Git and Expression Engine

How do you configure Expression Engine to run with the most powerful version control architecture Git.

I have had experience using both EE 1.6 and EE 2 with git. EE 1.6 was a real headache mainly because of template synchronization. Let me give you a walk-through to using Git and EE2 on Eleven2 servers.

What we are doing is a fully version controlled and command line deployment of EE2.

Add/Edit Files Locally -> Push to Remote Server -> Deploy

Before we begin, lets make the following assumptions.

• You have installed git on your local system
• You have a git enabled remote server

Step 1

The first we do is set up EE2 in our local system and git it. We need to create a .gitignore file as we have to exclude config.php and few other folders from being copied over to production.

My .gitignore file looks like

// File .gitignore : Make sure its in the project directory
    
.DS_Store
system/cache/*
system/config.php
system/config.local.php
images/uploads
images/avatars/uploads
images/member_photos/
images/captchas/*
images/*.psd
images/contestphotos
images/forum_attachments
images/country 

cd /wamp/htdocs/ee2
touch .gitignore 

// Next copy and paste the content into .gitignore 

Now we are ready for initializing git

cd /wamp/htdocs/ee2
git init
git add .
git commit -a -m "Initial Commit" 

This will gitify your EE2 installation.

Step 2

Next you need to set a remote repository in your remote server. This remote repo can either be on your own server or github.com. Its always advisable to set up the remote repo on

// SSH to Remote server : Username : app
ssh -p 1122 app@server.com
cd /home/app/git
git init --bare 

This will create a bare remote repository in the server.

Step 3

In your local repo, we need to add the remote server. So navigate to your local directory

cd /wamp/htdocs/ee2
git remote add origin ssh://app@server.com:1122/home/app/git
git push 
// This will push all the files from local to remote 

Step 4

So all our local changes are now migrated to remote repository. And now we need to pull all those files and deploy it in remote server public_html

ssh -p 1122 app@server.com
cd public_html/
git clone /home/app/git 

This will create a full fledged repository in the publc_html and will get all the files from the remote repo /home/app/git.

Final Step: Deployment

What i do to deploy is

// Local
    
git commit -a -m "Commit message here"
git push origin master
ssh -p 1122 app@server.com "cd public_html;git pull origin master" 

Thats it easy peasy. I dont have to upload any files using ftp. Just 3 lines and my site is synced.