kallithea Files · docs/administrator_guide/vcs

Files @ b66725ba01ed

Branch filter:

Location: kallithea/docs/administrator_guide/vcs_setup.rst

b66725ba01ed 1.7 KiB text/prs.fallenstein.rst Show Annotation Show as Raw Download as Raw

Thomas De Schampheleire

cli: add command 'kallithea-cli front-end-build'

Kallithea is under the GPL license, and we can thus only distribute any
generated code if we also ship the corresponding source.

We are moving towards a web front-end that use npm to download and compile
various open source components. The components might not be GPL, but if we
distribute any parts of their code (compiled or converted to other
representation), then we also must distribute the corresponding source under
the GPL.

It doesn't seem feasible for us to distribute the source of everything that
npm downloads and includes when we are building. It thus also doesn't seem
feasible for us to build and ship the compiled (possibly minified) front-end
code. Instead, we have to make it as smooth as possible for our users to
get up and running.

It doesn't seem feasible for us to ship or install npm. We must assume it is
available. That requirement must be documented clearly, and we must recommend
how to install npm for the most common platforms.

We could perhaps just document what manual steps to run. Kallithea doesn't
work out of the box anyway - it has to be configured and initialized. Extra
steps might not be a big problem.

Another approach is to call out to npm while pip is installing Kallithea and
download the requirements and build the files. It can be done by customizing
setuptools commands in setup.py. But: Python packaging is fragile. Even
though we only support pip, it really isn't built for things like this.
Custom output is muted and buffered and only shown if running with -v or the
command fails. And pip and setup.py can be used to build and install in so
many ways that we probably can't make it work reliably with all ways of
installing Kallithea.

The approach implemented by this commit is to add a custom cli command
'front-end-build' to run the required commands. This single user-facing
command can internally run various steps as needed. The only current
requirement is the presence of npm and an internet connection.

For now, this will just create/update style.css ... but currently probably
without any actual changes. The files created by npm (and the node_modules
directory) must *not* be a part of the release package made with 'setup.py
sdist'.

(Commit message is mostly written by Mads Kiilerich)

.. _vcs_setup:

=============================
Version control systems setup
=============================

Kallithea supports Git and Mercurial repositories out-of-the-box.
For Git, you do need the ``git`` command line client installed on the server.

You can always disable Git or Mercurial support by editing the
file ``kallithea/__init__.py`` and commenting out the backend. For example, to
disable Git but keep Mercurial enabled:

.. code-block:: python

   BACKENDS = {
       'hg': 'Mercurial repository',
       #'git': 'Git repository',
   }


Git-specific setup
------------------


Web server with chunked encoding
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Large Git pushes require an HTTP server with support for
chunked encoding for POST. The Python web servers waitress_ and
gunicorn_ (Linux only) can be used. By default, Kallithea uses
waitress_ for `gearbox serve` instead of the built-in `paste` WSGI
server.

The web server used by gearbox is controlled in the .ini file::

    use = egg:waitress#main

or::

    use = egg:gunicorn#main

Also make sure to comment out the following options::

    threadpool_workers =
    threadpool_max_requests =
    use_threadpool =

Increasing Git HTTP POST buffer size
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If Git pushes fail with HTTP error code 411 (Length Required), you may need to
increase the Git HTTP POST buffer. Run the following command as the user that
runs Kallithea to set a global Git variable to this effect::

    git config --global http.postBuffer 524288000


.. _waitress: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/waitress
.. _gunicorn: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/gunicorn
.. _subrepositories: http://mercurial.aragost.com/kick-start/en/subrepositories/