Release Management for PHP

Question

I was wondering the best methods/tools to handle release management for PHP files? I can't seem to find an overwhelmingly obvious answer. Something that could handle releasing files with the same name to different locations (e.g. dbaccess.php). This isn't for a major product or anything so the simplest answer is the best.

Right now I'm using WAMP locally with NetBeans as my IDE since it is capable of pushing to a remote server via FTP but I can't find a way to do the above. Any nudge in the right direction is appreciated!

Answer 1

You are looking for a VCS, or Version Control System. A VCS can greatly help you develop in a rapid, more organized manner, and give you really robust deployment options.

The big ones out there are Git, Bazaar, and SVN.

Personally, I think Git is easiest to pick up and start working with. With git, your code base and files are all local and git keep track of them and how they change throughout your development cycle. You can then setup what are called 'remotes', which are other locations you want to 'push' to.

Once you have a remote setup, you can easily deploy using simple commands like this.

git push development-server

Answer 2

This question is rather off-topic for SO, but, in the interests of pointing you in the right direction, perhaps look at source code management (SCM). Git is a very popular solution (there are many others).

You can use an SCM with many online repository providers - including github and bitbucket to manage both your software and more importantly with regard to your question: release and deployment management.

Using these services allows not only version control of your code, but the automated release management (or deployment) of code - commonly done using something know as hooks, where, after you commit your code, scripts can be run to automatically deploy your code (via a number of protocols including: FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSYNC etc) to sites or servers of your choice.

Alternatively, you could write your own release script ~ Perhaps a bash script that FTPs the contents of a directory to a given server/location that you run manually when you want to update your code/website.