# Self-Hosting a Static Git Frontend
Sunday, 10. August 2025


GitHub was a nice code hosting and showcasing platform, before it became an _AI powered developer platform_. I need a
simple, read-only showcase for my source code. I didn't need a full-blown Git forge; I needed a lightweight,
self-hosted frontend, something akin to a modern `cgit`.

After a quick search for alternatives, I settled on [legit](https://github.com/icyphox/legit).
It's a minimal static site generator written in Go that
creates a clean, browsable HTML interface for a directory of Git repositories. It lets you inspect files, view commit
history, and read diffs, all without any client-side JavaScript or backend database.

I made one minor patch to the template. By default, it rendered author email
addresses from the commit logs directly into the HTML. To prevent exposure to spam scrapers, I removed that field from
the output.

When creating a server-side git repository with `git init --bare`, there's a file `description` which _legit_ uses to print
the description next to the repository name in the rendered HTML.
I wrote a script to automate this setup on my server, so I don't need to
log in and do this setup manually.

The result is now live at [code.raphting.dev](https://code.raphting.dev).

I've added two repositories for now and will push more projects when it makes sense.

By Raphael Sprenger