Document: WM-089                                                 P. Webb
Category: Self-Host                                           2026-04-17

                 Self-hosting my code with cgit (again)

Abstract

   cgit is basic but it works well…perfect.

Body

   Of all the code forges available, cgit[1] is the most basic but also
   the least offensive to me, stylistically (and customizable). Last
   weekend I planned to spin up a website for my photography but felt a
   sudden urge to get my public repos off Github.

   A few hours later, code.webb.page[2] was live. My original plan for
   hosting my repos was to wait until EOL[3] was ready but my roadmap
   doesn’t have that happening anytime soon.

   

   I setup a repo[4] with all my cgit customizations. Organizing the
   CSS[5] alone took a few days, thank goodness nesting exists (inlined
   my uchū palette[6] as well).

   ## Installation

   I always start with this handy script[7] for my servers.
   

   apt install cgit fcgiwrap python3-markdown -y


   cgit needs fcgiwrap and if you want to have READMEs appear in your
   repos, you’ll need python3-markdown (per the readme=: lines in
   cgitrc[8]).

   Also, I had to edit about_formatting.sh[9] to make relative imagess
   appear in my READMEs. Replace this:
   

   *.markdown|*.mdown|*.md|*.mkd) exec ./md2html; ;;


   With this:
   

   *.markdown|*.mdown|*.md|*.mkd) ./md2html | sed 's|src="\./|src="/'"$CGIT_REPO_URL"'/plain/|g'; ;;



   

   fcgiwrap.socket should be owned by Caddy. Open with:
   

   systemctl edit fcgiwrap.socket


   

   [Socket]
   SocketUser=caddy
   SocketGroup=caddy
   SocketMode=0660


   And enable with:
   

   systemctl enable --now fcgiwrap.socket


   After updating your Caddyfile[10]’s reverse_proxy:
   

   chown caddy:www-data /run/fcgiwrap.socket


   And reload!
   

   systemctl reload caddy


   I like my repos’ default branch to be primary and I made it so via:
   

   git config --global init.defaultBranch primary


   I ran into issues making clone URLs pretty but still useable for me
   so I disabled them. You can download the repos via the /commit page
   in tar.gz and zip though.

   If you do go through the process of changing which users owns the
   main repo directory, you’ll have to reload fcgiwrap to pick up the
   group change.
   

   systemctl restart fcgiwrap


   Because I like having my repos organized, I have to update cgitrc
   when adding new ones. Not too bad of a deal-breaker, I’m doing
   everything else manually anyway (and it’s a one-time thing).

   ## FIN

   I think that’s it! I’m gonna keep tinkering with the styling here and
   there (the Markdown rendering isn’t to my liking) and the structure
   (the generated HTML would look nicer if indented when you view source
   on the browser).

   I still have a number of repos on Github, most of them old and thus
   inconsequential. cgit is just a repo viewer so it lacks support for
   private repos; so, I’m not fully off Github yet.

   EOL can’t come soon enough! 🕸️