.Git Wah?
Everyting you wanted to know about .Git but were
afraid to ask?

Mike Van Winkle
• Developer @ WP Engine
• Freelance WordPress Developer for 3 years
• Second career
• Santa Rosa, CA

Utopia
• I write perfect code.
• I upload perfect code to website.
• Nobody touches my perfect code without
asking me first.
• Rinse and Repeat.

Reality
• Other developers on a project
• I do stupid things
• Clients sometimes think they can code
• Shit happens

Version Control
• The Problem: How do we maintain stability
and continuity in our websites/applications?
• The Answer: We save versions.

Realistic Workflow
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

Realistic Workflow
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

Version Control
• As much about transitioning a website
between states as it is recording changes.
• Deployment is quicker and safer.
• Changes can be easily “rolled” back.
• A google example

Subversion or .Git
• SVN solves the problem by saving a
“revision” with each change committed.
Developers then can update code to a
specific #
• Git Solves the problem by tracking the
differences between commits

Subversion or .Git
• .Git is a “distributed” model with less
server overhead and better performance
• .Git makes complex workflows much easier
to manage
• Github.com is a great community of
projects and developers sharing code.
• Little functions that make life easy
(examples later)

Getting Started:What
you need
• A command line tool like iTerm or Putty
• RSA Key Pair: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys
• Some Code

Getting Started: Set up
a repo

Getting Started: Set up
a repo

Getting Started:Then
What?
$ git init
[create a .gitignore file ... touch .gitignore ]
$ git add . --all OR $ git add wp-content
$ git add remote origin
git@github.com:mikevanwinkle/My-WP-Site.git
git commit -am “initial commit”
git push origin master

What to ignore?
• Large Files
• Local Files
• custom .htaccess files
• custom wp-config.php
• WP Core
• Folders containing .svn info
• Historic Files

What to ignore?
*~ wp-content/upgrade/* .htaccess ?
.svn wp-content/uploads wp-config.php ?
.cvs wp-content/blogs.dir/*/*
.git pclzip-*
.listing log.txt
*.bak debug.log
*.swp gallery/*
cache wp-content/gallery/*
.cache wp-content/album/*
temp wp-content/plugins/plugins
tmp
*.tmp
imagecache*
uploads*
*_backup
wp-config-sample.php
wp-content/w3tc*
wp-content/w3-*

Deployment
On your webhost, you’ll need ssh access or you will
need a tool that can deploy via FTP ( Beanstalk ? )
$ git clone git@github.com:mikevanwinkle/My-WP-
Site.git
$ git pull origin master

Development: Example
[on your local]
$ git branch dev
$ git checkout dev
[make some changes]
$ git commit -am “Making my dev changes”
$ git push origin dev [pushes the new branch up]
[on production site]
$ git pull origin dev
$ git checkout dev

Development: Example
[on your local]
$ git branch feature-1
$ git checkout feature-1
[make some changes]
$ git commit -am “Making my dev changes”
$ git push origin feature-1 [pushes the new branch up]
$ git checkout master
$ git merge feature-1
$ git commit -am “merge feature-1 with master”
$ git push origin master

Realistic Workflow

Realistic Workflow

Cool Stuff: Hooks
• applypatch-msg
• post-commit
• post-update
• pre-commit
• update
• commit-msg
• post-receive
• pre-applypatch
• pre-rebase

Cool Stuff: Stash
• applypatch-msg
• post-commit
• post-update
• pre-commit
• update
• commit-msg
• post-receive
• pre-applypatch
• pre-rebase

Cool Stuff: Stash
$ git stash save “Temp 2”
$ git stash list
$ git stash apply <STASH ID>
http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Stashing

Cool Stuff: Reset
$ git reset --hard HEAD

Cool Stuff: Reset
$ git reset --hard HEAD

Cool Stuff: Archive
$ git archive HEAD | gzip > /tmp/
website.tar.gz

Resources
http://rkulla.blogspot.com/2011/08/some-points-on-git-vs-subversion.html
http://ryanflorence.com/deploying-websites-with-a-tiny-git-hook/
http://git.wpengine.com/faq/
https://help.github.com/
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge