This post details how to install a hgweb server locally on an amd64 Debian 12 desktop machine, as suggested in the hgweb sign-in post.

Run the Synaptic Package Manager, mark apache2, apache2-bin, apache2-data, and apache2-utils for installation. They are version 2.4.65-1~deb12u1 on our current setup. Also mark mercurial and mercurial-common for installation. They are version 6.3.2-1+deb12u1 for us. Install the marked packages.

According to https://510x.se/notes/posts/Install_Mercurial_and_hgweb_on_a_Debian-based_system/ you can copy the hgweb.cgi file from an installed Mercurial package as follows:

mkdir -p ~/hg/cgi
cp /usr/share/doc/mercurial-common/examples/hgweb.cgi ~/hg/cgi

The contents of this file on our machine are:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
#
# An example hgweb CGI script, edit as necessary
# See also https://mercurial-scm.org/wiki/PublishingRepositories

# Path to repo or hgweb config to serve (see 'hg help hgweb')
config = b"/path/to/repo/or/config"

# Uncomment and adjust if Mercurial is not installed system-wide
# (consult "installed modules" path from 'hg debuginstall'):
# import sys; sys.path.insert(0, "/path/to/python/lib")

# Uncomment to send python tracebacks to the browser if an error occurs:
# import cgitb; cgitb.enable()

from mercurial import demandimport

demandimport.enable()
from mercurial.hgweb import hgweb, wsgicgi

application = hgweb(config)
wsgicgi.launch(application)

I edited the config = line to read config = b"/home/ecm/hg/cgi/hgweb.config"

The hgweb.config file contents are as shown in the following log:

~/hg/cgi$ cat hgweb.config 
#[collections]
#/home/ecm/webrepos = /home/ecm/webrepos
[paths]
/ecm = /home/ecm/webrepos/*
[ui]
username = E. C. Masloch
[web]
allow_archive = gz, bz2, zip
encoding = utf-8
[extensions]
highlight =

Download a .tlz (tar lzipped) file from https://pushbx.org/ecm/backups.hg/ and unpack it:

mkdir webrepos
cd webrepos
tar -xf ~/Downloads/hg/20251019.tlz

1. Run chmod a+rx on the directories involved in the hgweb.cgi pathname

2. Enable CGI module in apache by running /etc/apache2/mods-enabled$ sudo ln -s ../mods-available/cgi.load

3. Unlike what the 510x.se page states, create a file named /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/hg.conf (using sudo with a text editor), with the following contents:

ScriptAlias /hg "/home/ecm/hg/cgi/hgweb.cgi"
<Directory "/home/ecm/hg/cgi/">
	AllowOverride None
	Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
	Require all granted
</Directory>

4. Run sudo service apache2 reload

5. Navigate to http://127.0.0.1/hg/ecm?sort=lastchange