git instaweb

08 Oct 2009 – San Antonio

I was reading Pro Git by Scott Chacon and was on the section about “git instaweb”. This is where you can run gitweb, a cgi script that comes with git, locally or on a server. I have successfully gotten gitweb up for my personal git repos on my remote server. I use it all the time. I was curious if I could get it working locally, for friends who prefer a visual tool to see their git logs, commits, etc.

I cd into a local repo (you have to cd into the .git folder of the app to get the desired view):

cd /code/app/.git

and run the instaweb command (note: I’m on a macbook pro that already has ruby installed, hence my choice of using webrick instead of the default lighttpd):

git instaweb -d webrick --start

I tried the command without the “—start” command and it kept trying to seek a browser. I tried “-b firefox”, “-b Firefox”, “-b /Application/Firefox.app/MacOS/firefox-bin”, etc and they all failed. I found the “—start” suggestion on StackOverflow.com

Once I ran this command, I could see the git log, commits, diffs, etc in gitweb for my local changes. What this will do is run the daemon on port 1234 of localhost. If you open your browser of choice and go to http://localhost:1234 then you will see gitweb for the git repository you ran the command in.

To stop the process, just change “—start” with “—stop”.

git instaweb -d webrick --stop

Note: I personally use “git log —graph”, gitk, gitx, or other tools for this, usually. Just thought it was a good addition to my git toolset.

git instaweb

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