README

git-deploy-php allows quick and easy deployments of Git repositories to FTP or SFTP servers. You DO NOT need to have git installed on the server. Great for shared servers where you have no shell access, and to save bandwidth and time by only uploading the files that have changed.

Usage

1. Drop git-deploy into your project.
2. Create the deploy.ini file (see below).
3. Run php git-deploy in your command line / terminal.

And there you go. It's that simple.

deploy.ini

In the root directory of your project, create a deploy.ini file.

Note: deploy.ini is the default file's name. You can name it anything you want (for example, staging.ini), and run php git-deploy staging. That serves as an easy way to separate the deployment to staging and production servers.

; This is a sample deploy.ini file.

[example]

skip = false
user = example
pass = password    
host = example.com
port = 21
path = /path/to/installation
passive = true

; If that seemed too long for you, you can specify servers like this:
[ftp://example:password@example.com:21/path/to/installation]

The first time it's executed, git-deploy will assume that your deployment server is empty, and will upload all the files in the git repository. If you've already deployed your project's files previously, you have to create a REVISION file on your deployment server, containing the hash of the commit it's currently in.

To get the hash of the current commit, you can use:

git rev-parse HEAD

Advanced Usage

Using SFTP

To use SFTP, you have two options. With the long-form deploy.ini configuration, you just need to add scheme = sftp. With the short-form, you just need to change ftp:// to sftp://.

If you want to use a private key to login instead of a password, you can do so by adding the following to your deploy.ini configuration:

sftp_key = /path/to/key/file

Revert a deployment

If you deployed using git-deploy and you want to go back to the previous deployment, all you need is --revert:

php git-deploy --revert [your_ini_file_name]

If you use deploy.ini (i.e., if you didn't give the .ini file a custom name), then you can simply use:

php git-deploy --revert

Deploy a specific commit

php git-deploy -r [your_commit_hash] [your_ini_file_name]

If you use deploy.ini (i.e., if you didn't give the .ini file a custom name), then you can simply use:

php git-deploy -r [your_commit_hash]

Note: If you want to, instead of using a commit hash, you can use a tag, or any other valid reference.

Deploy the latest commit from different branches

Sometimes you might need to deploy code from different branches to different servers (e.g. from the develop branch to the staging server, and from the master branch to the production server). This is easy to do. Add the following to your deploy.ini configuration:

branch = develop

git-deploy will then always deploy the latest commit from the develop branch to the server.

List files to upload and delete

Sometimes, you may just want to see what files are to be uploaded to the FTP server, and which ones are to be deleted. In this case, you can use -l (lowercase L):

php git-deploy -l [your_ini_file_name]

If you use deploy.ini (i.e., if you didn't give the .ini file a custom name), then you can simply use:

php git-deploy -l

Pretty simple, huh?

Clean remote directories automatically

If you have directories you use for caching that you'd like to clear when you deploy a new commit, you can add the following to your .ini file:

clean_directories[] = folder/to/clean
clean_directories[] = another/folder

And git-deploy will empty those directories for you.

Ignore files

If you have files that you don't want uploaded to your server, you can add the following to your .ini file:

ignore_files[] = file/toignore.txt
ignore_files[] = another/file/toignore.php

And git-deploy will ignore those files.

Upload untracked files

If you have files that you're not tracking in your repository but that you'd still like to upload, you can add the following to your .ini file:

upload_untracked[] = folder/to/upload
upload_untracked[] = another/file/toignore.php

And git-deploy will automatically upload those files for you. This is super useful for things like Composer, which recommends that you don't track the vendor folder in your git repo. This way, you can have git-deploy upload the entire vendor folder to the server, and you won't need Composer installed on it.

Deploy only if the repository is in sync with the remote

If the repository is maintained by more than a person and you are afraid someone makes a deploy when its local repository is not aligned with the remote, you can make git-deploy-php block the operation when this case occurs. To configure this behaviour, simply add to your .ini file the following:

check_sync_with_remote = true

Enable maintenance mode on your website for the duration of the deployment

If you want to take your website down with an "under maintenance" page to prevent users from seeing errors during the middle of a deployment, you can ask git-deploy to automatically turn maintenance mode on prior to deploying, and off at the end of the deployment.

It works by modifying a file specified by the maintenance_file option in your deploy.ini. It'll set that file's contents to maintenance_on_value at the start of the deployment and then set its contents to maintenance_off_value at the end of the deployment. For example:

maintenance_file = 'maintenance.php'
maintenance_on_value = '<?php $under_maintenance = true;?>'
maintenance_off_value = '<?php $under_maintenance = false;?>'

Note: It's up to your application to detect whether or not maintenance mode is on by checking the maintenance_file, and proceed accordingly.

Some frameworks looks for a file at a specific location and shows it's maintenance page if the file exists disregarding the content of the file. The file can be deleted at the end of deployment by not setting maintenance_off_value. This example works with Laravel 5: maintenance_file = 'storage/framework/down' maintenance_on_value = 'Down for maintenance'

How It Works

git-deploy stores a file called REVISION on your server. This file contains the hash of the commit that you've deployed to that server. When you run git-deploy, it downloads that file and compares the commit reference in it with the commit you're trying to deploy to find out which files to upload.

git-deploy also stores a REVISION file for each submodule in your repository, as well as a PREVIOUS_REVISION file for both your repository and each submodule. This allows it to keep your submodules up-to-date, as well as to know which commit to go back to you when you run php git-deploy --revert.

Suggestions, questions and complaints.

If you've got any suggestions, questions, or anything you don't like about git-deploy, you should create an issue here. Feel free to fork this project, if you want to contribute to it.