Question

OK so I’ve built an ecommerce system in CodeIgniter and its already been deployed a couple of times as a few different sites. With more sites in the pipeline I need to come up with a way of being able to implement updates across all the sites so that if a bug is found and fixed in one site, or if a new feature is added, then the changes to the models and controllers can be updated across all the sites.

Is there a way to do this sort of thing in GIT or any other similar version control system?

Thx for any advice you can give.

Answer 1

Two quick ways jump to mind:

First, you can maintain a list of sites running the e-commerce platform with your central repository and perform a git push to each of them whenever you need to update.

Second, for each of the sites running your e-commerce platform, you could set up a cron jon to perform a git pull from the central repository at regular intervals. There will be a little more latency in updating (each site is on its own schedule), but it’s one less touch for you in the middle.

Others may have suggestions for more sophisticated ways to lay out the flow, but a quick push or pull should cover the simple cases.

One final word: I don’t know what your hosting environments look like, but if there are any variations IN the environment and/or configuration of your sites, you will need to choose a flow that allows you to test an upgrade before applying it—git won’t detect issues unless you tell it to!