache2 -p 1234 --start Syntax error on line 1 of /mnt/storage/gurjeet/.git/gitweb/httpd.conf: Invalid command 'server.document-root', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration Could not execute http daemon apache2 -f.

/mnt/storage/gurjeet/ is my $HOME.

I have tried commenting out that first line, but then the error complains about line 2 'server.port = 1234'

Any help appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

PS: I am told that no subscription is required on this mailing list,
since people usually do reply-all; so relying on that.
--
Gurjeet Singh
EnterpriseDB Corporation
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

CC-ing Eric Wong, author of git-instaweb.

Gurjeet Singh <singh.gurjeet@gmail.com> writes:

Hmmm... it looks like starts apache2, but generates config file (httpd.conf) for lighttpd instead.

Ahh... actually you started apache2, but didn't generate configuration file for it, so git-instaweb re-uses previous config file... which by default is lighttpd:

  start, --start
      Start the httpd instance and exit. This does not generate any of the
      configuration files for spawning a new instance.

Try using

  $ git instaweb -d apache2 -p 1234 -b lynx
 
then exiting web browser.

BTW. I think that git-instaweb should be more helpful here... will investigate.

Nb. it doesn't mater where $HOME is, but where is git repository you were in when calling git-instaweb.

BTW. in the future it would be good idea to tell what git version are you using.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 4:23 AM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Now that's very unintuitive.... I am the impatient kind, and didn't read the whole paragraph. I assumed --start would just start the webserver (maybe run in daemon mode).

That worked.. I do not have lynx, but it did start apache2 and I was able to browse the repo.

Got it. I have some files of my home directory in a Git repository, so $HOME is where the repository is.

I have quite a few development related Git repositories under $HOME/dev/ and instaweb shows all of them on the first page (with description etc). IOW, is it supposed to recurse down all directories to look for .git/ directories?

.git dev/EDB-ADVISORS/.git dev/EDBAS/.git dev/PCS/.git dev/PEM/.git dev/PGAGENT/.git dev/POSTGRES/.git dev/SERVICESTOOLS/.git dev/SLONY/.git

Is this expected?

I am at 1.7.1

Thanks for the help, and thanks to everyone around Git for a great piece of software.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011, Gurjeet Singh wrote:

I'm working on it... actually the patch series is ready to send; it will be sent as a reply to this email.

I just hope that it wouldn't be lost being deeper in thread...
 

It is expected behavior.

It is consequence of the fact that the default gitweb mode is to search for repositories recursively starting from given root; git-instaweb set this $projectsroot to the one directory up from $GIT_DIR. Alternate solution would be for git-instaweb to generate projects list file for gitweb with only single repository listed...

Nevertheless usually you don't have repositories inside of working directory of other repositories. There was even idea floated to deprecate such support, but it didn't gained traction.

One expected exception is when you use _submodules_; in this case you would probably want to see both supermodule and submodules (subrepositories).

That is why I think that current git-instaweb behavior has sense.

This series fixes the issue reported by Gurheet Singh in "Having some problem with instaweb", in that --start/--restart doesn't generate configuration, which is documented:

  start, --start
      Start the httpd instance and exit. This does not generate any of the
      configuration files for spawning a new instance.

but unexpected.

The first three patches are independent refactoring to make final change smaller and easier to review, thoug they have merit even taken standalone.

---
Jakub Narebski (4):
      git-instaweb: Check that correct config file exists for (re)start
      git-instaweb: Move all actions at the end of script
      git-instaweb: Use $conf, not $fqgitdir/gitweb/httpd.conf
      git-instaweb: Extract web server configuration into configure_httpd

 Documentation/git-instaweb.txt |    8 ++--
 git-instaweb.sh                |   84 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
 2 files changed, 58 insertions(+), 34 deletions(-)

This is preparatory work for making start/restart check that git-instaweb set up correct configuration, and generate it if it is missing.

Pure refactoring, no functional changes. 

Signed-off-by: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
---
As usual, you can check this change with

  $ git blame -w --date=short -C -C HEAD^.. -- git-instaweb.sh |
    grep -C 3 -e '^[^^]' | less -S

assuming that it is checked out (HEAD == this commit).

Thanks Junio for the tip!

Nb. it would be nice to have an option to 'git diff' which would function like '-w' but ignore code movement...

 git-instaweb.sh |   46 +++++++++++++++++++++++++---------------------
 1 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-)

Don't repeat yourself: use "$conf" instead of its [current] contents, namely "$fqgitdir/gitweb/httpd.conf".

Signed-off-by: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
---
Straighforward improvement.  Note that currently $conf is constant,
and doesn't change its value.

 git-instaweb.sh |    4 ++--
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

As a nice side-effect now the order of parameters does not matter:

  $ git instaweb --httpd=apache2 --start

is now (after this patch) the same as

  $ git instaweb --start --httpd=apache2

Before this commit --start, --stop, --restart (and their subcommand versions start, stop, restart) exited immediately.

This is preparatory work for making start/restart check that correct configuration is set up; this change was required to have access in start_httpd to requested web browser etc.

Signed-off-by: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
---
Unfortunately there are no tests for git-instaweb, so I couldn't test
if it is really no much of a functional change.

BTW. if you thought of a better subject for this commit, please speak up.

 git-instaweb.sh |   27 ++++++++++++++++++++-------
 1 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

Currently start/restart does not generate any configuration files for spawning a new instance. This means that

  $ git instaweb --http=<server> --start

might pick up stale 'httpd.conf' file for a different web server (e.g. for default lighttpd when requesting apache2).

This commit changes that, and makes git-instaweb generate web server config file and/or gitweb config file if don't exists.

This required naming config files after the name of web server (alternate solution would be to somehow mark for which web server was config file generated).

Note that web servers that embed configuration in server script file, namely webrick and plackup, and which delete "$conf" in their *_conf function, would have their config (server script) always regenerated.

Note: this commit introduces a bit of code repetition (but only a few
lines).

Reported-by: Gurjeet Singh <singh.gurjeet@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
---
This is an actual fix.

Though I haven't checked if git-instaweb behaves sanely if you switch between web servers with --start...

 Documentation/git-instaweb.txt |    8 ++++----
 git-instaweb.sh                |    7 +++++++
 2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Everything looks reasonable, thanks! Acked and pushed to "instaweb" branch on git://bogomips.org/git-svn.git