diff mercurial/help/hgweb.txt @ 17104:5a9acb0b2086

help: improve hgweb help

The existing help only walked through an example.

Now we first explain the basic rules and then show an example.

The 'collections' example and description only cause confusion and is removed.

Bikeshedded by Patrick Mezard <[e-mail]>

--- a/mercurial/help/hgweb.txt	Mon Jun 18 18:19:28 2012 +0200
+++ b/mercurial/help/hgweb.txt	Thu Jun 21 12:50:15 2012 +0200
@@ -1,47 +1,50 @@
 Mercurial's internal web server, hgweb, can serve either a single
-repository, or a collection of them. In the latter case, a special
-configuration file can be used to specify the repository paths to use
-and global web configuration options.
+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 only the following sections are recognized:
+This file uses the same syntax as other Mercurial configuration files
+but recognizes only the following sections:
 
   - web
   - paths
   - collections
 
-The ``web`` section can specify all the settings described in the web
-section of the hgrc(5) documentation. See :hg:`help config` for
-information on where to find the manual page.
+The ``web`` options are thorougly 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 ``paths`` section provides mappings of physical repository
-paths to virtual ones. For instance::
+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 = /foo/bar
-  projects/b = /baz/quux
-  web/root = /real/root/*
-  / = /real/root2/*
-  virtual/root2 = /real/root2/**
+  /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 maps every Mercurial repository found in '/real/root'
-  into 'web/root'. This format is preferred over the [collections] one,
-  since using absolute paths as configuration keys is not supported on every
-  platform (especially on Windows).
-- The fourth entry is a special case mapping all repositories in
-  '/real/root2' in the root of the virtual directory.
-- The fifth entry recursively finds all repositories under the real
-  root, and maps their relative paths under the virtual root.
+- 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 provides mappings of trees of physical
-repositories paths to virtual ones, though the paths syntax is generally
-preferred. For instance::
-
-  [collections]
-  /foo = /foo
-
-Here, the left side will be stripped off all repositories found in the
-right side. Thus ``/foo/bar`` and ``foo/quux/baz`` will be listed as
-``bar`` and ``quux/baz`` respectively.
+The ``collections`` section is deprecated and has been superseeded by
+``paths``.