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DESCRIPTION
This file contains special instructions for setting up ViewVC on Windows. It
will take you through a basic installation and tell you how to set up optional
features like code colorizing and the MySQL commit database.
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REQUIREMENTS
ViewVC requires the Python interpreter which you can download from
http://python.org/
and the Python for Windows Extensions which are at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
For CVS support, ViewVC also requires that the CVSNT client (cvs.exe) OR the
RCS tools (rlog.exe, rcsdiff.exe, and co.exe) be installed on your computer.
CVSNT is available from
http://www.cvsnt.org/wiki
and RCS can be obtained from:
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/RCS/
For Subversion support, you'll need to have the Subversion Python bindings
installed. Binaries are available from the Subversion website at:
http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=91
Note that if you use binaries, you have to be running the same version of
python as the binaries were built for. For example, you cannot use Subversion
bindings built for Python 2.3 with Python 2.4. Instructions for building
the binaries from source are available here:
http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/bindings/swig/INSTALL
The Subversion bindings also require you to have diff.exe installed in a
directory on your system PATH. diff.exe is available as part of the GnuWin32
project's DiffUtils package at http://gnuwin32.sf.net/.
Once you've got Python and CVSNT or RCS or the Subversion bindings installed,
you can test out ViewVC before you install it by running:
python bin\standalone.py -r <PATH_TO_REPOSITORY>
The standalone server has a number of features (including a GUI interface)
which you can find out about by running
python bin\standalone.py --help
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BASIC INSTALLATION
Run the ViewVC install script with
python viewvc-install
The script will copy the source files into an installation directory that you
specify, store some path information, and compile the ViewVC library files into
Python bytecode.
After the installation is finished you will need to edit the viewvc.conf file
in the folder you installed to. The comments in that file tell you exactly what
to do.
With the config file set up you should be able to double-click standalone.py
and access your repository with a web browser.
See the sections below for information on setting up optional features and
troubleshooting. From here on <PYTHON_DIR> will stand for the Python root
directory (usually something like C:\Python22) and <VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR> will
represent the directory where ViewVC has been installed to (default is
C:\Program Files\viewvc-VERSION).
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SERVER CONFIGURATION
If you want to make ViewVC available to a network (rather than using it on a
standalone machine), you will need to configure a web server to host it. This
section includes instructions for setting up ViewVC on two commonly used
Windows web servers, IIS and Apache.
With IIS, you can run ViewVC in CGI mode or ASP mode (or both modes). ASP mode
gives better performance (faster page loads), but is harder to set up and may
be less stable. CGI mode is stable and easy to set up but slower.
On Apache, you can use CGI mode or Mod_Python mode or both modes at once.
Mod_Python mode is faster than CGI mode.
CGI Mode On IIS
1) Copy viewvc.cgi and query.cgi from <VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\bin\cgi to a
folder that is accessible through your web server.
2) Start up the IIS "Internet Services Manager" and right click a virtual
server or virtual directory that contains the files you just copied. Choose
"Properties" from the context menu that appears.
3) On the properties dialog that appears, navigate to [Home | Virtual]
Directory -> Application Settings -> Configuration. This will bring up
another dialog box called "Application Configuration".
4) On the "App Mappings" tab choose "Add". Fill in the following information
Executable: <PYTHON_DIR>\python.exe "%s"
Extension: cgi
Script Engine: checked
Check that file exists: unchecked
That is all. Assuming you've set up viewvc.conf to point to your
repositories, the CGI pages should run. See the Troubleshooting section below
if there are any problems.
ASP Mode On IIS
In order to run ViewVC with ASP, you will need to enable Python ActiveX
scripting and to install the included Aspfool ISAPI filter on whatever
virtual server is being used to serve the viewvc pages. Step by step
instructions follow below. Aspfool is located in the windows\aspfool folder.
To set up ASP mode, follow these steps:
1) Run <PYTHON_DIR>\Lib\site-packages\win32comext\axscript\client\pyscript.py
to register Python as an ASP scripting language. (More documentation on this
is at http://www.python.org/windows/win32com/ActiveXScripting.html)
2) Copy the viewvc.asp and query.asp files from
<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\bin\asp to a folder that is accessible through your web
server.
3) Start up the IIS "Internet Services Manager" and right click on the
virtual server that contains the files you just copied. Choose "Properties"
from the context menu that appears.
4) On the properties dialog that appears, click the "ISAPI Filters" tab.
