viewvc-4intranet/INSTALL

CONTENTS
--------
  INSTALLING VIEWCVS
  SQL CHECKIN DATABASE
  CVSGRAPH CONFIGURATION
  IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS...


INSTALLING VIEWCVS
------------------

1) To get viewcvs.cgi to work, make sure that you have Python 1.5
   installed and a webserver which is capable of executing cgi-scripts
   (either based on the .cgi extension, or by placing the script
   within a specific directory).

   You need to have RCS installed. Specifically, "rlog", "rcsdiff",
   and "co". This script was tested against RedHat's rcs-5.7-10.rpm

   Note, that the viewcvs.cgi script needs to have READ-ONLY, physical
   access to the CVS repository (or a copy of it).  Therefore, rsh/ssh or
   pserver access doesn't work yet.

   For the checkin database to work, you will need MySQL >= 3.22, 
   and the Python DBAPI 2.0 module, MySQLdb.  This was tested with
   MySQLdb 1.12.

2) Installation is handled by the ./viewcvs-install script.  Run this
   script and you will be prompted for a installation root path.
   The default is /usr/local/viewcvs.  The installer sets the install 
   path in some of the files, and ViewCVS cannot be moved to a 
   different path after the install.

   Note: while 'root' is usually required to create /usr/local/viewcvs,
   ViewCVS does not have to be installed as root, nor does it run as root.
   It is just as valid to place ViewCVS in a home directory, too.

   Note: viewcvs-install will create directories if needed. It will
   prompt before overwriting files that may have been modified (such
   as viewcvs.conf), thus making it safe to install over the top of
   a previous installation. It will always overwrite program files,
   however.

3) Edit <install-root>viewcvs.conf for your specific configuration. 
   In particular, examine the following configuration options:

      cvs_roots
      default_root
      rcs_path
      mime_types_file

   There are some other options that are usually nice to change. See
   viewcvs.conf for more information.

4) The CGI programs are in <install-root>/cgi/.  You can symlink to this
   directory from somewhere in your published HTTP server path if your 
   webserver is configured to follow symbolic links.  You can also copy
   the installed <install-root>/cgi/*.cgi scripts after the install
   (unlike the other files in ViewCVS, the CGI scripts can be moved).

   NOTE: for security reasons, it is not advisable to install ViewCVS
   directly into your published HTTP directory tree (due to the MySQL
   passwords in viewcvs.conf).

5) That's it for repository browsing.  Instructions for getting the
   SQL checkin database working are below.


WARNING: ViewCVS has not been tested on web servers operating on the
         Win32 platform.



SQL CHECKIN DATABASE
--------------------

This feature is a clone of the Mozilla Project's Bonsai database.  It
catalogs every commit in the CVS repository into a SQL database.  In fact,
the databases are 100% compatible.

Various queries can be preformed on the database.  After installing ViewCVS,
there are some additional steps required to get the database working.

1) You need MySQL >= 3.22, and the Python module MySQLdb >= 1.12 installed.
   Python 1.5.2 is REQUIRED by MySQLdb, therefore to use this part of
   ViewCVS you must be useing Python 1.5.2.

2) You need to create a MySQL user who has permission to create databases.
   Optionally, you can create a second user with read-only access to the
   database.

3) Run the <install-root>/make-database script.  It will prompt you for
   your MySQL user, password, and the name of database you want to 
   create.  The database name defaults to "ViewCVS".  This script creates
   the database and sets up the empty tables.  If you run this on a 
   existing ViewCVS database, you will loose all your data!

4) Edit your <install-root>/viewcvs.conf file.  There is a [cvsdb]
   section.  You will need to set:
     
      
      host =             # MySQL database server host
      database_name =    # the name of the database you created with
                         # make-database
      user =             # the read/write database user
      passwd =           # password for read/write database user
      readonly_user =    # the readonly database user -- it's pretty 
                         # safe to use the read/write user here
      readonly_passwd =  # password for the readonly user

5) Two programs are provided for updating the checkin database, 
   cvsdbadmin and loginfo-handler.  They serve two different purposes.
   The cvsdbadmin program walks through your CVS repository and adds
   every commit in every file.  This is commonly used for initalizing
   the database from a repository which has been in use.  The 
   loginfo-handler script is executed by the CVS server's CVSROOT/loginfo 
   system upon each commit.  It makes real-time updates to the checkin
   database as commits are made to the repository.

