README.txt

========
gitserve
========

This is a helper tool for git that mimics mercurial_'s serve_ command.

It makes it very easy to see all your git project via git_'s own gitweb_ by
running a lightweight local server.

.. _mercurial: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/
.. _serve: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/hgserve
.. _git: http://git.or.cz/
.. _gitweb: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Gitweb

Usage
-----

When ``gitserve`` was installed correctly (with ``sudo``) it's usually located
in ``/usr/local/bin``. Note that this directory needs to be on your ``$PATH``
environment variable to be found by your shell.

Usage pretty easy::

    $ gitserve --help
    Usage: gitserve [options] <dir>

    Options:
      --version             show program's version number and exit
      -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      -v, --verbose         print status messages to stdout
      -q, --quiet           don't print anything to stdout
      -p PORT, --port=PORT  port to listen on (default: 8000)
      -a ADDRESS, --address=ADDRESS
                            address to listen on (default: hostname)
      -l, --local           only listen on 127.0.0.1
      -b, --browser         open default browser automatically
      -d, --daemon          detach from terminal and become a daemon
      --pid-file=PIDFILE    write the spawned process-id to this file
      --gitweb=GITWEB       use this gitweb cgi file instead of the included
                            version

As the only argument you can specify a directory that contains your git
projects. If you leave this argument blank ``gitserve`` will automatically uses
the current directory as the source for the gitweb script. E.g.::

    $ gitserve /home/jannis/git-projects

Shortcuts in the directory argument are also possible and will be expanded on
runtime::

    $ gitserve ~/git-projects

The default ``gitserve`` process will listen on your machine's hostname and on
port 8000, for example: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

If you provide a ``--port`` or ``--address`` option while starting ``gitserve``
you can have ``gitserve`` listen on your choices. You need to be root to run
it on port 80 or any other port below 1024. The ``--local`` option tells
``gitserve`` to listen only on ``127.0.0.1``.

The ``--browser`` option tells ``gitserve`` to automatically start your system's
default web browser with the URL of the ``gitserve`` server while starting it.

The ``--daemon`` option causes the whole ``gitserve`` process to detach from
your current shell session, becoming a daemon process that runs in background.
This is very useful in combination with the ``--pid-file`` option that write
the process id in the given file.

You can specify the location of the gitweb.cgi file that ``gitserve`` uses
with the ``--gitweb`` option (e.g. /home/jannis/lib/git/gitweb.cgi).