I am looking for a lightweight open source web interface for Git repositories that I can self-host on Debian or Ubuntu Linux. The web interface should be able to list, view, and edit text files in Git repositories. By "edit", I mean changing the contents of text files through the web interface and making commits. It would also be nice to be able to view git diffs and git blame, but that is not strictly necessary. GitLab has all the features I need, but it is too heavyweight, since I have no need for extra features such as issue tracking, wikis, fine-grained permissions, email notifications, continuous integration, etc.
1 Answer
You might wish to take a look at forgejo – which is what I use on a BananaPi here for years (well, it was named Gitea when I started with it and forked rather recently – but then, Gitea started as a fork as well).
So let's look how it meets your requirements:
- lightweight: even runs on a Pi – so though the binary might look big: yes ✅
- WebIf for Git repos: That and more, including Wiki & issue tracker. So again ✅
- can self-host on Debian/Ubuntu: Runs on Raspian here, which is a Debian flavor. Has binaries for multiple architectures (see the releases tab). ✅
- able to list, view, edit text files: absolutely ✅
- view git diffs: yes ✅
- git blame: indeed ✅ (could call it "praise", depending on what you find 😀)
- GitLab… far from that. Rather just download the binary, drop it into an empty dir, and run it. There are ways to run it as a swervice, of course. ✅
- no need for… well, but doesn't hurt, right?
- issue tracking ✅
- wikis ✅
- fine-grained perms: yess (multi-user and all that – the site where you download it is running it, so take a look around)
- email notifications: yepp ✅
- CI: yepp (woodpecker), if you want it
Freely configurable to your needs and liking. Just look around at the site hosting it: Codeberg.org is running Forgejo itself. Which shows it also scales pretty well, if needed.
