How do you set up a Fossil SCM server on OSX

Question

I'd like to run the Fossil SCM as a service that is called when needed on my Mac Mini Server. How should I go about configuring this?

Yes, I answered my own question, but I thought this might save someone else some work looking for the answers. — Stephen, Dec 21 '11 at 15:51
could someone add fossil-scm as a tag - if you feel it is appropriate - I don't have the rep. — Stephen, Dec 21 '11 at 15:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 21 '11 at 15:49

Getting the Fossil SCM setup as a server on Mac OS X.

This works on 10.7, but should work back to 10.4 AFAIK.

Pre-requistites:

The steps:

put the org.fossil-scm.service.plist file(below) in /Library/LaunchDaemons
change references to '/Users/spdegabrielle/'( ~/ ) to your own path
open Terminal and type the following: 

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fossil-scm.service.plist
open your browser to http://localhost:8081/reponame (I used 'projects' the name of my main repository as the default repository)

For more info, check Creating Launch Daemons and Agents.

Some explanation as to what is going on:

/Library/LaunchDaemons/ is where the .plist files defining 'User Daemons' that are launched as system startup are kept. Some other useful locations: ~/Library/LaunchAgents for each user, and /Library/LaunchAgents for all users.
KeepAlive  Don't restart the service; this way of using fossil works by starting it in response to a request on port 8081.
Label  org.fossil-scm.service  names the service, so is can be started sudo launchctl load and stopped using sudo launchctl load
ProgramArguments     /Users/spdegabrielle/bin/fossil   http   --localauth   --notfound   projects /Users/spdegabrielle/fossil-repository    is the launchd way of saying  fossil http --localauth --notfound projects /Users/spdegabrielle/fossil-repository

The meanings of the arguments are as follows:

fossil http action the request coming from port 8081(in this case), provide the response and quit. (see fossil help http)
--localauth auto-sign-in if you are accessing fossil from your server directly with http://127.0.0.1:8081/ or http://localhost:8081/ (see fossil help http)
--notfound projects sets the default repository when specifying the repository location as a folder (next) rather than as a specific repository
/Users/spdegabrielle/fossil-repository is the respository location (--notfound projects sets the default)
RunAtLoad - Don't run it on load - it will be run on demand
inetdCompatibility causes launchd will behave like inetd for the launched program

I'd like a better way on including the plist file? – Stephen Dec 21 '11 at 15:53 — Stephen, Dec 21 '11 at 15:53

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