Gitweb: how to display markdown file in html format automatically like github

Question

Markdown is important for documentation, it is very nice to see README.md can be automatically show in html format in github like https://github.com/twitter/bootstr

Answer 1

Here's something you can stick somewhere under sub git_summary in your gitweb.perl or gitweb.cgi. Note that it depends on an external markdown executable.

if (!$prevent_xss) {
    $file_name = "README.md";
    my $proj_head_hash = git_get_head_hash($project);
    my $readme_blob_hash = git_get_hash_by_path($proj_head_hash, "README.md", "blob");

    if ($readme_blob_hash) { # if README.md exists                                                                                                                                                      
        print "
readme
\n";
        print "
"; # TODO find/create a better CSS class than page_body                                                                                                  

        my $cmd_markdownify = $GIT . " " . git_cmd() . " cat-file blob " . $readme_blob_hash . " | markdown |";
        open FOO, $cmd_markdownify or die_error(500, "Open git-cat-file blob '$hash' failed");
        while () {
            print $_;
        }
        close(FOO);

        print "
";
    }
}

I don't really know Perl, so this is a dirty hack more than anything else, but it works.