Loggerhead: A web viewer for bzr branches

Loggerhead is a web viewer for projects in Breezy. It can be used to navigate a branch history, annotate files, view patches, perform searches, etc. Loggerhead is heavily based on bazaar-webserve, which was, in turn, loosely based on hgweb.

Getting Started

Loggerhead depends on the following Python libraries.:

  • SimpleTAL for templating.

  • Paste for the server. (You need version 1.2 or newer of Paste).

  • Paste Deploy (optional, needed when proxying through Apache).

  • flup (optional, needed to use FastCGI, SCGI or AJP).

Installing Dependencies Using Ubuntu Packages

$ sudo apt-get install python-simpletal
$ sudo apt-get install python-paste
$ sudo apt-get install python-pastedeploy
$ sudo apt-get install python-flup

Installing Dependencies Using easy_install

$ easy_install \
  -f http://www.owlfish.com/software/simpleTAL/py2compatible/download.html \
  SimpleTAL
$ easy_install Paste
$ easy_install PasteDeploy
$ easy_install flup

Running the Standalone Loggerhead Server

After installing all the dependencies, you should be able to run loggerhead-serve with the branch you want to serve on the command line:

./loggerhead-serve ~/path/to/branch

By default, the script listens on port 8080, so head to http://localhost:8080/ in your browser to see the branch.

You can also pass a directory that contains branches to the script, and it will serve a very simple directory listing at other pages.

You may update the Bazaar branches being viewed at any time. Loggerhead will notice and refresh, and Bazaar uses its own branch locking to prevent corruption.

See loggerhead-serve for all command line options.

Running Loggerhead as a Daemon

To run Loggerhead as a linux daemon:

  1. Copy the loggerheadd scipt to /etc/init.d

$ sudo cp ./loggerheadd /etc/init.d
  1. Edit the file to configure where your Loggerhead is installed, and which loggerhead-serve options you would like.

$ sudo vim /etc/init.d/loggerheadd
  1. Register the service

# on upstart based systems like Ubuntu run:
$ sudo update-rc.d loggerheadd defaults

# on Sysvinit based systems like Centos or SuSE run:
$ sudo chkconfig --add loggerheadd

Using Loggerhead as a Breezy Plugin

This branch contains experimental support for using Loggerhead as a Breezy plugin. To use it, place the top-level Loggerhead directory (the one containing COPYING.txt) at ~/.config/breezy/plugins/loggerhead. E.g.:

$ bzr branch lp:loggerhead ~/.config/breezy/plugins/loggerhead
$ cd ~/myproject
$ bzr serve --http

Using a Config File

To hide branches from being displayed, add to ~/.config/breezy/locations.conf, under the branch’s section:

[/path/to/branch]
http_serve = False

More configuration options to come soon.

Serving Loggerhead behind Apache

If you want to view Breezy branches from your existing Apache installation, you’ll need to configure Apache to proxy certain requests to Loggerhead. Adding lines like this to your Apache configuration is one way to do this:

<Location "/branches/">
    ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:8080/branches/
    ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:8080/branches/
</Location>

If Paste Deploy is installed, the loggerhead-serve script can be run behind a proxy at the root of a site, but if you’re running it at some path into the site, you’ll need to specify it using --prefix=/some_path.

Serving Loggerhead with mod_wsgi

A second method for using Loggerhead with apache is to have apache itself execute Loggerhead via mod_wsgi. You need to add configuration for apache and for breezy to make this work. Example config files are in the Loggerhead doc directory as apache-loggerhead.conf and breezy.conf. You can copy them into place and use them as a starting point following these directions:

  1. Install mod_wsgi. On Ubuntu and other Debian derived distros:

    sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi
    

    On Fedora-derived distros:

    su -c yum install mod_wsgi
    
  2. Copy the breezy.conf file where apache will find it (May be done for you if you installed Loggerhead from a distribution package):

    # install -d -o apache -g apache -m 0755 /etc/loggerhead
    # cp -p /usr/share/doc/loggerhead*/breezy.conf /etc/loggerhead/
    # mkdir -p /var/www/.config
    # ln -s /etc/loggerhead /var/www/.config/breezy
    
  3. Create the cache directory (May be done for you if you installed Loggerhead from a distribution package):

    # install -d -o apache -g apache -m 0700 /var/cache/loggerhead/
    
  4. Edit /etc/loggerhead/breezy.conf. You need to set http_root_dir to the filesystem path that you will find your bzr branches under. Note that normal directories under that path will also be visible in Loggerhead.

  5. Install the apache conf file:

    # cp -p /usr/share/doc/loggerhead*/apache-loggerhead.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/loggerhead.conf
    
  6. Edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/loggerhead.conf to point to the url you desire to serve Loggerhead on. This should match with the setting for http_user_prefix in breezy.conf

  7. Restart apache and you should be able to start browsing

Note

If you have SELinux enabled on your system you may need to allow apache to execute files in temporary directories. You will get a MemoryError traceback from python if this is the case. This is because of the way that python ctypes interacts with libffi. To rectify this, you may have to do several things, such as mounting tmpdirs so programs can be executed on them and setting this SELinux boolean:

setsebool httpd_tmp_exec on

This bug has information about how python and/or Linux distros might solve this issue permanently and links to bugs which diagnose the root cause. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=582009

Support

Discussion should take place on the bazaar-dev mailing list at mailto:bazaar@lists.canonical.com. You can join the list at <https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/bazaar>. You don’t need to subscribe to post, but your first post will be held briefly for manual moderation.

Bugs, support questions and merge proposals are tracked on Launchpad, e.g:

Hacking

To run Loggerhead tests, you will need to install the package python-nose, and run its nosetests script in the Loggerhead directory:

nosetests

License

GNU GPLv2 or later.

Index