Question

I begin to use git for software development.

I have a project on github. This project also involves some user-settings stored in dedicated settings-files.

On github the settings should be empty (like this)

### Settings:

## Your name
$name = "";
## Your email adress
$email = "";
## and so on

However, I also have the project running on my computer (or server). My personal version of the project should have all settings filled out.

I would like to have two branches for that. The personal branch should contain all my settings. The master branch should be the one where I develop the software and which I upload to github.

I would like to merge the master branch into the personal branch from time to time to keep my system up-to-date. However, whenever I try to merge the branches, my personal settings get lost.

Is there a way to do this or am I just doing something wrong (what)?

Answer 1

In your personal branch, you could keep:

• the GitHub config file unchanged (with no value), but with a different name (config.template for example)
• a “value file” with your personal value
• a “smudge” script able to generate the actual config file using the template one and your personal values

That script is triggered on any git checkout as a content filter driver.

That way, you can merge master onto your personal branch as many time as you want, your config values will not be modified.