I am new to GitHub. I managed to install GitHub for Windows and created a github repository. I'm a PHP developer and this is my current situation before GitHub.
Currently, all of my work go to C:\xampp\Dropbox\* ("htdocs"). Everything I code is in there with each application under its own subdirectory. Whenever I need to update the production server, I FTP our production server and upload the necessary files. This is good when I am working alone but working with other developers would be hard because we need to know who edited which, when what was edited, etc.
Could you help explain how I can maintain my codes using GitHub? I suppose that I shouldn't make the entire htdocs as a local repository. I access my codes via http://localhost/ when testing it locally. Since I develop web applications using PHP, code changes regularly. We don't compile codes and I was used to simply saving all the files and letting Dropbox save all the versions I made.
It's a bit confusing what to do next since the GitHub for Windows application created local repositories in C:\Users\Admin\Documents\GitHub\test-app folder. Should I edit the code in htdocs and ALSO edit the code in My Documents\GitHub? Then also "push" the update to GitHub AND also update our production server via FTP?
So, to summarize, from the primitive perspective of web development, what steps must be changed so that I can enjoy the benefits of using version control systems such as GitHub?
Thank you!
The global idea is to use a versioning server to push code directly into your production server, bypassing FTP boring method.
You can tell GitHub application to clone your code at Xampp htdocs root, instead cloning it into your documents, if you have already initialized your repositories.
Every project must be a GitHub (or Git, more generally) repository.
So, you have to :
git init all your projects into your local server, at root of your project (so, not htdocs, but htdocs\<YOURPROJECT>
create repositories on GitHub for each of your projects
Follow GitHub instructions to initialize projects, git push on GitHub to finish.
You can do all that with a command line. In my opinion, it's easier.
Your code is on GitHub now. You won't have to edit your code into your documents AND htdocs if you initialize your repos in htdocs.
Next, it could be "fun" to install Git on your production server to grab most recent code from GitHub repository. Without Git, it's a pain in the a** to push code on a production server.
Now, when your local dev server and your production server are in sync, every time you will commit and push on GitHub, you can grab latest copy with a simple git pull on your production server.
Related
I know this has been asked before, but I couldn't get the answer I needed.
Currently I'm developing an website using PHP and was using Notepad++ before, and it all worked well because I'm developing with a co-worker so we both keep on changing different files on the FTP.
Switched to NetBeans. All went ok, pulled the entire website via FTP to my local computer and everytime I edited a file and saved it uploaded to the FTP. But, there is a problem. If my colleague updates a file, it doesn't update on my local folder. So, I thought: "Let's try versioning".
Created a team on bitbucket, created a repository. All went ok.
But now, I'm in a struggle to get everything up and running on both NetBeans (mine and colleague's) so that my colleague is editing a file on his NetBeans and constantly saving so that it gets saved on FTP and only when he stops working on that file push it to BitBucket so that I can pull after.
Suggestions?
About setting up your work environment :
In order to set up your bitbucket repository and local clone, go read this link (official doc).
You will need to repeat the cloning part once for each PC (e.g : once on yours, once on your colleague's).
Read the account management part to see how you can tag your actions with your account, and your colleague's action with his own account.
Start using your git workflow ; when you are tired of always typing your password to upload modifications to your bitbucket account, take the time to read the ssh keys setup part - read carefully, you will need to execute the procedure once for you and once for your colleague.
Using your local git repository with Netbeans is pretty straightforward :
From netbeans, run the File > New Project ... command (default: Ctrl+Shift+N),
Select PHP application with Existing Sources and click Next >,
For the Sources Folder: line, select your local git directory,
Fill the remaining fields, and if you want the last Run configuration screen, then click Finish.
After the project is created in netbeans, you can modify the Run configuration part by right clicking on the project's icon, selecting the Properties menu entry, and going to the Run configuration item.
About solving your workflow "problem" :
Your current FTP workflow can lead you to blindly squash your colleague's modifications (when uploading), or have your colleague's modification blindly squash your own local modifications (when downloading). This is bad, and you will generally notice it only after the bad stuff happened - too late.
Correctly using version control allows you to be warned when this could potentially happen, and to keep an almost infinite undo stack on the modifications of the project's files. The cost, however, is that both of you will have to add several actions in your day to day workflow - some choices can not be made automatically.
You may find it cumbersome in the beginning, but it really pays off, and quite quickly - we're talking big bucks here. So use it and learn.
