Can you use Github Desktop to create a local repository only - github

We are looking to set-up source control on a Windows remote development server. The source code should never leave this server. Can we use Github Desktop in this scenario to simply manage a local repository and never send the code off the server? If not, is there some other simple way to achieve this?

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Automatic git pull on server

So I have a server where I keep development files used for my game server. With multiple developers, I was wondering if there is a way to have the repository located on that server automatically pull new files as my developers push their commits to the online master? I have looked into ngrok but am unable to figure out how to implement this as this is not a web server and the files are not located on the root drive of the computer. Hope someone can give me a good step by step or point me in the right direction of a tutorial!
If you are on linux you can use crontab, on windows you can use Windows Task Scheduler

pros/cons of running own version control server

I do mostly small projects as a part of my research at the university, and have been using our SVN server, and also played around with Mercurial in connection with SourceForge.
I am wondering if running Mercurial or any other kind of version control on my home server would make sense. The SVN server I use at work is behind the university firewalls, and between the IT-department of the building and our IT-responsible in our department I think it's much of a hassle of starting new projects on the server and coding when I am at home. I have a Drobo FS (NAS) at home which I could imagine using for running a version control server, so that I can easily reach my code wherever I happen to be, without having to put my code on a 3rd party server.
What are the pros/cons of this approach compared to getting an account at a project hosting site with support for private projects? Is it feasible? If so, would it imply a significant maintenance workload?
The pros are that you are in full controll of your server:
you can set it up any way you want it
noone else has access to your source/project
The cons are that you are the only one that is responsible: you have to
ensure the proper setup
do maintenance
perform upgrades
ensure protection against power outages
ensure adequate security measures
ensure reguar back-up
etc.
Of course you should do it as soon as you have projects you don't want to open on servers like github.
Most small private teams have a source server, no reason not to have one. For example gitolite is easy to install and use (I don't know for Mercurial but I think there is an easy to install solution too, probably even easier).
A side effect would be you could use something a little more modern than svn, for example a decentralized vcs you could use at home and synchronize with your server (no need to use a server for every manipulation when using mercurial and git : just set up a local repository and push to your server from time to time).
Whenever you have distributed development (either because of a team across different geographical sites, or because you develop from different sites), a DVCS makes sense.
Don't forget that, on one site, if your team members have access to the git/mercurial repo filesystem (ie the shared path of the repo), you don't even need a server at all. Those DVCS supports filesystem protocol access (albeit without authentication or authorization), aka local protocol.
You can also share your project across sites with an external service like BitBucket (supporting both public and private projects, for Git or Mercurial)
If you have write access to university network (through an USB key for instance), you don't even need to access that external service (BitBucket could be blocked, it wouldn't matter).
A git bundle allows you to export a git repo as one file, from which you can pull from as it was a repo.
So you have various options in order to access/manage a repo from different site, without having to register yourself to a centralize server (like your SVN), which you couldn't access from any site (like from home).

Is there a way to publish a website from github or cloud9IDE directly to a web-host?

Is there a way deploy a website directly from github or cloud9 ide? using ftp or other way, right now it doesn't matter what hosting, just so it'll be fully functional and accessible online.
(I know github has a web-hosting of a kind but it seems very limited)
What webframework/language are you using? If you use RoR or Sinatra or any other rake-based framework you can use heroku.com. If your using asp.net you can use appharbor.com, finally if your using php you can use phpfog.com.
What these hostingproviders have in common is that you deploy the website by pushing your code with git, while you won't be deploying directly from github you can just add one of the above mentioned hosts to your remote-list (in addition to github) and then push to that remote when you wish to deploy.
Another solution would be to add a post-receive-hook to github which then triggers whenever you push to github, in that post-recieve-hook you could tell the webhost to pull from the repo. This does however require you to have git installed on the webserver aswell as some kind of webinterface for the post-recieve-hook to post to.

What is a typical workflow to put my local MVC3 project on to a "live server"?

