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

I use following post-receive hook in my remote repositories which are made browsable with gitweb.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Post-receive hook script which generates README.html to git-dir from
# README.md found at the head of master branch in repository.
#
# Gitweb can read the README.html and embed it to the project summary page.

git cat-file blob HEAD:README.md | markdown > $GIT_DIR/README.html

That script is run when I push commits from my local work repositories to the remote bare ones. You could use that or something similar depending on your workflow/setup.

More information about git hooks: http://book.git-scm.com/5_git_hooks.html