I have heard that uploading your website with FTP is now for n00bs, but it's the only way I've known how for the 8 or so years I've been building websites. Apparently all the buzz now is using a version control system, like SVN or Git, and somehow using SSH to upload only the files that have changed (if I understand correctly). I'm wondering if someone could explain or point me to a "comprehensive" guide. What do I need to install, and will my shared host (Dreamhost) be compatible? I currently develop on a WAMP environment. I have never used version control and wouldn't know where to start. I usually develop with a framework such as CakePHP or Zend.
You've got things mixed up a bit. A version control system is used internally to keep track of your code during development. With centralized systems like SVN, you regularly upload your code to a SVN server, which keeps track of what has changed, makes sure conflicting changes are merged correctly, and keeps a history so you can roll back changes.
Decentralized or distributed version control systems eliminate the one central server, instead allowing every single copy of the code to track its own change history, and then letting you merge and combine these separate branches at will.
But once you have a complete product, you push it out to the production server any way you like. FTP is certainly one option for doing that.
For the file uploads, what you are looking for is rsync. There is a Windows wrapper for this called DeltaCopy and the DreamHost wiki has instructions.
First you'll want to decide what you want to use for version control. I hear great things about Git, but am still an SVN user myself.
Dreamhost actually lets you create SVN repositories with their webpanel, very keen there and I can't remember but I thought they had some additional really nice features to help.
I would suggest reading or skimming through at best: http://www.svnbook.org it is very comprehensive if you plan to actually use SVN over Git.
Everyone is completely missing the point. Development using a version control system is a great thing and has massive upside even for developers working on their own. The question here is about deployment using version control systems.
This is a newer and great idea, consider something like Magento which has 6,744 files in the base install, not mentioning when you start adding your own skins which usally run to around 500 files. Using version control to DEPLOY something like this saves major time uploading this many tiny files via FTP as only the modified ones are sent.
Asside from this, I've never actually tried deploying like this so I can't offer any real world experience, however there are several good articles on how to get this setup, a good one can be seen here.
Here's an wiki that should give you all the information you need on adding Subversion to Dreamhost.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Subversion
I've used Subversion now for my sites, and it does make it much easier. I use Aptana on my Windows machine and upload everything through that program. It allows me to compare old versions, revert to them, branch off new versions, etc...
It's a huge timesaver!
Eric Sink's articles about source control are a great place to learn about the basic concepts.
http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html
I also develop with Zend Framework and here is how I use FTP and Version control.
On my local machine I have Subversion and TortoiseSVN installed.
If I start a new project, I set up an SVN repository the way I like it (I use the trunk/branches/tags system).
I checkout an initial working copy from the trunk to a project folder in my local webroot.
I create a new project in Aptana and set the project path to my project folder on the localhost.
Aptana understands that this project is versioned and shows appropriate icons on each file. I can do many of the version control functions directly in my file tree in Aptana, no need for any shell or even Tortoise.
Once I have a stable, deployable version of my app, I create a version control tag. Then I do an export of that (unversioning it).
The exported app is then uploaded via FTP.
That's how I do it at the moment anyways, maybe it clarifies somethings. Tips on improving the procedure are welcome!
As others have said, you can set up version control locally ... or on your host. I recommend you do whatever works best for you.
You mention using Dreamhost. I support one small site there, and know that they do allow uploading via scp and sftp. This would allow you to upload your files with your password encrypted. (And you don't have to adopt a version control method if you don't want to! ;-) Scroll down the sftp page I linked to and you'll find some suggestions for scp & sftp clients.
FWIW, if you're using Windows, I've used WinSCP for years and liked it. Also, if you want full login access, I suggest PuTTY; its full download also includes command line based clients for sftp and scp.
There is no problem using ftp to upload. The only disadvantage is that the password is transferred as plain text.
It would be good to have a local version control system, that would allow you to easily see changes between versions, and quickly revert to an older version, and much more...
I don't think there is a need to install a version control system on your shared host. Only if you want to access the version control system from different sites (at home, at work, while traveling), it can be handy.
