Awhile ago I set up my own git server. I’ve been hacking happily using that and Eclipse. In my spare time, I’ve been taking UCSD’s wonderful algorithm course: Algorithmic Design and Techniques. The course provides plenty of programming challenges! I chose the paid version so my code can be evaluated against all tests in the grading server. I solved the programming challenges in 3 languages: Java, Python, and C++. It has been so much fun!

Anyway, I thought it’d be nice to enable a web front end to my own code hosted on my own server. There are a lot of choices: gitweb, gitlab, gitea, etc. A couple of days ago I came across cgit. It’s pretty lightweight, written in C. That’s what I chose for that task. It’s setup now already, please go to https://code.haidongji.com to check it out!

It takes a bit of work to get the clean subdomain working. My environment is Debian 9 running apache2. Below were steps taken to make my environment work. Hope it helps somebody!

• sudo apt install cgit
  The install creates /etc/cgitrc file and /etc/apache2/conf-available/cgit.conf
• Here is the content of my apache2 site conf file
  [code language=”text”]
  <VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName code.haidongji.com
  ServerAdmin emailAddress
  DocumentRoot /usr/share/cgit/
  <Directory "/usr/share/cgit/">
  AllowOverride None
  Options ExecCGI
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
  </Directory>
  Alias /cgit-css/cgit.css /usr/share/cgit/cgit.css
  Alias /cgit-css/cgit.png /usr/share/cgit/cgit.png
  ScriptAlias / /usr/lib/cgit/cgit.cgi/

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/codehaidongji.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/codehaidongji.log combined

  </VirtualHost>[/code]

• sudo apt install python3-pygments for syntax highlighting
• Here is the content of the /etc/cgitrc file
  [code language=”text”]
  css=/cgit-css/cgit.css
  logo=/cgit-css/cgit.png

  # enable Pygments syntax highlighting. Must be above scan-path, otherwise it would not work!
  source-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting.py
  scan-path=/srv/git[/code]

• sudo a2enmod cgid
  sudo a2enconf cgit
• sudo systemctl restart apache2

Note that in /etc/cgitrc, syntax highlighting line MUST BE ABOVE the scan-path line, otherwise syntax highlighting will not work!

Cheers and happy coding!