Ive been programming for a little while now and have built a little application which is now hosted on a dedicated server.
Now i have been rolling out different versions of my app with no real understanding on how to manage the process properly.
Is this the proper way to manage a build of an application when using a product like git hub ?
Upload my entire application onto github.
Each time i work on it, download it and install it on my dev server.
When im done working on it and it appears to be ok, do i then upload the changed files with the current project i am working on or am i meant to update the entire lot or am i mean to create a new version of the project?
once all my changes are updated, is there anyway of pushing these to a production machine from git hub or generating a listing of the newly changed files so i can update production machine easily with a checklist of some kind ?
My application has about 900 files associated with it and is stored in various folder structures and is a server based app (coldfusion to be precise) and as i work alone majority of the time, im struggling to understand how to manage the development of an app...
I also have no idea on using the command line and my desktop machine is a mac, with a VM running all my required server apps (windows server 2012, MSSQL 2012 etc)
I really want to make sure i can keep my dev process in order, but ive struggled with how to understand how to manage a server side apps development when im using a mac my dev machine is a windows machine i feel like im stuck in the middle.
You make it sound more complicated than it is.
Upload my entire application onto github.
Well, this is actually 2 steps: First, create a local git repo (git init), then push your repo up to github.
Each time i work on it, download it and install it on my dev server.
Well, you only need to "download" it once to a new dev box. After that, just git pull (or git fetch depending on workflow), which ensures any changes on the server are pulled down. Just the deltas are sent.
Git is a distributed version control system. That means every git repo has the full history of the entire project. So only deltas need to be sent. (This really helps when multiple people are hacking on a project).
When im done working on it and it appears to be ok, do i then upload the changed files with the current project i am working on or am i meant to update the entire lot or am i mean to create a new version of the project?
Hmm, you are using fuzzy terminology here. When you are done editing, you first commit locally (git add ...; git commit), then you push the changes to github (git push). Only the deltas are sent. Every commit is "a new version" if you squint.
Later on, if you want to think in terms of "software releases" (i.e. releasing "version 1.1" after many commits), you can use git tags. But don't worry about that right away.
once all my changes are updated, is there anyway of pushing these to a production machine from git hub or
generating a listing of the newly changed files so i can update production machine easily with a checklist of some kind ?
Never manually mess around with files manually on your server. The server should ONLY be allowed to run a valid, checked-out version of your software. If your production server is running random bits of code, nobody will be able to reproduce problems because they aren't in the version control system.
The super-simple way to deploy is to do a git clone on your server (one time), then git pull to update the code. So you push a change to github, then pull the change from your server.
More advanced, you will want something like capistrano that will manage the checkouts for you, and break up "checking out" from "deploying" to allow for easier rollback, etc. There may be windows-specific ways of doing that too. (Sorry, I'm a Linux guy.)
Related
I'm currently helping to maintain a project for a client remotely. I'm the only developer ergo some of my unorthodox approaches/thinking.
the problem
The client is using Visual Studio 2010 + Team Foundation Server for their source control. I am working on a Mac over VPN and have tried several approaches to make committing to their TFS workable. I've tried TFS plugin for Eclipse with no luck (VPN really hoses the connection to TFS). Currently I am having to do a full "checkout for edit" through a virtual machine to the TFS, then transferring the project over the VPN to overwrite those files. Not a sustainable solution to say the least.
the solution?
I'm wondering if there is a way to:
get a list of changed files from GIT (I think this is the solution
(How to list all the files in a commit?)
then use that list as a means to go in and fetch those file, maintaining their folder structure
from there I can do my dump over
VPN into the VM that has the project mapped in TFS.
Or if there is something I've overlooked or hadn't thought of, please do recommend them, I'm all ears.
First, I'm assuming you are running the VM on or near the TFS server, not on your Mac. If not, you can just share a directory using VMware/VirtualBox and edit away on your Mac...
It sounds like you could achieve what you want with plain old Git. If you:
Create a bare repository on the VM (git init --bare)
Add a post-receive hook to copy the files from the master branch (for example) into the TFS directory, overwriting merrily (http://git-scm.com/book/en/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks)
Initialise your local copy of the source as a Git repository (git init)
Add the remote repository. Assuming it's a Windows box you can use an SMB shared folder over the VPN so your remote is "local" as far as Git is concerned. (git remote add tfsserver file:///Volumes/tfsmount/code
Your first push will be expensive (but you could prepopulate the remote repo to get around that), but subsequent pushes would be just the changesets. The post-receive hook would then take care of updating the files, and you're laughing.
Of course, you then get to impress them with how amazing Git is, get them to migrate, and your problem goes away forever :).
Update: Here's a link which describes these steps in more detail, under the guise of updating a remote website: http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto.
Is Clone the only way for me to get my own repository to a different machine?
I have published my repository from my home PC and am trying to edit it from another.
I'm using Github for Windows but cannot see how to get the published repository to a second machine in order to edit the code and republish the changes so I can later use on the original PC.
The general approach for Distributed Version Control Systems is to:
Clone the repository (from the server)
Update your code (local, in your working directory)
Commit the code (local, in your working directory)
Push the commits (to the server)
Pull the new commits (from the server) to another development PC.
Typical development cycles iterate between steps 2 and 3. And sometimes 4 (to store your changes off-site) and 5 (to grab changed made by others).
As I suppose that 'Github for Windows' uses git(hub), it is also a DVCS and works also with these steps.