There is an awesome plugin for bzr called bzr-upload, designed exactly for your kind of use-case. bzr is very light-weight (no need to set up any repository) and super easy to start using, even if you haven't used any kind of source control before. It's a plugin for bzr and every time you make a commit on your local machine, it will s/ftp the changed files up to your web host. It doesn't push up all the version control info, just the files themselves.
Related
In my past projects I have failed to invest time in setting up my workspace correctly.
For backups + version control I simply copy my webdirectory files to a separate folder on my hard-disk, if I find I have made a mistake somewhere, I reload a previous backup and start again from that point, often wasting precious time repeating work I have already done.
My IDE has no ftp functionality, I have to manually copy the files from my desktop to my webserver, constantly overwriting files and duplicating.
I am certain there is a better, more efficient way of doing the above. I have read about Git for version control and know I should be using it.
What is the suggested way to work efficiently (OS is Windows) with an IDE, version control and FTP that will save me sweat, tears and data loss?
EDIT: I am currently using netbeans IDE
Version control - when used properly - is much better than simply copying files around. In a single user environment, version control allows you to have fine-grain control over your versioning, often in a way that is more space efficient than full file copies because the old versions are stored as diffs.
In a multi-developer environment, version control provides the same benefits, but you also have to consider the case when multiple people edit the same file at the same time. In the simplest case, two people edit the same file in different places and you can safely take both modifications in sequence. In more complex cases, two or more developers make changes to the same region of code and it needs to be manually merged.
Git is different from traditional revision control systems in that it was designed to be used in a distributed fashion. That is - each developer has their own repository, and merges happen when they need to happen. You can have an authoritative central server if you want one, but you don't need to make very commit to that server all the time. This makes git particularly suitable to individual or remote development. Git doesn't require a heavy server on your desktop, just one small binary.
There are a lot of tutorials out there on git. Some of them are:
Getting into SCM with git
github's Introduciton to Git
A Visual Git Reference
Git Tutorial
Here's how my setup works - this may or may not be feasible for you, but I hope it helps somehow. I no longer use FTP for anything.
You should get a DVCS setup, and which one you choose is entirely up to you. Any of them will be better than manually copying or not having anything at all. I suggest taking a look at both Git and Mercurial and making a decision from there. In my opinion, if you're using Windows primarily, Mercurial might be a better choice. If not, I'd say go for Git. You could always try both!
I setup a gitolite server which acts as a central repository for all of my git projects. It is great to have a remote central repository because your entire codebase is backed up in the case that your workstation should fail - and on top of that, you can use it to do some code coordination to move your files around (and stop using FTP).
Once that is setup, I start the process of pulling and pushing to it - you talk about your IDE here, and there are a lot of Git IDE options, but I just use the command line - I just find it faster. Again, up to you on how to incorporate that.
In terms of web development, I setup my gitolite server to use git-hooks to propagate changes to my servers. They all have the git client installed, so the codebase is usually in the webroot. When a change is pushed from my workstation to the gitolite server, it fires off some commands that automatically updates the production server. Not only is it convenient, but it also puts a copy of the codebase and its versions on your servers as well. Be careful with this though; you need to make sure you aren't sharing your /.git directory.
The basic idea is to improve your development ecosystem. My Git setup is perfect for that. You might need to assess your entire workflow and make adjustments based on your needs.
Here's the git plugin for NetBeans. I suggest using the command line when you get started, though.
In the past, I have been developing in a very amateurish fashion, meaning I had a local machine where I developed and tested code and a production machine to which I copied the code when I was done. Recently I modified this slightly to where I developed locally, checked the code into SVN and then updated the production machine through SVN.
