mercurial/help/hgweb.txt

fncache: avoid loading the filename cache when not actually modifying it

With time, fncache can become very large. The mozilla-central repo for example,
has a 31M and growing fncache file. Loading this file takes time (280ms for the
mozilla-central repository).

In many scenarios, we don't need to load fncache at all. For example, when
committing changes to existing files, or pushing such commits to another clone.
This patch detects when a name is added via store.vfs(), and only loads the
cache if a) the data metadata file doesn't already exist, or b) when opening
for appending, the data or metadata file exists but has size  (a transaction
rollback leaves behind such files).

Benchmarks (run on Macos 10.13 on a 2017-model Macbook Pro with Core i7 2.9GHz
and flash drive), each test without and with patch run 5 times:

* committing to an existing file, against the mozilla-central repository.
  Baseline real time average 2.3736, with patch 1.9884.

* unbundling a large changeset consisting *only* of existing-file modifications
  (159 revisions, 1050 modifications, mozilla-central
  4a250a0e4f29:beea9ac7d823), into a clone limited to the ancestor revision of
  that revset). Baseline real time average 1.5048, with patch 1.3108.

Mercurial's internal web server, hgweb, can serve either a single
repository, or a tree of repositories. In the second case, repository
paths and global options can be defined using a dedicated
configuration file common to :hg:`serve`, ``hgweb.wsgi``,
``hgweb.cgi`` and ``hgweb.fcgi``.

This file uses the same syntax as other Mercurial configuration files
but recognizes only the following sections:

  - web
  - paths
  - collections

The ``web`` options are thoroughly described in :hg:`help config`.

The ``paths`` section maps URL paths to paths of repositories in the
filesystem. hgweb will not expose the filesystem directly - only
Mercurial repositories can be published and only according to the
configuration.

The left hand side is the path in the URL. Note that hgweb reserves
subpaths like ``rev`` or ``file``, try using different names for
nested repositories to avoid confusing effects.

The right hand side is the path in the filesystem. If the specified
path ends with ``*`` or ``**`` the filesystem will be searched
recursively for repositories below that point.
With ``*`` it will not recurse into the repositories it finds (except for
``.hg/patches``).
With ``**`` it will also search inside repository working directories
and possibly find subrepositories.

In this example::

  [paths]
  /projects/a = /srv/tmprepos/a
  /projects/b = c:/repos/b
  / = /srv/repos/*
  /user/bob = /home/bob/repos/**

- The first two entries make two repositories in different directories
  appear under the same directory in the web interface
- The third entry will publish every Mercurial repository found in
  ``/srv/repos/``, for instance the repository ``/srv/repos/quux/``
  will appear as ``http://server/quux/``
- The fourth entry will publish both ``http://server/user/bob/quux/``
  and ``http://server/user/bob/quux/testsubrepo/``

The ``collections`` section is deprecated and has been superseded by
``paths``.

URLs and Common Arguments
=========================

URLs under each repository have the form ``/{command}[/{arguments}]``
where ``{command}`` represents the name of a command or handler and
``{arguments}`` represents any number of additional URL parameters
to that command.

The web server has a default style associated with it. Styles map to
a collection of named templates. Each template is used to render a
specific piece of data, such as a changeset or diff.

The style for the current request can be overwritten two ways. First,
if ``{command}`` contains a hyphen (``-``), the text before the hyphen
defines the style. For example, ``/atom-log`` will render the ``log``
command handler with the ``atom`` style. The second way to set the
style is with the ``style`` query string argument. For example,
``/log?style=atom``. The hyphenated URL parameter is preferred.

Not all templates are available for all styles. Attempting to use
a style that doesn't have all templates defined may result in an error
rendering the page.

Many commands take a ``{revision}`` URL parameter. This defines the
changeset to operate on. This is commonly specified as the short,
12 digit hexadecimal abbreviation for the full 40 character unique
revision identifier. However, any value described by
:hg:`help revisions` typically works.

Commands and URLs
=================

The following web commands and their URLs are available:

  .. webcommandsmarker