Magento 2 .gitignore template in combination with Deploybot and Git workflow

Question

I installed Magento 2 using composer locally (on my local Dev environment using MAMP).

• I added my custom theme and did all my frontend work on my local Dev site.
• I want my code and changes to be tracked by Git and pull it in on my Staging site (from the Beanstalk remote repo)

I installed Magento 2 using Composer and @Claudiu Creanga advised me in this article to use the service Deploybot to deploy the site to Staging.

I have a few questions regarding this process:

1. How do I have to setup my .gitignore file? In other words; which files and folders I have to track and I have to commit and push to my remote repo?
2. How do I install my site on the Staging server? Also using Composer?
3. Because I used Composer to install Magento 2, I can use composer update to update Magento 2 core. But how do I update my Staging site? Also using composer update? So if I understand wright I don't pull in this update changes by Git from my remote repo?
4. How do I install and update Extensions? Also using Composer? So I don't add the Extensions via Git and I don't track the Extensions, isn't it?

Answer 1

You should use this .gitignore

In my opinion you should remove the line /dev/tools/grunt as you want to track the grunt folder. You deploy the composer files and a few other folders needed.

Then on your staging server you run automatic commands like:

cd ~/your_root_folder
php bin/magento cache:flush
composer install
php bin/magento setup:upgrade
grunt clean
grunt exec
grunt less
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy en_US en_GB

Depending on your configuration other commands may need to run.

Ideally you should install extensions with composer because it makes managing dependencies better. The truth is that few vendors offer them through composer, they still send you a zip package via email. So you should drop it in the app/code folder which is tracked by git.

*If you're using mamp, check the php version. Magento2 doesn't work with php 7.0.0 and mamp didn't yet release a newer version of php7 I think.