Installing HgWeb in IIS on Windows

1. Creating the HgWeb Website

This page describes how to get HgWeb running on Windows Vista/2008 and 7/2008 R2.

Install Python 2.6. By default, this installs to C:\Python26. On this page, the Python installation folder is referred to as PYTHON_HOME.

Create an HgWeb website in IIS. We'll call the path to this website's root directory HGWEB_ROOT.

Create a web.config file in HGWEB_ROOT. Edit it to look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="Python" path="*.cgi" verb="*" modules="CgiModule" scriptProcessor="PYTHON_HOME\python.exe -u &quot;%s&quot;" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

You'll then need to enable the Python module. From a command prompt, run:

> C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config /section:isapiCgiRestriction /+"[path='C:\Python26\python.exe -u %22%s%22',description='Python',allowed='True']"

You should have everything configured to start running CGI scripts through Python. To test that it's working, create a test.cgi file in HGWEB_ROOT:

   1 print 'Status: 200 OK'
   2 print 'Content-Type: text/html'
   3 print
   4 print '<html><body><h1>It Works!</h1></body></html>'

Save the file. Hit the test.cgi file in your web browser. If you see It Works!, you've got the Python CGI handler installed correctly.

Create an empty file named hgweb.config in your HgWeb root directory. This is where the HgWeb configuration goes once everything is working.

Download and run the Mercurial Python module installer (it's the one whose description says "use this for running hgweb"). After installation, you should see mercurial and hgext directories in your PYTHON_HOME\Lib\site-packages directory. If you don't see those directories, you chose the wrong installer.

Download the hgweb.cgi script for your version of Mercurial. Browse the Mercurial source code. Click the the tag for your version, click Browse in the navigation menu, click the hgweb.cgi script, then right-click Raw from the navigation menu, choose Save As... and save the file into your HgWeb directory.

Open hgweb.cgi and change the value of the config variable to point to the hgweb.config file you created earlier:

   1 config = "HGWEB_ROOT\hgweb.config"

Hit the hgweb.cgi script in your web browse and you should see the HgWeb interface.

2. Configuring URL Rewrite Rules

Now, we need to create some URL rewrite rules so that URLs to your repositories don't have hgweb.cgi in them.

First, you'll need to download and install version 2 of the Url Rewrite Module.

Once that is finished, edit the HGWEB_ROOT\web.config file and add the following <rewrite> section under <system.webServer>:

  <system.webServer>
    <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="rewrite to hgwebdir" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
          <match url="*" />
          <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">
            <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Rewrite" url="hgweb.cgi/{R:1}" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>
  </system.webServer>

You should now be able to hit your website without hgweb.cgi in the URL and see the HgWeb UI.

3. Authenticating Against Active Directory

Add the following to your HgWeb's web.config, in the /configuration/system.webServer/security/authentication section:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.webServer>
    <security>
      <authentication>
        <basicAuthentication enabled="true" realm="YOUR_DOMAIN" defaultLogonDomain="YOUR_DOMAIN" />
        <anonymousAuthentication enabled="true" />
      </authentication>
    </security>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Replace YOUR_DOMAIN with the name of your Windows domain. Anonymous authentication is enabled so you can support unrestricted repositories (e.g. allow_push=*).

You'll need to unlock the basic authentication configuration section so it can be configured in your web.config:

> C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd unlock config /section:basicAuthentication

You can test that authentication is working by adding an allow_push setting to the repository's .hg\hgrc file on the server:

allow_push = USERNAME

Commit a change an attempt a push. You should see a sequence like this:

> hg push
pushing to https://localhost:4301/cm
searching for changes
http authorization required
realm: YOUR_DOMAIN
user: USERNAME
password: