preamble

we’ll use git to facilitate the process of pushing code to the vm.  because there’s a cardinal rule about not serving files from a repo, we’ll need to create a git host and use a githooks to update the web root when code is pushed to the repo.  i’m using the terms hub and prime introduced by Joe Maller in his post A web-focused Git workflow.

i don’t have a cool picture of the concept, like Maller did, but here’s one of a cute red panda (credit: tambako) to set the mood before we get started:

ok, here we go:

terms

environment

steps

  1. set up
    1. on the vm, install git as root: yum install git
    2. on the vm, create a user to handle git-related activity: useradd git
    3. on the vm, get its inet ip address using ifconfig: ifconfig
    4. on the vm, copy your rsa public key (you’ll be pushing git updates over ssh) from your laptop into the git user’s .ssh/authorize_keys file on the vm
    5. on the vm, make sure the correct permissions are set on the authorized_keys file and .ssh dir: chmod 700 /home/git/.ssh; chmod 644 /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys
    6. on your laptop, run a sanity check by logging into the vm via public key. note: if you’re using an alternate ssh port and/or different pub key file name, define these in your laptop‘s .ssh/config file: ssh git@{ip address}
    7. on the vm, in /var/www/, as root, create a directory that git can push content to (note: if the dir isn’t owned by git or isn’t world-writable, git throws an “error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied” error): mkdir /var/www/git/; chown git:git /var/www/git/
    8. on the vm, cd into the /var/www/git/ directory and su to the git user: cd /var/www/git/; su git
  2. create a new project

    1. on the vm, create a new directory {proj name} for the prime repo and cd into it: mkdir proj; cd proj

    2. on the vm, initialize a git repo: git init

    3. on the vm, create and add a file so we can clone prime later (git dissallows cloning an empty repo): touch readme; git add readme; git commit -m ‘initial commit’ Note: if you haven’t already told git who you are, run: git config user.email “example.com@domain.com” git config user.name “example.com”

    4. on the vm, define a remote repository for the soon-to-be-created hub: git remote add origin /home/git/proj

    5. on the vm, cd into git user’s home directory: cd ~

    6. on the vm, create the hub repo by cloning the newly created repo using the –bare flag (that’s a double ‘-’ before bare): git clone –bare /var/www/git/proj

    7. on the vm, create a post-update hook in the hub repo to update the web directory when an update is pushed.  open /home/git/proj/hooks/post-update and add the following: [sourcecode lang=“bash”]

      jump into web dir

      cd /var/www/sites/example.com/

      w/o this, git throws “fatal: Not a git repository: ‘.’” error

      ref: http://bit.ly/5lieqQ

      unset GIT_DIR

      pull in the updates

      git pull origin master [/sourcecode]

  3. start working
    1. on the laptop, open a terminal on whatever machine your going to develop on and clone the new host repo: git clone git@{ip address}:proj
    2. on the laptop, edit the readme file in the repo, check in the change and observe in the output the results of the hook-initiated pull
    3. on the laptop, view http://{ip address}/readme to confirm the new code is displaying

references