   To build a database of all the commits in the CVS repository /home/cvs,
   invoke: "./cvsdbadmin rebuild /home/cvs".  If you want to update
   the checkin database, invoke: "./cvsdbadmin update /home/cvs".  The
   update mode checks to see if a commit is already in the database,
   and only adds it if it is abscent.

   To get real-time updates, you'll want to checkout the CVSROOT module
   from your CVS repository and edit CVSROOT/loginfo.  Add the line:

       ALL (echo %{sVv}; cat) | <install-root>/loginfo-handler

   If you have other scripts invoked by CVSROOT/loginfo, you will want
   to make sure to change any running under the "DEFAULT" keyword to
   "ALL" like the loginfo handler, and probably carefully read the
   execution rules for CVSROOT/loginfo from the CVS manual.

6) You may want to modify the HTML template files:

      <install-root>/html-templates/queryformtemplate.html
      <install-root>/html-templates/querytemplate.html

   They're used by the queryform.cgi and query.cgi scripts generate
   HTML output.  At some point, viewcvs.cgi, query.cgi, and queryform.cgi
   will use the same mechanism for HTML generation, but not yet.

7) You should be ready to go.  Load up the queryform.cgi script and give 
   it a try.


CVSGRAPH CONFIGURATION
----------------------

CvsGraph is a program that can develop a clickable, graphical tree
of files in a CVS repository.

1) Install viewcvs according to instructions in 'INSTALLING
   VIEWCVS' section above.  The installation directory is where
   the 'viewcvs-install' script copied and configured the viewcvs
   programs.

2) Download CvsGraph from http://www.akhphd.au.dk/~bertho/cvsgraph/

3) Configure and compile per instructions with CvsGraph.  I had
   problems with 'configure' finding the gd library.  Had to create
   a link from libgd.so to libgd.do.4.0.0. 

4) Place the 'cvsgraph' executable in the viewcvs installation
   directory.

5) Copy 'cvsgraphwrapper.cgi' and 'cvsgraphmkimg.cgi' from the
   <install-root>/cgi/ directory to your web server's cgi-bin.
   For detailed instructions see the 'INSTALLING VIEWCVS' section.

6) Set the 'use_cvsgraph' option in viewcvs.conf.

7) That's it!

8) There is a file in <install-root> called cvsgraph.conf that
   you can edit if desired to set color and font characteristics.
   See the cvsgraph.conf documentation.  No edits are required in
   cvsgraph.conf for operation with viewcvs.


IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS ...
------------------------

If you've trouble to make viewcvs.cgi work:

=== If nothing seems to work:

 o check if you can execute CGI-scripts (Apache needs to have an
   ScriptAlias /cgi-bin or cgi-script Handler defined). Try to 
   execute a simple CGI-script that often comes with the distribution
   of the webserver; locate the logfiles and try to find hints
   which explain the malfunction

 o view the entries in the webserver's error.log
 
 o make sure there is a trailing slash on the URL. for example:
 
     http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/
     
   (ViewCVS should perform a redirection to ensure this, but a report
    has indicated that it doesn't always do this... please send more
    of these bug reports if you run into this)

=== If viewcvs seems to work but doesn't show the expected result
    (Typical error: you can't see any files)

 o check whether the CGI-script has read-permissions to your
   CVS-Repository. The CGI-script often runs as the user 'nobody' 
   or 'httpd' ..

 o does viewcvs find your RCS utililties? (edit rcs_path)

=== If something else happens or you can't get it to work:

 o check the ViewCVS home page:

     http://viewcvs.sourceforge.net/

 o review the ViewCVS mailing list archive to see if somebody else had
   the same problem, and it was solved:

     http://mailman.lyra.org/pipermail/viewcvs/

 o send mail to the ViewCVS mailing list: viewcvs@lyra.org

   NOTE: make sure you provide an accurate description of the problem
         and any relevant tracebacks or error logs.