Tag: git

Git, Feature Branches, and Jenkins – or how I learned to stop worrying about broken builds

I mentioned in my last post how we have started using Feature Branches with Git and Jenkins. In that, I rather casually mentioned that

“The build server uses the Git plugin for Jenkins to monitor all the branches on the local repository. Whenever a developer pushes to the repository, Jenkins will see the change and try to merge it into the stable branch. If the build passes, the merge is committed. If it doesn’t pass, the FeatureBranch doesn’t get merged – and it will stay unmerged until another change is made against it.”

This feature means that broken builds have almost no impact on team productivity. In fact – it can even be more productive to allow a broken build than to try to prevent it all the time.

Continue reading “Git, Feature Branches, and Jenkins – or how I learned to stop worrying about broken builds”

Making Parallel Branches meet regularly with Git and Jenkins

If you’ve been following my tweets recently, then you’ll know that we’ve recently converted the majority of our projects at work from Subversion to Git for our source control. We didn’t just do this because we wanted to play with a new shiny toy, but because we hope to achieve a new way of working. That’s what I want to describe here.

Continue reading “Making Parallel Branches meet regularly with Git and Jenkins”

Git Tip – Use different SSH keys per server

A lot of public git repos are configured around the use of SSH keys for authentication. It’s a good idea to use different keys for each server.

Doing this requires two steps:

  • create a unique key for the server (and submit it as normal)
  • configure your SSH client to use the new key just for that server

Creating the key is easy (Linux/Mac – sorry, Windows users) – ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/site_key (rename site_key as appropriate)

Then, you need to add a section like this in your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host    site_name
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/site_key

(Again, change site to whatever is appropriate)

Congrats! You’ve now got a unique key just for one site – this means if they happen to get compromised, all you need to do is regenerate the key, and away you go.

(Of course, you may want to use passphrases, and other appropriate measures, on your end – but that’s good advice anyway)

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