Now I would like to start a new project and improve my workflow. Ideally I had the following in mind:
Have one or more local dev environments
Develop and test on local machine(s)
Use SVN (or Git) as code repository
Use a build tool to set up new environments (either dev, staging or production) and deploy code
Since I am not very familiar with this process, I am looking for suggestions on how to best set this idea up and the tools to use, especially when it comes to the build tools. I was looking into Ant and Phing (possibly make), but I am so new to this that I would really like to get some guidance. Are there any good tutorials or books about PHP deployment, especially for beginners? What I am especially interested in are the following topics:
Deployment to different types of servers with different settings (e.g. dev uses different db, db passwords, PHP error reporting than production or staging).
Deployment that automatically pulls code from SVN.
Deployment that temporarily sets a "Maintenance" page for production environment.
Once I mastered the above, maybe even do some testing in the build process.
I know my question might sound quite confused... I admit, I am new to this and might be a little off the target in what I really need. That's why any help is greatly appreciated.
I would suggest making your testing deployment strategy a production-ready install-script -- since you're going to need one of those anyway eventually.
A few tips that may seem obvious to some, but are worth pointing out:
Your config file saved in your VCS should be a template, and should be named differently from the file that will eventually contain the actual settings. E.g. config-dist.php or config-sample.conf or sample/config-mysql.php or something along those lines. Otherwise you will end up accidentally checking in a server-specific configuration file over your template.
For PHP deployment, anticipate that some users will not be able to run server-side scripts through any mechanism other than the web server itself. A PHP-based installer is almost non-negotiable.
You should include a consumer-friendly update mechanism, and for that, wordpress is a great example of a project to emulate. A PHP script can (a) download the latest build, (b) use the ftp functions to update your application's files, and (c) execute an update script which makes the appropriate changes to the database, etc.
For heaven's sake don't do like [redacted] and make your users download and install separate patches for each point release. Have them download the latest (final) release which contains all the updates to date, and applies the correct ALTER TABLE functions in sequence.
Whether the files are deployed via SVN or through FTP, the install/update mechanism should be the same: get the latest files, run the update script. The updater uses the version listed in the PHP script and the version listed in the DB, and uses that knowledge to apply the appropriate DB patches in order. As for how to generate those patches, there are other questions here that you can refer to for more info.
As for the "Maintenance" page, just use the version trick mentioned above to trigger it (compare the version in the DB against the version in the PHP code). It's also useful to be able to mark a site as "down" to the public but make it visible to admins (like Joomla does), which you can trigger through database or filesystem flags.
As for automatically pulling code from SVN, I'd say you're better off with either a cron script or with commit triggers than working that into your application, since it wouldn't be relevant to end users.
This isn't exactly part of your question, but it's relevant:
If you go into distributing code intended for a wide audience, I would advise you to go with building and distributing OpenSSL-signed PHAR packages. You can distribute them over HTTP without a problem, and because they're OpenSSL-signed, you're also mitigating the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks and protecting end-users/customers/clients from someone injecting code if you want to setup an automatic or one-click update.
There's a set of tools I've contributed to in the past that work great for this, but you'll either need PHP 5.3, or you'll need PHP 5.2 with PHAR installed via PECL. https://github.com/koto/phar-util
As far as testing goes, PHPUnit is the de facto standard.
If you are interested in using Git then you should check out this build system from CodeMeme. From what you described it sounds like it would be a good fit. You can add it to any project as a submodule and with the included code you can tailor a build script that will deploy to different multiple servers in multiple environments. It uses Git to build the code for deployment but unfortunately SVN is not supported.
https://github.com/CodeMeme/Phingistrano
I have a web server which can run PHP and Ruby.
I would like to know if there is a PHP program which can do version control of my code similar to SVN?
I know there are already open source project hosting sites which provide this service already but I would like it to be installed on my own host.
I don't have the access to this server to install additional packages either
I'm not aware of any version-control system written in PHP. But even if there were one, I'd stay away from it. Version control isn't one of the things a scripting language is best used for.
Edit: I suggest installing Subversion on your local machine and develop all the code there, that way the SVN on your local computer can be used for version-control.
Edit 2: If you are collaborating with others and want them to have access to your repositry, I suggest getting subversion hosting somewhere for your project. There are some free hosts out there that support it, just google it and you should find some results.
