Question

I’m just getting started with Git.
I’ve got:

• a repository on my local machine for web development /www/my-web-app/ and
• on a remote server I have a bare repository /www/git-repo/ and then the actual web app /www/production-my-web-app/.

I’m currently pushing from my local machine to the bare repository and then pulling that in the production repository.

The issue is I have a couple of config files that are different in production.
I have them ignored but I can’t figure out a way to upload them (can’t do it via FTP for some reason) and I’m sure I’m just missing an obvious facility of git.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

The feature you might have missed and should help in your case is the “content filter driver“, especially the smudge step.

The idea is to version a:

• template of your config file
• a script (smudge) able to take the template and generate a private (ie non-versioned) config file
• some non-production values (used by the script when called from your local machine)

That way, that same smudge script will use external values when used in a production environment, that is secret values not stored in a git repo (no danger for them to be cloned/pushed around).
As opposed to your local machine where those test values can be safely versioned in a Git repo.

If there is no “secret data” issue, you can simply version several “config value” files, one per environment, leaving it to your smudge script to:

• detect in what environment it is being called (automatically during the git checkout)
• use the right “config value” script to generate the proper config file.