Dashboard behavior and limits

For a visual introduction, see the dashboard tour.

Projects and revisions

The project table sorts by the newest commit, with a link to sort by name. Each overview shows the last commit and author, repository size, dated branch and tag lists, checkout registrations, recent events, and the default branch's README. The in-memory index supplies the table and default overview without spawning Git during a request. Selecting a revision on the overview loads that revision's commit and README. Startup shows indexing placeholders while a background thread builds the records. Push notifications queue a refresh; a 60-second fingerprint sweep also discovers administrative pushes and deleted projects.

Every page includes the text logo and an About dialog with the running build version, copyright, and license. Native browser controls open and dismiss it.

The Files view has a classic expandable tree with connector lines, folder and file-type icons, a branch/tag picker, and a preview. Folder controls expand inline without JavaScript; folder names open the directory preview. The current path opens automatically, and only the selected item is highlighted. On desktop the tree panel fills the available screen height, with a 32rem minimum. Branch, tag, and commit labels distinguish a moving named revision from an immutable snapshot. Files, breadcrumbs, section navigation, and pagination keep the selected revision; Permalink pins it, and Latest default branch explicitly returns to the default revision. Calendar branch/tag choices preserve the month.

READMEs render a built-in Markdown subset in the overview and in directories. Other Markdown files also open rendered, with a Source mode and heading links. GitHub-flavoured tables, alerts (> [!NOTE]), task lists, and strikethrough render as on GitHub, and YAML front matter is kept out of the rendered view. Raw HTML is escaped, comments outside code are hidden, and relative document links retain the selected branch or tag. Directory links also work without a trailing slash. Images, including SVG, load through an immutable protected raw route. Source views have line numbers, highlighted line links, optional wrapping, and server-side syntax highlighting for C/C++, Python, shell, YAML, and JSON (fenced code blocks in Markdown get the same), with no JavaScript. On narrow screens, file navigation is collapsed behind Show files, and project/commit rows rearrange for reading. Empty projects explain how to start; missing files retain the project, revision picker, and parent links. Text and README source previews are limited to 512 KiB. The file preview embeds images up to 4 MiB; README image references use the raw route's 16 MiB limit, which also bounds downloads. Files beyond these limits remain available through Git. The sidebar preloads trees up to 5000 entries and 32 path components in one bounded Git read. Larger trees fall back to loading the current directory and its ancestors; opening another folder loads its contents. These expanded listings retain a combined 5000-entry limit. A rendered page is limited to 8 MiB of HTML.

Commits and Graph show 50 commits per page with a server-rendered SVG graph. Lane lines span each row and remain connected when commit text wraps. Older links retain the selected revision and preserve merged histories; locating a cursor scans a bounded traversal, so deep paging costs more than a single page of work. Commit pages include the message, parent links, file statistics, and a diff capped at 512 KiB. Calendar views show UTC commit activity, and day pages list up to 200 commits with a link to the tree at the end of that day. Activity and cursor traversal are bounded to 200000 commits. Limit notices identify abbreviated output; time and output failures return a bounded error.

Every page works without JavaScript and shares one layout with inline CSS. HTTP requests perform no writes. There is no persistent index or SQLite database; standard bare Git repositories remain the source of truth.

Dashboard tunnel

ckgit web opens the server's loopback dashboard through an SSH tunnel: it picks a free local port (8420 when available), starts ssh -N -L without a shell using the administrator's own login on the server host (the restricted ckgit account allows no forwarding), waits until the dashboard answers, prints the URL, opens the browser, and closes the tunnel again on Ctrl+C. The configured web_host chooses the forwarding login and web_port chooses the dashboard port; explicit ADMIN-HOST and --remote-port override them. The remote port must match http_port in the server's server.ini. --project NAME opens that hosted project's overview directly instead of the project index.