For some reason browsers were not loading static resources (js, css, favicon) until I appended a slash to the base ref in gitweb.cgi. Not sure if it is a bug or something changed on my side after a system upgrade, or some change in some dependency. I attached the change.
--- gw/gitweb.cgi 2021-04-27 16:06:23.054063915 -0500 +++ gitweb/gitweb.cgi 2021-04-27 15:59:02.060725146 -0500 @@ -4215,7 +4215,7 @@ # the stylesheet, favicon etc urls won't work correctly with path_info # unless we set the appropriate base URL if ($ENV{'PATH_INFO'}) { - print "<base href=\"".esc_url($base_url)."\" />\n"; + print "<base href=\"".esc_url($base_url)."/\" />\n"; } print_header_links($status);