On top of using Ctrl+S to save your modifications on disk, you and your colleague will need to integrate 3 extra commands in your daily work :
Save your work to your local repository (git add / git commit)
Download the latest modifications shared by your colleague (git pull)
Upload your work to the central repository (git push)
You can access these commands :
from a terminal,
from a GUI frontend : you can try TortoiseGit for windows, or gitk for linux,
from Netbeans :
in the contextual menu of the files/folders in the project tree (right click on the item, there is a "Git" entry),
using the Team > Git > ... menu
Since you provided a git tag, I'll describe what's to do for Git.
set up a remote bare repo on a server that you both could access (BitBucket in your case):
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server
you both clone that remote repo to your local machines:
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Getting-a-Git-Repository#Cloning-an-Existing-Repository
each of you works in her part of the application. When one is done, publish the work to the server:
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Working-with-Remotes#Pushing-to-Your-Remotes
By now, the remote server holds the version that was just pushed. What's missing is the deployment of the website. This has been discussed here:
Using GIT to deploy website
Doing so, you will decouple your work from that of your colleague since you're not changing files over FTP all the time. You work in your part, your partner works on her part. The work is getting merged and then a new version of the website gets published.
You can create git or Mercurial repositories in Atlassian Bitbucket (http://bitbucket.org). If your team is new to version control, i advise you no forks in your first project.
The easy solution ins to use Atlassian SourceTree (http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/) to control your code since there is a bug in netbeans. See NetBeans + Git on BitBucket
You need to create a new repository in bitbucket. I assume you already configure the ssh2 keys. Using Git you need:
git clone --bare --shared php_project php_project.git
git commit
Using Mercurial you need:
hg init
hg commit
Good luck / boa sorte
Pedro
I am very new to github. I was trying to pull a branch from a repository which contains some php code.
I used git clone <url>
then I used git checkout <branchname> to switch to a specific branch.
Since I am using Github for Windows, the files are stored in Github folder of My Documents. Now I want to test the code and make some changes to it in my localserver. So should I copy paste the project folder in the www directory of my wamp folder? Or should I do something else? And if after copying the folder, if I want to commit any changes, what command should I use to push?
Github for Windows does mention in the help page that:
GitHub for Windows is optimized to work with GitHub remotes — but if you wish to use a non-GitHub remote, it will work just fine. Set the remote manually in the settings tab and everything else should work as expected. You can also drag in repositories from the file system and GitHub for Windows will respect the configuration of the origin remote.
So you can pull from a non-GitHub repo, like I did in this answer or as illustrated in this blog post.
But from your local clone, you cannot easily push to another repo (like one in your wamp folder for instance)
it does not support multiple Git remotes and it will only work with the origin remote.
If you wish to push & pull to other remotes, we suggest you use the command line client that is included with the application.
An alternative to command-line would be to use a GUI which does support multiple remote, like SourceTree.
Or you can clone the GitHub repo from the command-line directly in the right folder, and then declare that local repo in your GitHub for Windows app.
Or you could create a virtual host that has a DocumentRoot of the Github folder of My Documents (meaning you don't have to move anything, and can keep using GitHub for Windows as you were).
I'm part of a team of 3 (2 developers and 1 designer) who sometimes work in the office and sometimes remotely and I'm looking at a way of using GIT to develop our websites seamlessly. I've got a managed account with Rackspace and have 3 servers setup on the account - development, staging and production.
I'm looking at the best way for our team to develop daily on our websites without having to FTP the files up to the server each time we make any changes. I've used SVN in the past but i'm looking to use Git for version control. The workflow I had in mind for an example website called 'test' was the following:
Development Server would have a directory (called trunk but not sure if it should be called something else?) for each user as well as a central directory. E.g /var/www/test/jbloggs/, /var/www/test/asmith/, /var/www/test/rjohnson/ and /var/www/test/central/trunk/.
The central repository would be installed within /var/www/test/central/trunk/ and then /asmith/, /rjohnson/ and /jbloggs/ would clone the trunk which would mean they would become /var/www/test/asmith/trunk, /var/www/test/rjohnson/trunk/ and /var/www/test/jbloggs/trunk/.
Each user would then have a copy of /trunk/ which will contain all the website files, will all have a subdomain configured i.e jbloggs.test.development, rjohnson.test.development etc and will configure their IDE to automatically SFTP to the server so that they are working directly within their directory the development server. The central directory domain will be test.development. When they come to committing any changes to the central repository they will SSH into the server and commit their changes and when we want to update the central repository we will pull these changes to get the latest version which can then be viewed at test.development.
Is this the right method of doing things or should we all have a local LAMP stack installed (apart from the designer who uses Windows) and have our repositories locally? If so, should the central repo still be on the rackspace server? The developers will be using phpstorm and the designer dreamweaver.
Hope the above makes sense.
Thanks
I strongly advise you to work local and then commit on the shared server. This is what git is made for. Development will be more reactive and easier for everybody. Make sure all dev master git so they can do their internal soup as they want. If one dev destroy the database, the others can keep on working. But you'll also need a convenient way to synch databases so developers work with an up to date local database.
The rest of your chain is ok, you can still have two test step like dev server for dev team and test server for testers. This will make testers working on a more stable version and it will also make you test the upgrade process when you copy changes from dev server to test server. Lot of errors arise because of untested upgrade procedures.
