Browsing Git repositories with gotwebd

gotwebd is the web interface for browsing Git repositories provided as part of Game of Trees—a project grown out of the OpenBSD community whose goal is to develop a new version control system that relies on prior art, takes what makes Git's design great, leaves out the parts that make Git hard for us to use, and invents new parts for an end result that serves our needs.

Other than the most obvious features, such as browsing repositories, reading commit logs, and inspecting diffs, gotwebd has a few unique features.

First, the privsep design and the use of sandboxing techniques on different operating systems; then the built-in SSH "web" authentication for access control, which also serves as protection against relentless AI scraping; and finally, the ability to directly serve static web content from a Git repository without the need for CI or external hosting.

In this talk, we'll walk through the design of gotwebd, its evolution over time, and present its unique features in detail.