not-quite-submodules

This gem can be used to automatically check out and update a git repository pretty much anywhere. I wrote it because I wanted to be able to clone a project repository, and then automatically fetch some deployment capistrano tasks, keeping them up to date whenever I run a cap command. But you can use it anywhere else as well, it's not limited to capistrano or even being inside a git repository.

not-quite-submodules simply clones the specified repository, checks out the latest tag (by version number!) and copies the content to the specified config_dir.

There must be at least one tag in the configuration repository, otherwise the update will fail. The version comparison/ordering is done using the Versionomy gem, for example:

v1.0 < v1.0.1 < v1.1 < v1.1.1 < ...

For your convenience, not-quite-submodules also generates a .gitignore file in the config_dir which ignores all content copied from the configuration repository.

By default, the gem will try to update the configuration repository once every 24 hours. You may force an update by setting the FORCE_UPDATE environment variable to a truthy value. From the command line, for example:

FORCE_UPDATE=1 cap deploy

You'll need a new git repository containing your configuration. Lets say you currently use the following directory structure in your projects:

project/
    Cap
    config/
        capistrano/
            deploy.rb
            util/
                important.rb
                stuff.rb
            project.rb
            stages/
                production.rb
                staging.rb
    [...]

Let us also assume that everything in the util/ folder as well as deploy.rb is never modified, that is, the project specific configuration resides solely in stages/ and project.rb. You'd now create a new git repository containing the following:

deploy.rb
util/
    important.rb
    stuff.rb

Then you'd simply remove these files from your project structure, resulting in:

project/
    Cap
    config/
        capistrano/
            project.rb
            stages/
                production.rb
                staging.rb
    [...]

Now you want to add the following lines to the beginning of your Cap file:

require 'not-quite-submodules'
NotQuiteSubmodules.initialize(
    "git@github.com:you-on-github/capistrano-configuration.git",
    :target_path => "config/capistrano",
    :temp_path => "config/.config_repo"
)

initialize is pretty much everything you'll ever see of not-quite-submodules. It takes the repository to be cloned as its first parameter and allows you to specify the following configuration parameters:

• :target_path => This is where you'd like the files from the repository to end up in the end.
• :temp_path => The directory to which the repository is cloned. Note that this directory is not deleted after the files have been updated so that the entire repository does not need to be cloned again next time. Therefore it might be a good idea to add it to your .gitignore file.

• not-quite-submodules does not currently delete any files, it only overwrites updated files or creates newly created ones.

• Support file deletion

Copyright (C) 2013 Lucas Jenß

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