Click the "add" button and enter the following information:
Filter Name: aspfool
Executable: aspfool.dll
After you save these changes, the ViewVC ASP pages should begin to work.
CGI Mode on Apache
Follow the instructions under "Apache Configuration" in the ViewVC INSTALL
file.
Mod_Python Mode on Apache
There are probably ten thousand different ways to set up Apache, mod_python,
and ViewVC together. Here are some instructions that work for me using
Mod_Python 3.0.3 and Apache 2.0.46. If any Apache gurus want to contribute
better instructions, I'd be happy to include them here.
1) Run the win32 mod_python installer from www.modpython.org.
2) Add the following line to the "Global Environment" section of httpd.conf
LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so
3) Copy viewvc.py, query.py, handler.py, and .htaccess from
<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\bin\mod_python to a folder being served by apache. Make
sure overrides are allowed in this folder. The relevant parent directory in
httpd.conf should have "AllowOverride All" set, or at least "AllowOverride
FileInfo Options".
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ENSCRIPT HIGHLIGHTING
To use enscript, you'll have to install the enscript, libintl, libiconv, and
sed packages from the gnuwin32 project (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/).
Detailed instructions are on their site, but here is the basic procedure.
1) Extract all packages to a folder on your hard drive, for example c:\gnuwin32
2) Add "c:\gnuwin32\bin" to the system "PATH" environment variable. If ViewVC
is running as part of a system service like IIS you will need to reboot the
computer so it is able to see the value. See the "Troubleshooting" section
below for specific information on when a reboot is neccessary.
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BONSAI-LIKE CHECKIN DATABASE
To use the checkin database, you'll need to install MySQL and the MySQL-Python
interface. MySQL can be downloaded from www.mysql.com. The MySql-Python adapter
is available from http://sf.net/projects/mysql-python/. Make sure to grab the
the latest version from the "Files" section. (The "Home Page" link takes you to
an outdated page that only links to very old versions.) Both packages come with
GUI installers. Once you have MySQL running and set up with a username and
password, follow these instructions to set up ViewVC.
1) Open a command prompt and type these commands:
cd /d <VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>
python bin\make-database
The script that comes up will prompt you for the MySQL username and password
(you should have created these during the MySQL installation), and the name of
the database to create. The default database name "ViewVC" should be fine
unless for some reason a database with that name already exists.
2) Enter the username, password, and database name into the [cvsdb] section of
the <VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\viewvc.conf file.
3) At the command prompt run
python bin\cvsdbadmin rebuild <repository>
where <repository> is the path to your CVS repository.
4) If you want the checkin database to be dynamically updated with every
checkin, add the following line to your CVSROOT/loginfo file:
ALL python "<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\bin\loginfo-handler" %{sVv}
If you decide not to enable dynamic updates, you can periodically refresh the
database with "python bin\cvsdbadmin update <repository>"
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CVSGRAPH
To use CvsGraph with ViewVC, just put cvsgraph.exe in a directory on your
system PATH and set the use_cvsgraph option to 1 in your viewvc.conf file.
The CvsGraph home page is http://www.akhphd.au.dk/~bertho/cvsgraph/.
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DOCROOT OPTIMIZATION
By default ViewVC serves up image and stylesheet files in
<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\templates\docroot\ on its own instead of relying on the
webserver to deliver them. This simplifies web server configuration, but is
inefficient because it means the Python interpreter has to run each time one of
these files is downloaded. This causes ViewVC pages to load more slowly,
especially when ViewVC is running under CGI on Windows.
To make things more efficient, you can make the
<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\templates\docroot directory available on your web server
and then set the "docroot" value in viewvc.conf to point to the web address of
the directory.
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TROUBLESHOOTING
- By far the most common cause of errors in ViewVC is failure to successfully
execute the programs it depends on (cvs, rlog, rcsdiff, co, enscript, sed,
and cvsgraph). To help deal with this problem, ViewVC includes a special
debugging mode that displays output from the programs it executes on every
web page. This allows you to see error messages and other information that
isn't normally visible. To enable the debugging mode, change line 23 of
<VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\lib\debug.py from:
SHOW_CHILD_PROCESSES = 0
to:
SHOW_CHILD_PROCESSES = 1
Important: You may need to restart your web server before this change takes
effect. See "Changes made to..." later in this section.
- If you see the following error:
error: (2, 'CreateProcess', The system cannot find the file specified.')
it means that a program ViewVC has tried to execute could not be found by
Windows. The fix to this is usually to install the program if it isn't
already installed or to update the path to the program in viewvc.conf.
