Git on lighttpd

Intro

I switched to lighttpd. The main reason for this change was the ease of configuration: for example, with apache, when you want to serve the same website with and without ssl, you end up doing something like this:

# file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/domain.com.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
    Include /etc/apache2/domain.com.inc.conf
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
    Include /etc/apache2/domain.com.inc.conf
    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/private/domain.com.pem
</VirtualHost>

# file: /etc/apache2/sites-available/domain.com.inc.conf
ServerName domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/domain.com

Including the website config as a separate file is pretty much the only way to accomplish this without duplicating this config in both virtualhosts. That is two files to maintain, for one domain. If you want to do this for every domain you control, you have to multiply the files and includes.

Doing this with lighttpd is really easier:

# file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
$SERVER["socket"] == ":443" {
    ssl.engine              = "enable"
    ssl.pemfile             = "/etc/ssl/private/domain.com.pem"
}
$HTTP["host"] == "domain.com" {
    server.document-root    = "/var/www/domain.com"
}

git and lighttpd

Now, let's do cool things. One of the subdomains I own is dedicated to hosting my public git repositories. I (quite obviously) named it http://git.chmd.fr. I want to use it for:

  • Serving a gitweb instance to browse all repositories, such that https://git.chmd.fr/?p=netmon.git takes you to browsing the repository of netmon.
  • Serving the git protocol, such that git clone https://git.chmd.fr/netmon.git clones this repository.

Combining the two was tricky, but I ended up finding how to proceed. Here is the relevant part of my config:

$HTTP["host"] == "git.chmd.fr" {

    # This takes care of serving gitweb
    server.document-root    = "/usr/share/gitweb"
    cgi.assign = ( ".cgi" => "" )
    server.indexfiles = ( "gitweb.cgi" )

    # And this condition matches git objects
    $HTTP["url"] =~ "(?x)^/(.*/(HEAD | info/refs | objects/(info/[^/]+ | [0-9a-f]{2}/[0-9a-f]{38} | pack/pack-[0-9a-f]{40}\.(pack|idx)) | git-(upload|receive)-pack))$" {
        alias.url  += ( "" => "/usr/lib/git-core/git-http-backend")
        cgi.assign = ("" => "")
        setenv.add-environment = (
            "GIT_PROJECT_ROOT" => "/home/www/git-public-repos/",
            "GIT_HTTP_EXPORT_ALL" => ""
            )
    }
}

Combined with the trick from above, you can get this to work on both http and https. I hope this will help others!

Comments !