You can updates changes on test and production server either by installing GIT on them or just using a simple script that will ftp changed files. I don't like having git on a production server but this is a personal opinion.
I'm trying to learn how to use Git in my daily workflow but I'm slightly confused as to how to make it work for me. As a web developer, the way I work is that I have two VPS' - one as a production and the other as a development server. On the development server, I usually create a webdav that points to the source files (located in /home/public_html/dev.domain.co.uk/) and mount it as a local folder on my mac. This way, I can open (or create) the PHP files in my IDE, do what I need to, save the file and then refresh the test link in my browser.
Now, as I say, I would like to start using Git to keep track of all amends I, and my co-workers, make to projects. So my question is how would I do this - would I create a repository on my development server in the public_html folder? And when I clone the repository on the different machines I work on, would I mount the webdav and clone the repository in there? Ideally I want to set up an online repo that myself and co-workers can access.
Any help and/or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks :)
I have a similar workflow. I was using my IDE to edit the files over SSH, effectively using the files directly on a development server. What I ended up doing was opening a console over SSH to my dev server, and running git there. I use Bitbucket as a remote, and push/pull from there, keeping all of my changes somewhat centralized. What I need to push to my production server, I pull from Bitbucket, and then flip a symlink so that all files appear updated instantaneously.
Git is a decentralized version control system, meaning that you do not need to have a "shared" repository. However, when collaborating, especially if you do not work closely with your coworkers, it might be attractive to have a central point with an "official" repository.
Now in your case, if you want to continue working in your WebDAV exported folder on your testing machine, it depends on if you share this folder with coworkers or not. If it's your private working space, create your git repository there and work with it however you like.
To setup a central, "official" repository you push you changes to, you have several choices depending on your infrastructure:
Use a 3rd party service like GitHub or BitBucket: This is simple to setup and use, but may require subscription fees if you want to keep your repository private.
Use your development server and setup a clone of your repository in a shared place, either via SSH or WebDAV. This might require more maintenance and you don't get the fancy WebUI of GitHub and the likes.
You might also want to have a look at this article about a branching model for development.
You could use a service like http://bitbucket.org.
it's free and it allows to create private and public repositories.
Once you commit changes, simply push it to the server (they tell you how to do it), then have your partner to clone that repository and pull from it whenever necessary.
I've worked on several PHP projects and always I have problems with organizing my work. Where do you develop your application - on localhost, remote server or maybe production one(!) ?
When I work on my localhost after making some major path I send new files by ftp - but sometimes it happens to forget about one file and it is just tiring to browse several directiores to copy changed files.
What best practises do you propose?
This is how we manage our commercial site:
Develop in a local sand box
Check-in to SVN
Automated build/test from SVN onto internal
dev server
Scripted deploy using rsync to staging
server for QA/UAT
Scripted deploy onto production
servers.
Staging and production servers are both hosted by the ISP and are hardware and version matched and run RHEL, internal Dev server is version matched CentOS.
This way, when code hits the production servers there shouldn't be any nasty surprises as even the deploy scripts get checked in stage 4.
Google App Engine has an apposite tool that automatically uploads to the production environment files that are modified; don't know if there's something similar for PHP.
So, doing a dev2prod script (a script that does this automatically) should be a good solution.
To do local source file management, everyone may suggest you to use a source code control system.
I'm developing on a development machine which has an identical enviroment like the production one - that prevents some different behaviour because of different versions or configs. after finishing i just move all the files on to the production server.
Winmerge is a nice and free windows tool to diff your files between development and production machine.
Develop in your local machine with the same exact configuration as your development enviroment (that is apache mods, php extensions and so on), using a version control system (I prefer SVN) to keep track of modified files and what not.
Then you can write a script in your production or testing enviroment to copy/update files off the repository to the web server path.
Probably get told off for redirecting an old post but here's how I do it using free tools:
I use Netbeans, Git, bitbucket, source tree, gitflow and FTPloy.
Bitbucket.com : sign up for free account.
SourceTree: free from bitbucket. Great tool for managing git repositories. All commits, merges and pulls can be done in here. Issues in bitbucket can be tracked.
In sourcetree, take the master branch and click "git flow" - google gitflow - it's fantastic work flow of feature, hotfix, development, and release branches and sourcetree helps automate the process.
FTPloy.com automates the deployment of your master branch. Free is one repo/server. But worth the upgrade if you want to push development branch to a server sandbox for testing.
Hope this helps someone searching the web!
This is my own PHP Development lifecycle.
Create a GIT Private Repository on Github or Bitbucket.
Connect the GIT with cPanel. (It's very easy to commit the changes to the repo as well as a production server).
Develop on Localhost(probably on Xampp on Windows) with Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text
Initialise GIT and connected with the private repository.
Push the changes to the GIT repository (master/branches) - master changes will upload to the production server automatically.