OpenBSD cgit About Filters Hack

| bsd |

update - I moved from self-hosted cgit to sourcehut. Join me there!

Fri, 6 Dec 2019 21:22:36 -0800

I set up cgit recently on OpenBSD for the first time and I was surprised to see that the about filters do not seem to be working. Typically there are some built-in converters that convert markdown to html, man to text. I have no idea why this is missing and the only information that I was able to find about this was in the CVS changelog from 2018.

Disable the filter feature as it wouldn’t work with the way cgit.cgi is built statically for us.

If i try to set the readme option to a plain text README file, it does not seem to preserve line breaks, tabs or spaces and looks pretty strange.

Another option would be to simply write HTML to format my README.

The hack that I came up with is to write plain text and then wrap it in a <pre> tag.

In /var/www/conf/cgitrc I set readme=:README.html and then in the root of my repo I have a README.html file that looks like this:

<pre>
Blog
====

Source for the dev.levlaz.org website. This site is generating using 
ssg[1] which is a static site generator. The included Makefile provides 
some helper scripts to make working with ssg a bit easier.
</pre>

The end result you can see here.

Now, I just want to go figure out why the filters don’t work to begin with.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Give a Problem. Grow a Programmer.

In 2009, I kicked off my senior year in college with a class that ultimately changed the way I thought about my degree—and my future.

via flower.codes September 15, 2025

Yala stablecoin depegs after theft

The YU bitcoin-backed stablecoin list its intended dollar peg after what they described as "an attempted attack", later writing that there was an "unauthorized transfer of funds". Although they initially wrote that &#…

via Web3 is Going Just Great September 15, 2025

How big a solar battery do I need to store *all* my home's electricity?

I have a modest set of solar panels on an entirely ordinary house in suburban London. On average they generate about 3,800kWh per year. We also use about 3,800kWh of electricity each year. Obviously, we can't use all the power produced over summer an…

via Terence Eden’s Blog September 15, 2025

Generated by openring