Enabling the SHOW_CHILD_PROCESSES mode as described above can provide helpful
diagnostic information such as the command line ViewVC is using to invoke the
program and the value of the PATH environment variable in the environment
ViewVC is running under.
- A common cause of server errors under IIS is permissions problems. You need
to make sure that the virtual directory containing the CGI or ASP files has
script execution enabled. You also need to make sure that the web server user
accounts (IUSR_machine_name and IWAM_machine_name, where machine_name is your
computer name) have read and execute access to the .asp or .cgi stub scripts,
the ViewVC lib/ folder, the paths where external tools like cvs, rcs,
enscript, sed, and cvsgraph live, and the CVS repositories. NTFS auditing
makes it very easy to track down permissions problems. Also look for IIS
messages in the event log.
- Certain Apache configurations may hide some environment variables from the
ViewVC CGI scripts and the programs they launch. You can see whether an
environment variable is visible from the CGI environment by enabling the
SHOW_CHILD_PROCESSES debug mode described above. You can force Apache to let
variables through with the PassEnv directive
(http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_env.html#passenv).
- Changes made to environment variables, ViewVC source files and the ViewVC
configuration file do not always take effect immediately. The table below
shows what actions you need to take after changing any of these things before
they will have an effect.
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| | Environment | ViewVC | ViewVC |
| | Variables | Source | Configuration |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| Standalone | restart | restart | restart |
| Server | standalone.py* | standalone.py | standalone.py |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| CGI mode under | reboot | nothing | nothing |
| apache or IIS | computer | | |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| mod_python or | reboot | restart Apache | restart Apache |
| under apache | computer | | OR |
| | | | reload(viewvc) in stub |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
| asp mode under | reboot | restart IIS | restart IIS |
| IIS | computer | OR | OR |
| | | Unload ASP App | Unload ASP App |
| | | | OR |
| | | | reload(viewvc) in stub |
+----------------+----------------+----------------+-------------------------+
* If standalone.py was launched from a command prompt and you set the
environment variable through the control panel, you'll need to open a new
command prompt.
Notes:
Under ASP, changes made to the stub scripts inside the web root do take
effect immediately, you only need to take additional action when you make
changes to the main source files in <VIEWVC_INSTALL_DIR>\lib
To "Unload ASP App", go to the IIS properties dialog for the application
directory containing the ViewVC .asp files (in Internet Services Manager).
Switch to the [Home] | [Virtual] Directory tab and click the "Unload" button
under "Application Settings".
To "reload(viewvc) in stub", put these lines in one of the ASP or Mod_Python
stub scripts:
import viewvc
reload (viewvc)
then load the page in a web browser.
- If you have problems getting ViewVC to work with mod_python, you can first
make sure mod_python works standalone with the testing instructions at
http://www.modpython.org/live/current/doc-html/inst-testing.html.
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KNOWN ISSUES
- If you see ViewVC errors like
Error parsing rlog output. Expected RCS file "c:\cvsroot\dir\file,v", found
"c:\cvsroot\dir\RCS/file,v"
it's because your RCS utilities don't recognize the RCS file suffix and are
treating all files specified on the command line like working copies even
when they end in ",v". You can fix this by including the following string in
your RCSINIT environment variable:
-x,v
Important: You may need to reboot your computer before the environment
variable has an effect. See "Changes made to..." in the TROUBLESHOOTING
section.
- The GNU RCS utilities won't work with repository files that use CVSNT's
unicode expansion mode (-ku). Files that use this mode will show up with an
"rlog error: unknown expand mode u" error message in ViewVC directory
listings. To work around this, you can set up ViewVC to use the CVSNT
executable (cvs.exe) or CVSNT RCS tools (co.exe, rlog.exe, and rcsdiff.exe)
instead of the GNU tools.
- The standalone server will not run under Cygwin Python because it does not
support threads. ASP pages can't be run with Cygwin Python because it does
not support ActiveX. To use either of these features you should install a
native Python interpreter.
- On Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server under IIS, enscript might give an error
like:
enscript: couldn't open input filter "states -f
"K:/gnuwin32/share/enscript/hl/enscript.st" -p
"C://.enscript;K:/gnuwin32/share/enscript/hl" -shtml -Dcolor=1
-Dstyle=emacs -Dlanguage=html -Dnum_input_files=1
-Ddocument_title="Enscript Output" -Dtoc=0 -" for file "": No error
no output generated
The solution is to give read & execute permissions on cmd.exe to the
IUSR_computername and IWAM_computername user accounts. (Enscript uses cmd.exe
internally to launch its little helper program, states.exe).