The proper way to do this is to clone the repository onto your second machine, straight from the source (Github). Sharing one clone between multiple machines is not recommended except in a few circumstances.
Resolved.
I had to delete the local repository. Github then prompted me with an error and the option to "Clone again", this clone again worked.
Thanks.
I am using MACOS for Developing the iPhone Application.
I have made the repository in to some Public Site that gives Functionality to build the Repository in their server and after that we can use the project to work simultaneously. But it uses internet connection that's why it becomes to slow to update and modification.
I have multiple Computers and I want to Use One PC as a Server and want to Create the Repository there and after from another multiple Computer, I want to use the Same Project to be done simultaneously.
How can i done that settings or that kind repository ?
Please help me regarding this.
I will suggest you to use mercurial rather than subversion. so any one can commit locally and once the server is up, just push the changes.
SVN is a centralised and
hg is a distributed control version system
The main difference b/w
Subversion uses one main directory to store the versionned version and can deploy (export) a specific revision at anytime.
whereas
Mercurial repository holds both the current public version and all the history. You do not have to deploy anything anywhere, just update your current repo with data from one of the revision.
and when you are using hg you do not really need to wait your server up, you can commit locally and push your changes once server up :)
To know more about look at HERE
If you are using osx, chances are svn is already installed on the computer you want to use as a host. You can configure svn to work with apache and use your local machine as the svn host. The following link has the details for setting it up:
http://mark-kirby.co.uk/2008/how-to-set-up-and-use-subversion-svn-on-os-x-leopard/
I want to create a development environment with my central repository hosted somewhere like bitbucket/github. Then on my dev server and my production server I will have clones.
I will work on new features and make local commits on the dev server. Once this is at a stage that it can be pushed to production, I will push from the development clone to the central repository, then pull from the central repo to the production server.
All this makes sense, but there are 2 parts I cannot figure out.
How to keep the data-base and user-generated content (file uploads, etc.) in sync?
Also, will user generated content get wiped out when I do my next pull+update on the production server?
How do others address this?
Additional info:
This is going to be a MySQL/PHP website. I am also planing on using a mvc framework (probably cake) and I haven't firmly decided which DVCS to use but so far Mercurial is what I am thinking. Not sure if this info matters but adding just in case.
That is why a DVCS is not always the right tool for release management: once your code is on the server remote repo, you should have another "rsync" mechanism to:
extract the right tag (the one to put into prod)
transform/copy the right files
leave intact other set of files/database.
Here is a real version control system dummy! proper new starter!
The way I have worked so far:
I have a Drupal-6 web project www.blabla.com and making development under www.blabla.com/beta . I'm directly working on blabla.com/beta on server. nothing at my local, nothing at anywhere else. Only taking backup to local, time to time. I know horrible and not safe way :/
The new way I want to work from now on:
I decided to use Mercurial. I have one more developer to work on same project with me. I have a blabla.com Drupal-6 project on bluehost and making development blabla.com/beta. I found out http://bitbucket.org/ for mercurial hosting. I have created an account.
So now how do I set up things? I'm totally confused after reading tens of article :/
bitbucket is only for hosting revised files? so if I or my developer friend edit index.php, bitbucket will host only index.php?
from now on do I have to work at localhost and upload the changes to blueshost? no more editing directly at blabla.com/beta? or can I still work on bluehost maybe under blabla.com/beta2?
When I need to edit any file, do I first download update from bitbucket, I make my change at localhost, update bitbucket for edited files, and uploading to bluehost?
Sorry for silly questions, I really need a guidance...
Appreciate helps so much! thanks a lot!
bitbucket is only for hosting revised files?
The main service of bitbucket is to host files under revision control, but there is also a way to store arbitrary files there.
so if I or my developer friend edit index.php, bitbucket will host only index.php?
I a typical project every file which belongs to the product is cheked into revision control, not only index.php. see this example
from now on do I have to work at localhost and upload the changes to blueshost? no more editing directly at blabla.com/beta? or can I still work on bluehost maybe under blabla.com/beta2?
Mercurial does not dictate a fix workflow. But I recommend that you have mercurial installed where you edit the files. For example then you can see direct which changes you did since the last commit, without to need to copy the files from your server to your local repository.
I absolutely recommend a workflow where somewhere in the repository is a script which generates the archive file which is transmitted to the server, containing the revision of the repository when the archive got created. This revision information should also be somewhere stored on the server (not necessarily in a public accessible area), since this information can get very handy when something went wrong.
When I need to edit any file, do I first download update from bitbucket, I make my change at localhost, update bitbucket for edited files, and uploading to bluehost?
There are several different approaches to get the data to the server:
export the local repo into an archive and transmit this onto the server (hg archive production.tar.bz2), this is the most secure variant, since it does not depend on any extra software on the server. Also depending on how big the archive is this approach can waste lots of bandwidth.
work on the server and copy changed files back, but I don't recommend this since is is very easy to miss something important
install mercurial on the server, work in a working copy there and hg export locally there into the production area
install mercurial on the server and hg fetch from bitbucket(or any other server-accessible repository)
install mercurial on the server and hg push from your local working copy to the server (and hg update on the server afterwards)
The last two points can expose the repository to the public. This exposition can be both good and bad, depending on what your repository contains, and if you want to share the content. When you want to share the content, or you can limit the access to www.blabla.com/beta/.hg, you can clone directly from your web server.
Also note that you should not check in any files with passwords or critical secrets, even when you access-limit the repository. It is much more save to check in template files (with a different name than in production), and copy-and-edit these files on the server.