git-ftp.py: Quick and efficient publishing of Git repositories over FTP

Introduction

Some web hosts only give you FTP access to the hosting space, but you would still like to use Git to version the contents of your directory. You could upload a full tarball of your website every time you update but that's wasteful. git-ftp.py only uploads the files that changed.

This fork has been adapted to work with git-flow (AVH Edition).

Installation

Requirements: git-python 0.3.x it can be installed with easy_install gitpython

Usage

Usage: git ftp

Note: If you run git-ftp.py for the first time on an existing project and you already have files on the FTP server, you can execute git ftp -r <revision-on-ftp> to only upload changes since that revision. That avoids a full upload of all files, that might be unnecessary. If you are using another git repository as a proxy, it might be easier to place a git-rev.txt on the server. It should contain the SHA1 of the last commit which is already present there.

Storing the FTP credentials

You can place FTP credentials in .git/ftpdata, as such:

[master]
username=me
password=s00perP4zzw0rd
hostname=ftp.hostname.com
remotepath=/htdocs
ssl=yes

[develop]
username=me
password=s00perP4zzw0rd
hostname=ftp.hostname.com
remotepath=/htdocs/develop
ssl=no

[release/*]
username=me
password=s00perP4zzw0rd
hostname=ftp.hostname.com
remotepath=/htdocs/staging
ssl=no

Each section corresponds to a git branch. FTP SSL support needs Python 2.7 or later.

For git-flow there are five special wildcard sections. Each of the wildcard section corresponds with the prefix used for the branch as used by git-flow. If a section is found with the full name that section will be used.

Example 1:

If your prefix for a release branch is lanzamiento the section would be named lanzamiento/*

Example 2:

The prefix for a feature branch is set to feature.

The following is setup in .git/ftpdata

[feature/*]
username=me
password=s00perP4zzw0rd
hostname=ftp.hostname1.com
remotepath=/htdocs/testing
ssl=no

[feature/lots-of-work]
username=me
password=s00perP4zzw0rd
hostname=ftp.hostname2.com
remotepath=/htdocs/testing
ssl=no

If you are on the branch feature/new-feature and do a git ftp, it will be uploaded to ftp.hostname1.com as defined in the section feature/*. If you are on the branch feature/lots-of-work and do a git ftp, it will be uploaded to ftp.hostname2.com as defined in the section feature/lots-of-work.

Exluding certain files from uploading

By default the following files will never be uploaded:

• .gitignore
• .gitattributes
• .gitmodules
• .gitftpignore

Similarly to .gitignore you can specify files which you do not wish to upload.

The default file with ignore patterns is .gitftpignore in project root directory, however you can specify your own for every branch in .git/ftpdata:

[branch]
... credentials ...
gitftpignore=.my_gitftpignore

Used syntax is same as .gitignore's.

Using a bare repository as a proxy

An additional script post-receive is provided to allow a central bare repository to act as a proxy between the git users and the ftp server.

Pushing on branches that don't have an entry in the ftpdata configuration file will have the default git behavior (git-ftp.py doesn't get called). One advantage is that users do not get to know the ftp credentials (perfect for interns).

This is how the workflow looks like:

User1 --+                          +--> FTP_staging
         \                        /
User2 -----> Git bare repository -----> FTP_master
         /                        \
User3 --+                          +--> FTP_dev

This is how the setup looks like (One ftpdata configuration file, and a symlink to the update hook):

root@server:/path-to-repo/repo.git# ls
HEAD  ORIG_HEAD  branches  config  description  ftpdata  hooks  info  objects  packed-refs  refs
root@server:/path-to-repo/repo.git# ls hooks -l
total 0
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root    root      29 Aug 19 17:17 post-receive -> /path-to-git-ftp/post-receive