README of git-ftp

• © René Moser, [email protected], 2010-2012
• This application is licenced under GNU General Public License, Version 3.0

This is free and open source software. If you like and use it, flattr it (flattr?). Thx.

Summary

Git powered FTP client written as shell script.

About

I use git-ftp for my script based projects, mostly PHP. Most of the low-cost web hosting companies do not provide SSH or git support, but only FTP.

That is why I needed an easy way to deploy my git tracked projects. Instead of transfering the whole project, I thought, why not only transfer the files that changed since the last time, git can tell me those files.

Even if you are playing with different branches, git-ftp knows which files are different. No ordinary FTP client can do that.

Known Issues

• See git-ftp issues on GitHub for open issues

Installing

See INSTALL file.

Usage

$ cd my_git_tracked_project
$ git ftp push --user <user> --passwd <password> ftp://host.example.com/public_html

For interactive password prompt use:

$ git ftp push -u <user> -p - ftp://host.example.com/public_html

Pushing for the first time:

$ git ftp init -u <user> -p - ftp://host.example.com/public_html

Using Defaults

Setting defaults for a git project in .git/config

$ git config git-ftp.user john
$ git config git-ftp.url ftp.example.com
$ git config git-ftp.password secr3t

After setting defaults, push to [email protected] is as simple as

$ git ftp push

Bootstrapping

If you have an existing project on an FTP server that you would like to use with git-ftp, and you have lftp (http://lftp.yar.ru/) installed:

$ git ftp bootstrap -u <user> -p <password> -m 'initial version' ftp://host.example.com/public_html myprojectname
$ cd myprojectname

"git ftp bootstrap" does the following:

• Creates a new git repository using either the name you specified on the command line, or the last path component of the URL (similar to "git clone")
• Pulls down the entire file tree (using lftp's "mirror" command)
• Commits all files using the message you specify (through "-m" or by calling your $EDITOR, as in "git commit")
• Sets git-ftp defaults for user, password, and url
• Sets this initial commit as the "deployed" version

Fetching Direct Updates

If others are making changes directly through FTP instead of through git-ftp, and you have lftp installed, you can fetch updates:

$ git ftp fetch -u <user> -p <password> ftp://host.example.com/public_html

Much like "git ftp push" you may specify "--dry-run", and may omit the user, password, and URL parameters if you have defaults set.

After it completes, you can commit theses changes with something like:

$ git add -A
$ git commit -m "client's updates"
$ git ftp catchup

"git ftp fetch" will refuse to run if your working tree is dirty.

Using Scopes

For using defaults for different systems, use the so called scope feature.

$ git config git-ftp.<scope>.<(url|user|password)> <value>

Here I set the params for the scope foobar

$ git config git-ftp.foobar.url ftp.testing.com:8080/foobar-path
$ git config git-ftp.foobar.password simp3l

Set scope params using action add-scope

$ git ftp add-scope foobar ftp://username:[email protected]:8080/foobar-path

You can also remove a previously set scope using remove-scope

$ git ftp remove-scope foobar

Push to scope foobar alias [email protected]:8080/foobar-path using password simp3l

$ git ftp push -s foobar

Because I didn't set the user for this scope, it takes the user john as set before in defaults.

Ignoring Files to be synced

Add file names to .git-ftp-ignore to be ignored.

Unlike .gitignore, the pattern matching uses regular expressions (instead of globbing).

Ignoring all in directory config:

config/.*

Ignoring all files having extension .txt in ./ :

.*\.txt

This ignores a.txt and b.txt but not dir/c.txt

Ignoring a single file called foobar.txt:

foobar\.txt

Testing and Help Manual

For testing mode use --dry-run alias -D

$ git ftp push -u <user> -p --dry-run ftp://host.example.com/public_html

For more options and features see man page or help:

$ git ftp help

Unit Tested

Core functionality is unit tested on Linux using shunit2. You can find the tests in tests/.

Contributions

Don't hesitate to use GitHub to improve this tool. Don't forget to add yourself to the AUTHORS file.