For the same reasons - want to store the data on my own web site, which only supports PHP - I've created phpEasyVCS. It offers a web interface and WebDAV access.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/asvcs/ - Haven't tried this. But this sounds like what you are after.
For what I know WEBSVN is just a way to view your SVN repository
Regards
Why on earth would you care about the language of a tool that you use? That's like complaining that the builder of your house used a wooden ladder instead of a metal one.
Use Subversion or Git or anything you want, they'll all work fine.
Just use an online service such as http://unfuddle.com/ or http://cvsdude.com/
They have free basic plans and even their paid plans are cheap enough to make it worth it.
If you need VCS somewhere that is not your computer and the production site is not under your control either, I would agree with nandos that you should use online service.
Then in order to put changes in production you could make PHP script on production site that accesses the online service and downloads the newest version via HTTP (http should be generally available with CVS, and SVN uses it natively) rather than using specific VCS protocols.
You will have limited options, but that's not what generally is expected to be controlled from production anyway.
Ok I think nobody has really answered to my question.
I said that I don't want any hosting facilities like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_hosting_facilities.
So I think I will use http://websvn.tigris.org/
Thanks.
Guillaume
Why must the VCS be written in PHP? You could use SVN as the VCS and serve the files using apache. I can't think of a single benefit of wrestling with yet another version control system. What you could do is get a virtual machine appliance for source code control and issue management like vmTrac and either run it directly or pick it apart and figure out how it was put together
I know this is old, but for reference, since you have FTP access, you could use Bazaar over FTP, and use something like Redmine as a webviewer. Using FTP would be slower than installing the Bazaar smart server on the server (FTP is known as a "dumb" transport), but it would meet all your requirements.
Hope that helps someone
-Scott
My hosting service does not currently run/allow svn, git, cvs on their server. I would really like to be able to 'sync' my current source on my development machine with my production server.
I am looking for a pure php/python/ruby version control system (not just a client for a version control system) that does not require any services running on the server machine, something that could use the http interface to upload/download and sync files - basically offering a back end into my 'live' site for version control.
Additionally, I would think that such a system would be easy to develop an 'online' ide for, so that I could develop directly on the production server. (issues of testing aside of course)
Does anyone know if such a system exists?
==Edit==
Really, I want a wiki front end for a version control / development system - Basically look like a wiki and edit development files so that I could easily make and roll back changes via the web. I doubt this exists, but it would be easy to extend an existing php port of svn...
Get a better hosting service. Seriously. Even if you found something that worked in PHP/Ruby/Perl/Whatever, it would still be a sub-par solution. It most likely wouldn't integrate with any IDE you have, and wouldn't have a good tool set available for working with it. It would be really clunky to do correctly.
The other option is to get a free SVN host, or host SVN on your own machine, and then just push updates from your SVN host to your web site via ftp.
Don't host your repository on your web server. Deploy from your server to the ftp/sftp - whatever.
You could look into mercurial or bazaar-ng they are both written in python and support at least http downloads afaik, not really web based but written in one of the languages your hoster supports if the tags are correct. HTH
Mercurial has a web-interface and allows commits via http. It uses a couple of C extensions, but I would guess that all of them have pure-Python counterparts.
You can also just use WebDAV, when your hoster provides it.
I think it's actually a pretty good idea, but don't believe such a versioning system exists (yet) so hopefully you'll go ahead and make one.
I don't think adapting an existing solution is going to be easy, but it's probably worth looking into because if you use an existing solution you'll have all the client support done, and most of the versioning difficulties taken care of.
Starting from scratch is not going to be trivial.
-Adam
Use Bazaar:
Lightweight. No dedicated server with Bazaar installed is needed, just FTP access to a web server. A smart server is available for those requiring additional performance or security but it is not required in many cases - Bazaar 1.x over plain http performs well.
you could try the reverse way
use e.g. a free online svn/git Service to version control the sources on your dev machine
use usual ways to update the "production" machine aka site, like FTP
Why dont you want a client..? A simple client that you can run on your production machine which then syncs to your repository running on another server somewhere.
