Contributing to RhodeCode

If you would like to contribute to RhodeCode, please contact me, any help is

greatly appreciated!

Could I request that you make your source contributions by first forking the

RhodeCode repository on bitbucket

https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode and then make your changes to

your forked repository. Finally, when you are finished making a change, please

send me a pull request.

To run RhodeCode in a development version you always need to install the tip

version of RhodeCode and the VCS library.

| Thank you for any contributions!

|  Marcin

``RhodeCode`` is written entirely in Python. In order to gain maximum performance

there are some third-party you must install. When RhodeCode is used 

together with celery you have to install some kind of message broker,

Of course RhodeCode works in sync mode also and then you do not have to install

any third party applications. However, using Celery_ will give you a large speed improvement when using

many big repositories. If you plan to use RhodeCode for say 7 to 10 small repositories, RhodeCode

will perform perfectly well without celery running.

If you make the decision to run RhodeCode with celery make sure you run celeryd using paster

Installing RhodeCode from Cheese Shop

-------------------------------------

Rhodecode requires python version 2.5 or higher.

The easiest way to install ``rhodecode`` is to run::

If you prefer to install RhodeCode manually simply grab latest release from

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/rhodecode, decompress the archive and run::

- Assuming you have installed virtualenv_ create a new virtual environment using virtualenv:: 

.. note:: Using ``--no-site-packages`` when generating your

   virtualenv is **very important**. This flag provides the necessary

   isolation for running the set of packages required by

   RhodeCode.  If you do not specify ``--no-site-packages``,

   it's possible that RhodeCode will not install properly into

   the virtualenv, or, even if it does, may not run properly,

   depending on the packages you've already got installed into your

   Python's "main" site-packages dir.

- Activate the virtualenv_ by running::

.. note:: If you're using UNIX, *do not* use ``sudo`` to run the

   ``virtualenv`` script.  It's perfectly acceptable (and desirable)

   to create a virtualenv as a normal user.

- Make a folder for rhodecode somewhere on the filesystem for example::

- Run this command to install rhodecode::

- This will install rhodecode together with pylons and all other required python

  libraries

   work perfectly fine without them.

- A possible alternative is `Redis <http://code.google.com/p/redis/>`_

For installation instructions you can visit: 

http://ask.github.com/celery/getting-started/index.html.

This is a very nice tutorial on how to start using celery_ with rabbitmq_

Setting up RhodeCode

First, you will need to create a RhodeCode configuration file. Run the following

command to do this::

- This will create the file `production.ini` in the current directory. This

  configuration file contains the various settings for RhodeCode, e.g proxy port,

Next, you need to create the databases used by RhodeCode. I recommend that you

use sqlite (default) or postgresql. If you choose a database other than the

default ensure you properly adjust the db url in your production.ini

configuration file to use this other database. Create the databases by running

the following command::

This will prompt you for a "root" path. This "root" path is the location where

RhodeCode will store all of its repositories on the current machine. After

entering this "root" path ``setup-app`` will also prompt you for a username and password

for the initial admin account which ``setup-app`` sets up for you.

- The ``setup-app`` command will create all of the needed tables and an admin

  account. When choosing a root path you can either use a new empty location, or a

  location which already contains existing repositories. If you choose a location

  which contains existing repositories RhodeCode will simply add all of the

  repositories at the chosen location to it's database. (Note: make sure you

  specify the correct path to the root).

- Note: the given path for mercurial_ repositories **must** be write accessible

  for the application. It's very important since the RhodeCode web interface will

  work without write access, but when trying to do a push it will eventually fail

  with permission denied errors unless it has write access.

You are now ready to use RhodeCode, to run it simply execute::

- This command runs the RhodeCode server. The web app should be available at the 

- Use the admin account you created above when running ``setup-app`` to login to the web app.

- The default permissions on each repository is read, and the owner is admin. 

  Remember to update these if needed.

- In the admin panel you can toggle ldap, anonymous, permissions settings. As

  well as edit more advanced options on users and repositories

Try copying your own mercurial repository into the "root" directory you are

using, then from within the RhodeCode web application choose Admin >

repositories. Then choose Add New Repository. Add the repository you copied into

the root. Test that you can browse your repository from within RhodeCode and then

try cloning your repository from RhodeCode with::

  hg clone http://127.0.0.1:5000/<repository name>

where *repository name* is replaced by the name of your repository.

RhodeCode currently only hosts repositories using http and https. (The addition of

ssh hosting is a planned future feature.) However you can easily use ssh in

parallel with RhodeCode. (Repository access via ssh is a standard "out of

the box" feature of mercurial_ and you can use this to access any of the

repositories that RhodeCode is hosting. See PublishingRepositories_)

as the project. When using repository groups, each group is a subdirectory.

This allows you to easily use ssh for accessing repositories.

In order to use ssh you need to make sure that your web-server and the users login

accounts have the correct permissions set on the appropriate directories. (Note

that these permissions are independent of any permissions you have set up using

the RhodeCode web interface.)

If your main directory (the same as set in RhodeCode settings) is for example

set to **/home/hg** and the repository you are using is named `rhodecode`, then

to clone via ssh you should run::

    hg clone ssh://user@server.com/home/hg/rhodecode

Using other external tools such as mercurial-server_ or using ssh key based

authentication is fully supported.

Note: In an advanced setup, in order for your ssh access to use the same

permissions as set up via the RhodeCode web interface, you can create an

authentication hook to connect to the rhodecode db and runs check functions for

permissions against that.