I develop on my local machine with VS2010 and SQL Server. Naturally, my web.config points to my local SQL Server and I can debug/development and all is well. Unfortunately, I am not entirely sure on how to go about deploying my code to a live server.
Currently, my live server consists of a virtual machine (my site is accessible from the internet). When I'm ready to put my changes on the live server I publish my app (right click on solution explorer -> publish). Then I go to the directory it publishes to and dump all the files into a network share that goes to my site on the live server. On the initial copy over, I have to manually edit the web.config so that the connection string points to the SQL Server on the live server instead of my local machine. So this is my first stumbling block. How can I easily manage development settings and "live" settings in the web.config?
Now, I also use version control (Kiln). Can I possibly tag a changeset and have it automatically deployed to my live server somehow? Let's say someone submits a bug and I fix it. I push my changeset and now Kiln has the latest version of my code with the bug fix. What's the best way to get these changes on to a live server?
I'm unable to find any documentation that covers the entire workflow but I feel like there has go to be a better way. Surely, something like this can be accomplished without having to manually edit the web.config everytime I publish and pray to the computer Gods that I didn't miss something in the connection string.
It's just me so I have complete control over all of my environments, including the server and what's accessible via the internet, and anything is possible if only I knew what to do.
How can I easily manage development settings and "live" settings in the web.config?
Re: With VS 2010 web.config transformations, it is quite easy. Please take a look at this blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdevtools/archive/2009/05/04/web-deployment-web-config-transformation.aspx
For VS 2008 or older, we used to have multiple config file based on environment and we used to create Debug/Release/DevTest/UAT/PROD release configuration and then in the post build event we used to replace the web.config with the release configuration based config. For example - if you build the project using "Prod" release configuration then we copy the PROD web.config to the publishing folder.
Now, I also use version control (Kiln).
Can I possibly tag a changeset and have it automatically deployed to my live server somehow? Let's say someone submits a bug and I fix it. I push my changeset and now Kiln has the latest version of my code with the bug fix. What's the best way to get these changes on to a live server?
Re: Source control and publishing to live server are two different things. The first question you are asking here related to how you manage multiple releases and have control over bug fixes for each release. The way I would do it is I will have PROD branch in my source control which will be the first release and for every major release I will sub branch it to have more control over e-fixes.
For the other question about how to get it to live server, it depends on your environment. We do it differently based on how customer environment is setup. If they have given us the FTP, we use that or otherwise we package the application into an MSI and then deploy it to UAT.. Until UAT signoff is done, we keep on updating the MSI. Once signoff received, the MSI goes to PROD.
Hope this helps.

Organizing workflow with Mercurial and Netbeans (+ bitbucket.org?)

I've never worked with any version control systems before. Now I'm trying to learn Mercurial, but I'm confused (I've already read about 10-15 articles + hginit.com). I don't know how to organize the workflow.
I have a testing server and a production server. I work from my office computer and from my home laptop. I make changes directly on the testing server, and every week or so copy new code to my production server. I also need wiki/issues/etc. pretty much everything bitbucket.org has. I know that's a bad way of doing things.
Is there any tutorial or articles on how to organize the workflow? I'd also appreciate any schemes/sketches describing the process.
Thank you!
[Edit: Changed based on comments]
Using Bitbucket
Once you have created an account.
You should be able to create a repo with an appropriate url. Then you can clone it to create a local repository.
Check out getting started.
See the following to push the updates to BitBucket.
BitBucket comes with very extensive documentation.
Also there are, other useful tools to work with BitBucket:
BitbucketExtension that allows you to use command line for a number of operations.
Using Mercurial Queues and bitbucket.org
Organizing workflow
You will have to evolve a workflow that suits you. In your case, it looks like you have a testing server and production server.
So , you can setup two repositories, one for the testing server ad one for production. You can make push to testing server automatic so that you can test out the changes immediately. You can tag releases that are then pushed to production server.
Your local repo can be used to publish changes to testing server.
You can push the approved changes, tagged to BitBucket repository.