- By default, ASP will set session cookies at each page load. ViewVC does not
use these cookies and they can be safely disabled. You can do this by opening
the IIS properties dialog for the application directory containing the ViewVC
.asp files. Go to the [Home] | [Virtual] Directory tab and click the
"Configuration" button under "Application Settings". On the dialog that comes
up, uncheck "Enable Session State" under "App Options" -> "Application
Configuration".
- Python support for ASP can be a little flaky. If you get strange errors, it
can sometimes help to uninstall and reinstall it with pyscript.py. A number
of people have also encountered a problem in ActivePython 2.2 where the first
loads of any Python ASP page would work, but subsequent loads of the same
page would always return nothing (leaving the screen blank). There were a
number of workarounds for this problem, but the fix is to download and
install the latest python win32 extensions from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
- ViewVC can't convert timestamps on diff pages to local time when it is used
with CVSNT. This is caused by a CVSNT bug, which is described at
http://www.cvsnt.org/mantis/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=0000110
- Old versions of CVSNT (2.0.11 and earlier) have a bug in their rlog emulation
which causes them to output truncated paths to RCS files. In ViewVC, this
causes errors like
Error parsing rlog output. Expected RCS file "c:\cvsroot\dir\file,v", found
"file,v"
- Old versions of CVSNT (2.0.11 and earlier) have a bug in their standalone RCS
tools (rlog.exe, co.exe, and rcsdiff.exe) which causes them not to properly
interpret arguments with spaces. This can result in ViewVC errors in
repositories that have spaces in file or directory names. This bug only
occurs when ViewVC is configured to use the standalone utilities, not when it
uses cvs.exe directly as it does by default.
- Old versions of CVSNT (1.11.1.3-76 and earlier) don't have any RCS emulation,
so they can't be used as RCS parsers for ViewVC.
- Very old versions of CVSNT (1.11.1.3-57g and earlier) won't work reliably
with our loginfo handler because they have a bug which makes them escape
spaces and other special characters in filenames twice. This bug can result
in loginfo errors or invalid data being inserted into the database.
- Old versions of Highlight (2.4.3 and earlier) will not show line numbers
for .txt files or files of unknown type even when the
"highlight_line_numbers" option is enabled.
- Highlight versions 2.4.2 and 2.4.3 start line numbering for all file types
at 0 instead of 1 by default. A workaround is to make ViewVC pass an
explicit --line-number-start=1 option to Highlight
- Highlight version 2.4.4 starts line numbering for .txt files at 0 instead of
1. It also misinterprets the --line-number-start option for those files,
starting numbering one number before whatever number is specified. Since this
behavior does not affect unknown file types, a simple workaround is just to
not pass a --syntax option to Highlight for plain text files (instead of
passing --syntax=txt).
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THANKS
- Bryan T. Vold for improving the original ViewCVS patch by adding support for
enscript and tarball generation.
- David Resnick for tracking down the cause of re_search failures in
repositories with non-rcs files and for bringing a bug in
sapi.AspFile.header() to my attention
- Matt Bunch for finding a better way to address the ASP blank page problem,
and Keith D. Zimmerman for finding another workaround.
- R<>diger Koch for reporting a bug in viewvc PATH_INFO parsing code with
Apache for Windows as well as Jelle Ouwerkerk and Steffen Yount for providing
fixes.
- Nick Minutello and R<>diger Koch for providing workarounds for setting
enscript_library environment variable with apache. David Duminy for providing
the first bug report on this.
- Gyula Faller and Tony Cook for independently coming up with CVSNT loginfo
handlers that accept spaces and don't rely on unix-style echo commands. Tony
Cook's patch also eliminated the dependency on cat.exe.
- Mathieu Mazerolle for making the unix loginfo handler handle spaces in
filenames
- Paul Russell for analyzing problems with new fields in CVSNT RCS files.
Terry.Ninnis@pgen.com for coming up with a partial solution
- Bo Berglund for tracking down the cause of a case-sensitivity issue that
could lead to problems in the commit database and for patiently working with
me to finally fix the CVSNT RCS fields problem and another problem with
enscript.
- Ivo Roessling for finding and fixing a bug in the query page's commit
grouping code.
- Keith D. Zimmerman for experimenting with enscript and finding some new ways
to make it work.
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