Re: git use pattern questions

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 10:06:50AM +0100, Alex K wrote:

> I would like to publish a repository on say github but I would still
> like to hide sensitive information from a config file which
> nevertheless needs to be part of the repo. If it was possible to
> publish a single branch then I'd make one especially for github and
> publish the config file with something like "your password here"...
> 
> Would you know what's the best pattern to publish a repository but
> still hide sensitive information such as values of passwords, mysq
> port etc..?

That is not really possible with git. If you publish a branch, all of
its contents will be visible to anyone who clones it. You _could_ keep a
pristine branch without any config, do your development there, and then
merge it to a branch with the secret config file in it. And then just
publish the development branch. I suspect that would become a pain in
the long run, as you would need to commit and merge in order to do a
test.

Generally, I think the strategy people use is not to put the config file
into git at all. Put in a sample for people to read, but keep your
personal one as a purely local thing. You will then have to deal with
deployment of the tracked files and the config file separately (but
usually people don't deploy directly using git; they use "make install"
or rsync or whatever from their git checkout).

-Peff