SVN is available over HTTP so writing a client that is able to sync your code is really easy in python or php.
I would like to setup two environments for my new website written in PHP. One - to develop new versions and test them. And second production where my actual stable version of website will be available.
Website in PHP will consist of many PHP and other files (JS, images, and so on). So I think how to prepare this environment in best way to make it easy to do source control, fast copy website from development environment to production environment and to make development version available for people on the web so they will be able to see actual work progress and suggest changes or report bugs.
Could you please give me some advice where to go from this starting point? Are there books about this (from practical point of view?) or do you have experience or tips what to watch out and what is important to make this process easy and good for me and other people involved in developing new project?
For starters use the following three:
SVN - this will give you source control and allow you to track changes. You may want to get GUIs on top of this (Tortoise is a popular one) to ease the learning curve.
RSYNC - this will allow you to streamline your syncing between local and remote site with a single command. RSYNC uses a diff engine to sync which means that incremental syncs happen in a matter of seconds. During intense programming, I will sometimes sync 4-5 times in one hour pushing out little changes real fast just because I can so easily.
MySQLDump - This will allow you to import/export data from your production site. I usually do this once a week to get production data on my local servers which not only gives me a local backup but also lets me toy around with production data on a local test environment.
Those three alone will save you a lot of time in the long run and allow you to scale. Later on you can look into an automated build tools, unit testing frameworks, xml documentation framework and the like to build some serious products.
I work with a setup like this, so I can give you some tips on how to do this. I've been doing this for a while now, working out the kinks here and there, and feel like this is a setup I can honestly say is pretty darn productive.
Small note: I work on OSX, so the specific applications used might be a bit different from you if you're a linux/windows user.
I run a production 'server' on my Mac, using MAMP (www.mamp.info) to easily supply me with an Apache server with PHP and MySQL. You could use a similar tool such as XAMPP or install everything manually, it's really up to you.
Then I have my live servers, where my websites and customer websites are hosted. For each new website project (let's take abc.com as an example) I create a subdomain called staging.abc.com, on which I do my testing. It's always a good thing to test things on the exact same hard- and software before actually going live.
I use Subversion (or in short, SVN) for my versioning needs, with the added bonus that I can easily add 'hooks' to automatically update my online production server whenever I send my newly updated version to the SVN server. SVN also allows you to easily work with more than one person on the same project. For more information on SVN and how to use it, I suggest the great (and free) online book found here: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
So in short: I work locally with MAMP providing me with a local 'working' server. After that, I test online on a staging.abc.com location to see if everything works well, and to possibly allow others to see the project (in case you want your client to see what's going on, for example), and after that I actually publish the project by putting it on the actual domain.
There are many more things that can be done to optimize your workflow, but this should get you started.
Hope this helps!
-Dave
I prefer to have development occur on the developers local box if possible. If other developers are involved, you probably want to setup your version control such that both the database schema, javascript, css, and the php code can be checked out and setup on a developer's personal box pretty easily (assuming they have the correct LAMP/WAMP setup)
I've also seen it where people maintain a test website on a server where active development occurs. I would avoid this for active development, but use this for black-box testing of the latest checked in code (the latest build).
Once your test website checks out, then its a matter of exporting the code from your version control to the location the live website is. With svn, you can really just do an update of the live code with svn update specifying a revision or tag that indicates the current live version.
I would further recommend keeping some settings, like db access/username/pass, in a separate included file that is not version controlled. Keep this elsewhere, let developers plug in the access rights to their local database on their PC. On your server, plug in everything you need to access the database there. This should be really trivial code (defining a few variables) so not having it version controlled shouldn't be a big deal. If you like, you could version control a templated version, but I wouldn't put the real database info into version control.
Here is a pretty good starting place if you want to use MAMP or WAMP to develop locally and then push that to github and then update your live site from github:
http://www.mybringback.com/bringers/14509/git-local-and-shared-server-development-environment-with-ssh-setup/
Hope that helps.