Starting from version 1.1 the whoosh index can be build by using the paster

command ``make-index``. To use ``make-index`` you must specify the configuration

file that stores the location of the index, and the location of the repositories

(`--repo-location`).Starting from version 1.2 it is 

You may optionally pass the option `-f` to enable a full index rebuild. Without

the `-f` option, indexing will run always in "incremental" mode.

For an incremental index build use::

For a full index rebuild use::

In order to do periodical index builds and keep your index always up to date.

An example entry might look like this::

When using incremental mode (the default) whoosh will check the last

modification date of each file and add it to be reindexed if a newer file is

available. The indexing daemon checks for any removed files and removes them

from index.

If you want to rebuild index from scratch, you can use the `-f` flag as above,

or in the admin panel you can check `build from scratch` flag.

to use LDAP, you have to install the python-ldap_ package. This package is available

via pypi, so you can install it by running

   python-ldap requires some certain libs on your system, so before installing 

   it check that you have at least `openldap`, and `sasl` libraries.

Here's a typical ldap setup::

Since version 1.1 celery is configured by the rhodecode ini configuration files.

Simply set use_celery=true in the ini file then add / change the configuration 

Remember that the ini files use the format with '.' not with '_' like celery.

So for example setting `BROKER_HOST` in celery means setting `broker.host` in

In order to start using celery run::

   Make sure you run this command from the same virtualenv, and with the same user

There are two ways to enable https:

- Set HTTP_X_URL_SCHEME in your http server headers, than rhodecode will

  recognize this headers and make proper https redirections

- Alternatively, set `force_https = true` in the ini configuration to force using

  https, no headers are needed than to enable https

    server {

       listen          80;

       server_name     hg.myserver.com;

       access_log      /var/log/nginx/rhodecode.access.log;

       error_log       /var/log/nginx/rhodecode.error.log;

       location / {

               root /var/www/rhodecode/rhodecode/public/;

               if (!-f $request_filename){

                   proxy_pass      http://127.0.0.1:5000;

               }

               #this is important if you want to use https !!!

               proxy_set_header X-Url-Scheme $scheme;

               include         /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;  

       }

    }  

Here's the proxy.conf. It's tuned so it will not timeout on long

pushes or large pushes::

Also, when using root path with nginx you might set the static files to false

in the production.ini file::

    [app:main]

      use = egg:rhodecode

      full_stack = true

      static_files = false

      lang=en

      cache_dir = %(here)s/data

In order to not have the statics served by the application. This improves speed.

Here is a sample configuration file for apache using proxy::

Besides the regular apache setup you will need to add the following to your .ini file::

Some example init.d scripts can be found here, for debian and gentoo:

:Q: **Missing static files?**

:A: Make sure either to set the `static_files = true` in the .ini file or

   double check the root path for your http setup. It should point to 

| 

:Q: **Can't install celery/rabbitmq**

:A: Don't worry RhodeCode works without them too. No extra setup is required.

|

:Q: **Long lasting push timeouts?**

:A: Make sure you set a longer timeouts in your proxy/fcgi settings, timeouts

    are caused by https server and not RhodeCode.

| 

:Q: **Large pushes timeouts?**

:A: Make sure you set a proper max_body_size for the http server.

|

:Q: **Apache doesn't pass basicAuth on pull/push?**

:A: Make sure you added `WSGIPassAuthorization true`.

For further questions search the `Issues tracker`_, or post a message in the `google group rhodecode`_

.. _mercurial-server: http://www.lshift.net/mercurial-server.html

.. _PublishingRepositories: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/PublishingRepositories

.. _Issues tracker: https://bitbucket.org/marcinkuzminski/rhodecode/issues

.. _google group rhodecode: http://groups.google.com/group/rhodecode

Upgrading from Cheese Shop

--------------------------

.. note::

   Firstly, it is recommended that you **always** perform a database backup before doing an upgrade.

The easiest way to upgrade ``rhodecode`` is to run::

Then make sure you run the following command from the installation directory::

This will display any changes made by the new version of RhodeCode to your

current configuration. It will try to perform an automerge. It's always better

to make a backup of your configuration file before hand and recheck the content after the automerge.

   any minor or major releases. Bugfix releases (eg. 1.1.2->1.1.3) will 

   not have any database schema changes or whoosh library updates.

It is also recommended that you rebuild the whoosh index after upgrading since the new whoosh 

version could introduce some incompatible index changes.

The final step is to upgrade the database. To do this simply run::

This will upgrade the schema and update some of the defaults in the database,

and will always recheck the settings of the application, if there are no new options

Git support in RhodeCode 1.1 was disabled due to current instability issues. However,

if you would like to test git support please feel free to re-enable it. To re-enable GIT support just

uncomment the git line in the file rhodecode/__init__.py

   Please note that the git support provided by RhodeCode is not yet fully

   stable and RhodeCode might crash while using git repositories. (That is why

   it is currently disabled.) Thus be careful about enabling git support, and

   certainly don't use it in a production setting!

The RhodeCode statistics system makes heavy demands of the server resources, so

in order to keep a balance between usability and performance, the statistics are

cached inside db and are gathered incrementally, this is how RhodeCode does

this:

- On each first visit to the summary page a set of 250 commits are parsed and

  updates statistics cache.

- This happens on each single visit to the statistics page until all commits are

  fetched. Statistics are kept cached until additional commits are added to the

  repository. In such a case RhodeCode will only fetch the new commits when

  updating it's cache.

- On the first visit to the summary page RhodeCode will create tasks that will

  execute on celery workers. This task will gather all of the stats until all

  commits are parsed, each task will parse 250 commits, and run the next task to

  parse next 250 commits, until all of the commits are parsed.

   At any time you can disable statistics on each repository via the repository

   edit form in the admin panel. To do this just uncheck the statistics checkbox.