I run my blog using WordPress and all too recently became a big believer in SCM. I really want to put my site into subversion (that’s what I’m using right now, maybe git will come later) but I can’t think of the correct way to do it yet. Basically, my repository is set up currently with an ‘implementation’ directory and a ‘resources’ directory, with implementation holding what will eventually be published to the live site. I want to be able to preview my site locally without having to upload to the server for obvious reasons. However, to do this I found that I needed to actually install WordPress locally (not just copy the remote site down to my local box). This was told to me over at WordPress.org.
This brings up the problem of being able to use SCM with the install because I need to upgrade my local site every now and then but this generates inconsistencies with subversion because it can’t track what’s going on because an external system is messing with it’s repository structure. That just won’t work.
My initial inclination is to try to just SCM my theme information as this is really the only stuff that I ‘own’ while as everything else is really just part of my platform (no different than Apache or PHP, really). However, that’s where my understanding breaks down. How can I selectively SCM only part of that directory structure, and how can I maintain the configuration of WordPress that I’m on?
Anyway, I’m sure other people have tackled this and the solution is probably applicable to many apps similar to WordPress (Drupal, phpBB, phpMyAdmin, etc.). So, how do you do it?
It’s actually not that hard to do, but I’ll break it down into a few suggestions here. What you’re describing is more or less a ‘vendor drop’ directory. This is basically where you maintain the code in SVN, but replace the contents with the newer stuff as it comes out.
What you should start with is an empty directory. Set up an SVN repository, and then do an SVN checkout into the empty directory (it will still be empty, except it will get a hidden .svn directory added). Next, install wordpress here normally, and then add its files to svn. You can probably just ‘svn add *’ but be careful, and remove anything you don’t want versioned (uploads/temp/cache directories, if applicable). You can also use the svn:ignore property to tell it to ignore certain directories or file types, if you’d like. Run ‘svn stat’ to show you what is going to be checked in, etc, and once all is good, commit it (svn commit) and start working from there. Now you have a base installation of wordpress in SVN.
As you work and make changes, commit them.
When it comes time to upgrade, simply replace wordpress over top of what you have. Make sure when you replace directories, you replace the contents, and not the whole directory itself. You don’t want to lose the hidden .svn folder in every folder because that is what will mess subversion up. Do an svn stat and/or svn diff to figure out what’s changed, if anything, and mostly what’s newly-added. At this point, you can commit again.
To deploy on your production site, you can do an svn export, or do a regular checkout into the web directory. If you do a checkout, be sure to only update when you are ready to deploy.