git use pattern questions

git use pattern questions

[Alex K]

Hello

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..?

Also I have a developpement version of the site and a production
version on another server. Is making a branch for the production
version a good choice? I used to simply rsync the changes from dev to
prod and make the changes in the config file for the production
version. This makes sense because in order for the site to run a mysql
dump and some other data not part of the repo needs to be synced.

Thank you,

Alex

Re: git use pattern questions

[Jeff King]

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