Git is Currently in Invite Only BETA
Note that BETA features are NOT considered production-ready and there is no critical/urgent support or support guarantees. After the private beta it will be released into open beta, where anyone on Developer or above with beta features activated on their account will be able to test and use it.
Introduction
vCanopy now fully supports Git based websites. There are 2 types of Git integration available:
- Full Repositories
- Hybrid Repositories
In this article we’ll take a look at what these are, how they work, and how this is configured on your server.
Repo Types and Structure
The following details how our full and hybrid options differ, and how they’re configured on the server.
FULL REPOSITORIES
Our full integration is what most users will be familiar with, and with this WordPress core, plugins, and themes are all managed via Git. The entire codebase is immutable and so WordPress updates can only via Git deployments.
HYBRID REPOSITORIES
Our hybrid integration is for those of you who only want to handle specific plugins and themes via Git. Unlike the full repo as described above, the hybrid repo is not immutable, so WordPress core and any other themes and plugins not set in your repo are handled the traditional way inside the WordPress dashboard.
SETTING YOUR REPOSITORY TYPE
Once a website has been converted into a Git site, both full and hybrid types have a gp directory inside /htdocs called: .gpconfig.
This directory will contain a max of either 5 or 6 files depending on whether it’s a full or hybrid deployment:
.gpconfig/keep.releases .gpconfig/hybrid .gpconfig/predeploy-server.sh .gpconfig/predeploy.sh .gpconfig/postdeploy.sh .gpconfig/postdeploy-server.sh
The presence of the hybrid file will determine the type of deployment that we run:
- If the
hybridisn’t present, the site will run as a full deploy. - If the
hybridis present, then it will run as a hybrid deploy.
This is all set up directly inside your Git repo.
DEPLOYMENT SCRIPTS
The other .sh files handle deployments.
.gpconfig/predeploy-server.sh .gpconfig/predeploy.sh
These are bash scripts that will run prior to the Git pull. If the bash scripts return any non 0 response then the deploy will fail.
.gpconfig/postdeploy-server.sh .gpconfig/postdeploy.sh
These are bash scripts that will run after the the Git pull. If the bash scripts return any non 0 response then the deploy will fail.
More details about these and the keep.releases file can be found in this article:
How to Configure Git Repositories for vCanopy Hosted Websites
Full Repositories and their Deployments
This type of repo has the entire WP site in the directory.
Updates to WP core, plugins, and themes are all handled via the repo.
You and your clients will not be able to update core, plugins or themes via the wp-admin. This is made immutable.
DIRECTORY STRUCTURE CHANGES
With this type of deployment we pull the contents of the repo into a release directory and make the site /htdocs a symlink to that directory:
/var/www/site.url/htdocs ->. /var/www/site.url/releases-{timestamp}For example:
root@myserver:# ls -la /var/www/test.site
total 48
drwxr-xr-x+ 9 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 12:32 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 root root 4096 Jun 16 11:12 ..
drwxr--r-- 3 root root 4096 Jun 16 11:22 .duplicacy
drwxr-xr-x 2 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 11:12 dns
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 46 Jun 16 12:32 htdocs -> /var/www/test.site/releases/release-1655382717
We also create a public directory at /var/www/site.url/public and we make the wp-content/uploads directory a symlink from that:
/var/www/site.url/htdocs/wp-content/uploads -> /var/www/site.url/public
For example:
root@myserver:~# ls -la /var/www/test.site/htdocs/wp-content/
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 4 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 12:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 12:32 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 test19461 test19461 28 Jun 16 12:32 index.php
drwxr-xr-x 3 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 12:32 plugins
drwxr-xr-x 5 test19461 test19461 4096 Jun 16 12:32 themes
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jun 16 12:32 uploads -> /var/www/test.site/public
THE DEPLOYMENT PROCESS
The deployment process runs as follows:
- Create a new release directory
- Run
predeploy-server.shif present - Run
predeploy.shif present - Run Git pull into releases directory
- Run
postdeploy.shif present - Run
postdeploy-server.shif present - If all processes return 0 then we symlink the /htdocs to the new directory and update the uploads dir
Hybrid Repositories and their Deployments
If this file exists:
/var/www/site.url/htdocs/.gpconfig/hybrid
Then the scripts runs a different process to the one detailed in the previous section.
Sites that are using the hybrid deploy method have no directory changes re symlinks and they are not immutable.
Users who use this method can create repos that contain just their version controlled plugins and themes, for example:
.gpconfig/hybrid
.gpconfig/predeploy-server.sh
.gpconfig/predeploy.sh
.gpconfig/postdeploy.sh
.gpconfig/postdeploy-server.sh
wp-content/my-plugin
wp-content/my-plugin/my-plugin.php
The process is as follows:
- Create a new release directory
- Run
predeploy-server.shif present - Run
predeploy.shif present - Run Git pull into releases directory
- Run
postdeploy.shif present - Run
postdeploy-server.shif present
If all processes return 0 then we rsync all the directories contained within to their matching place in htdocs.
If any of the steps return a non 0 response we error out and we don’t run the rsync.
The app will then notify once the deployment is complete.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
With this method there is a duplication – a version of the plugins is stored in both in htdocs and in the release directory.
However, this method allows for you to version control any custom plugins and themes, and still run updates on other plugins from within wp-admin because the rest of your website isn’t modified at all.