Serve
=====

Mercurial comes with an in-built, light-weight web server capable of serving
a single repository for single connection. Serve does not provide user
authentication, but does provide a convenient, ad-hoc method of synchronizing
a repository over a local network. For more complete information on publishing
repositories, see the Mercurial wiki article on
`Publishing Repositories <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/PublishingRepositories>`_.

From TortoiseHg
---------------

.. module:: serve.dialog
	:synopsis: Dialog used to start/stop the web server

.. figure:: figures/serve.png
	:alt: Web server dialog

The serve tool is a wrapper for Mercurial's built-in web server. Once
launched, a computer can connect to the http port and browse your
repositories, perform clone, pull, or even push operations if enabled.
The web server can be launched from either the Workbench
(:ref:`Repository Menu <workbench-repository-label>`) or the
:ref:`Context Menu <explorer-context-label>`.

Toolbar buttons:

	:guilabel:`Start`
		start the web server
	:guilabel:`Stop`
		stop the web server
	:guilabel:`Configure`
		Configure repository web style, description, and access policies

When the settings dialog is launched via the :guilabel:`Configure`
button, it is run in the context of the current repository.  Please
visit the Mercurial wiki for detailed descriptions of the various
web configurations.

In TortoiseHg 2.0, the serve tool natively supports collections of local
repositories.  Just drag them onto the web serve dialog while it is not
running, or add them by hand using the editing buttons.  The repository
collections can be saved and reloaded.

From command line
-----------------

The server tool can be started from command line ::

	thg serve [OPTION]...

	start stand-alone webserver

	options:

		--webdir-conf  name of the webdir config file

	use "thg -v help serve" to show global options

.. vim: noet ts=4
