Installing cgit + nginx on Debian Jessie

cgit is a hyperfast web frontend for git repositories written in C. Coupled with nginx, this makes a super quick git repository viewer for your web server.

I was not able to find a good tutorial on how to get this installed with nginx on a Debian server. The latest version of Debian Stable (Jessie) comes with cgit already in the repositories so a lot of previous tutorials that had you compile cgit are no longer necessary unless you really need the latest and greatest version of cgit.

Install some software

In order to run cgit with nginx, you will need to install cgit, nginx, and fcgiwrap

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cgit nginx fcgiwrap

Configure your nginx.conf to work with cgit

The contents of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf should look something like this.

worker_processes          1;
events {
worker_connections      1024;
}

http {
    include                 mime.types;
    default_type            application/octet-stream;
    sendfile                on;
    keepalive_timeout       65;
    gzip                    on;

# Cgit
server {
    listen                80;
    server_name           git.example.com;
    root                  /usr/share/cgit;
    try_files             $uri @cgit;

    location @cgit {
    include             fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param       SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/lib/cgit/cgit.cgi;
    fastcgi_param       PATH_INFO       $uri;
    fastcgi_param       QUERY_STRING    $args;
    fastcgi_param       HTTP_HOST       $server_name;
    fastcgi_pass        unix:/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
    }
  }
}

Configure cgit

Edit /etc/cgitrc, your file should look like this:

# cgit config
# see cgitrc(5) for details

css=/cgit.css
logo=/cgit.png
    virtual-root=/

Fire it up!

Now you are ready to see cgit. Restart nginx and navigate to your web server.

etc/init.d/nginx restart

You should see the cgit home screen at your domain name or IP address now.

Add some repos

You can add repos to your /etc/cgitrc file and they will show up in cgit. The repo section of this file should look something like this:

# List of repositories.
# This list could be kept in a different file (e.g. '/etc/cgitrepos')
# and included like this:
#   include=/etc/cgitrepos


repo.url=MyRepo
repo.path=/srv/git/MyRepo.git
repo.desc=This is my git repository

repo.url=MyOtherRepo
repo.path=/srv/git/MyOtherRepo.git
repo.desc=That's my other git repository

Since cgit is packaged in Debian now, getting up and running is easier than ever. If you ran into any issues following this guide let me know in the comments.

Credits: I got a lot of inspiration from this guide via the awesome Arch Wiki. There were some minor changes that had to be made due to some configuration differences between Arch and Debian.

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