1. Git and Expression Engine

    Posted by Vinay on December 18, 2010 in Expression EngineGit

    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.

    1. You have installed git on your local system
    2. 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.