How to install a Local Git Repository Viewer Using GitList and Wamp

GitList is an elegant and modern web interface for interacting with multiple git repositories . It allows you to browse locally installed Git repositories using your favorite browser , viewing files under different revisions , commit history, diffs . It also generates RSS feeds for each repository, allowing you to stay up-to-date with the latest changes anytime , anywhere (isolated in the region of your intranet) . Sometimes , making your Git repositories only  available in a local intranet is  a requirement (otherwise you would use GitHub , right ? ) . Pretty easy ,  as Gitlist is written with PHP , it can be installed on any platform . These three requirements  should be met before the system is ready to “repo-fly” :  1)You already have a local Apache web-server with mod_rewrite enabled (or nginx)  , 2) PHP5.3.3  and 3) a Git-client (no matter witch , tortoisegit , msysGit , ROR’s git-client)  . In this article I’ll guide you through the process of setting up your own Git repository-viewer on a Windows box that has already Appache/php up-and running (my tests where made with WAMP)  . Don’t worry, it won’t hurt and it’s quicker than installing WordPress , Joomla or any other CMS .

An introduction before we start :

Git is an open-source  distributed version control tool , it was created by Linus Torvalds when he was building the Linux kernel . Git allows you to work on your code with relax as everything you do is reversible . It makes it easy to experiment with new ideas in a project and not worry about breaking anything . You should already know how to work with Git , otherwise this article will make no sense to you .
Composer , the new PHP package management system that aims to solve the code sharing problem  . Linux users are familiar with the sentence of “dependency hell” (libraries that depends on other libraries) . Package-managers are the rescue , for Linux : Yum – Apt-get . Programmers have also the same fears , if their  projects depend on different frameworks – libraries ,  this is the first issue to consider before starting the building process  . Composer is a command-line utility with which you install packages , it contains a dependency solver to be able to recursively resolve inter-package dependencies , a set of down-loaders , installers and other fancy things . All a user has  to do is drop a composer.json file in the project  folder and run composer.phar install. This composer.json file defines all project dependencies , and optionally configures composer . I have over-simplified the description to keep the article into reasonable size . The focus of this article is on GitList , so let’s get started .

Prerequisites :  As aforementioned , Apache — PHP5.3 and a Git-client are the prerequisites before continuing the installation process of GitList . One critical point is that the Git-client of your choice should not be installed in “Program Files” folder as the space in the path is not accepted by GitList’s configuration file (this is my conclusion ) .The root folder of the installation-partition could be a good choice (C:\git) .

Step by step process  :

1. Open the root directory of the web-server (on my computer its on C:\wamp\www\)  and right-click  on a black area . The Git-client had created an entry into the context-box .The following command-prompt window is shown
   
2. Let’s clone the GitList library (it could be also downloaded directly from the website ) . Use the following command .
   git clone https://github.com/klaussilveira/gitlist.git
   
3. cd into “gitlist” (the newly created directory)  and download composer (PHP’s package manager) .
   curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php
   
4. Let composer download all libraries (and any dependencies ) . The work is done for use (thanks to GitList’s authors) , all libraries that GitList depends on are listed in the composer.json  file . Composer will read this file and act upon  .
   php  composer.phar  install
   I have taken the simplest approach to install composer (into current project’s folder ) . Actually composer should be installed into a folder elsewhere in the file-system (for example c:\composer)  and it’s path listed into the system’s path (right click computer icon -> properties-> advanced -> environment-variables ->path) , that would make composer also available  for other projects .
5. This step of GitList’s installation process is to define two basic configuration options (path of the Git-client — git.exe — and location of the Git-repositories ) . Rename the config.ini.example file to config.ini and open it in your favorite editor (I prefer Notepad++) .
   
6. This step is critical , the configurations that are defined in config.ini file are highly dependent from how the Git-client was installed . As aforementioned ,  the Git-client shouldn’t be installed into a directory that has space into it’s path . Even if I had tried all possible combinations (single quotes — double quotes – single and double quotes — double and single quotes ) to save the path in the config.ini file , GitList just ignored it ( it displays a message like ” Program can’t be found , unknown …..” )   .  A while back ,  during the installation process of  ROR (Ruby on Rails) , I faced a similar problem . Finally it worked when ROR was installed into a directory that has no spaces  into it’s path . The same concept apply to Windows XP and Windows7 .
   No matter what Git-client is used (ROR’s git , msysgit , tortoisegit … ) , it’s path should be listed into Window’s path variable  (right click computer icon -> properties-> advanced -> environment-variables ->path) .
   On my Box , a Windows7 ,  ROR’s git-client  is defined into config.ini . See my configuration :
   
7. Let’s test GitList’s functionality . Two repositories will be cloned from GitHub . First move your cursor into your web-server’s public root directory (C:\Wamp\www) .
   
8. Fire-up your browser and navigate to http://localhost/gitlist  .
   The following  screen-shot shows all locally installed Git-repos .
   The following screen-shot shows the content of an individual repository .
   

Links : 

• GitList on GitHub 
• Installing GitList on Fedora .