Making cgit Pretty

| linux | devops |

Previously I wrote about how to install and configure cgit on Debian. If you have followed that short guide you now have a kick ass cgit install running on your server. So whats next? A bare cgit installation is pretty dull and there are some neat built in features that should be enabled for an optimal user experience. Open up /etc/cgitrc and made the following additions.

Configure Default README

You can set the default README for all repos by adding the following line. readme=master:README.md This will tell cgit to look for the README.md file in your master branch for the default README for a given project.

Add an about filter

You can add an about filter which will add the about tab to your projects and display the README file configured in the previous step.about-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/about-formatting.sh Assuming that you have a README.md file in your master branch you will now see it in the about tab of your project.

Enable Syntax Highlighting

This is a no brainer. Adding syntax highlighting makes your code easier to look at on the website. This takes a few steps. First install the highlight package with sudo apt-get install highlight . Next, open up/usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting.sh and uncomment the last line that reads exec highlight --force -f -I -O xhtml -S "$EXTENSION" 2>/dev/null Next, open up your stylesheet which should be found inusr/share/cgit/cgit.css and add the following sections.
# Style definition file generated by highlight 2.4.8, http://www.andre-simon.de/ 
table.blob .num { color:#2928ff; } 
table.blob .esc { color:#ff00ff; } 
table.blob .str { color:#ff0000; } 
table.blob .dstr { color:#818100; } 
table.blob .slc { color:#838183; font-style:italic; } 
table.blob .com { color:#838183; font-style:italic; } 
table.blob .dir { color:#008200; } 
table.blob .sym { color:#000000; } 
table.blob .kwa { color:#000000; font-weight:bold; } 
table.blob .kwb { color:#830000; } 
table.blob .kwc { color:#000000; font-weight:bold; } 
table.blob .kwd { color:#010181; }  

# Style definition file generated by highlight 3.13, http://www.andre-simon.de/

body.hl { background-color:#e0eaee; }
pre.hl { color:#000000; background-color:#e0eaee;
font-size:10pt;
font-family:‘Courier New’,monospace;}
.hl.num { color:#b07e00; }
.hl.esc { color:#ff00ff; }
.hl.str { color:#bf0303; }
.hl.pps { color:#818100; }
.hl.slc { color:#838183; font-style:italic; }
.hl.com { color:#838183; font-style:italic; }
.hl.ppc { color:#008200; }
.hl.opt { color:#000000; }
.hl.ipl { color:#0057ae; }
.hl.lin { color:#555555; }
.hl.kwa { color:#000000; font-weight:bold; }
.hl.kwb { color:#0057ae; }
.hl.kwc { color:#000000; font-weight:bold; }
.hl.kwd { color:#010181; }

Lastly, add this to your configuration file to enable syntax highlighting.
source-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/syntax-highlighting.sh
Since most of my repos look the same I configured these settings globally. You can also configure this at a per-repo level if you simply add any of theses sections to your specific repo settings. For example if you have a different README format such as README.rst for a repo called “my-repo” Then your configuration for that specfic repo would look something like this:
repo.url=my-repo 
repo.path=/srv/git/my-repo.git 
repo.readme=master:README.rst 
repo.about-filter=/usr/lib/cgit/filters/about-formatting.sh 
repo.desc=The best repo ever 
repo.owner=Your Name
Now you have a super fast git repo web viewer and it has a couple of bells and whistles as well.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to wildly overthinking things

Friday's big release was Qwen 3.8 27B, an Apache 2 licensed 27B parameter vision-capable LLM from Alibaba's Qwen research lab. I've been looking forward to this one: 27B is an excellent size for running a model on a reasonably specced laptop, and its prede...

via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 16, 2026

“I think there’s a lot of value in these.”

Speaking of user interface guidelines, developer Matt Sephton and others compiled many of Apple’s human interface guidelines, starting from 1980, all the way to 2014, including some goodies like early drafts, NeXT, Newton, and so on. Elsewhere, designer Ge...

via Unsung August 16, 2026

Birding photos from Dutch Gap on Aug 15, 2026

Birding photos from Dutch Gap on Aug 15, 2026 My best bird photo from this morning is a dragonfly (Eastern Pondhawk, I think). Least Sandpiper Green Heron Red-headed Woodpecker. It's a juvenile, so its head is not actually red yet.

via O'DonnellWeb August 16, 2026

Generated by openring