# Best Practices for SVN/GIT on projects

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [November 25, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218 "2019-11-25T19:16:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/1 "2019-11-25T19:16:41Z")

</div>

I am now experimenting with keeping my data/projects directory as a git repository, similar to described in [this thread](http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/svn-compatibility/28747).

It’s still a bit of a bumpy process, but it definitely feels more precise (i.e. safe) than the prior methods of maintaining project history.

One question I’m still trying to figure out is if there are any sub-directories or files that we should add to the .gitignore files. At the moment, I’m suspicious of the conversion-report.txt file and the .resources directory. Can anyone provide guidance on this topic, please?

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**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2019, 7:28pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/2 "2019-11-25T19:28:47Z")

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Hmm. Yes, ignoring `conversion-report.txt` and the `.resources` folder is a good start.

I can’t think of any others off the top of my head.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2019, 3:57pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/3 "2019-11-26T15:57:49Z")

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So, I’m piecing together a project update gateway event script. Here’s the first working revision:

```auto
projects_directory = '/var/lib/ignition/data/projects'

def project_updated():
	current_gateway = system.tag.readBlocking(['[System]Gateway/SystemName'])[0].getValue()
	current_project = system.util.getProjectName()
	update_message = 'Updated {g}:{p}'.format(g=current_gateway, p=current_project)
	print(update_message)
	add_command = 'git -C {pd} add .'.split(' ')
	add_command[2] = projects_directory
	system.util.execute(add_command)
	commit_command = 'git -C {pd} commit -m {msg}'.split(' ')
	commit_command[2] = projects_directory
	commit_command[5] = update_message
	system.util.execute(commit_command)

```

Yes, my parameter replacement in the command strings has hard-coded indices at the moment. I was originally doing format() before split(), but bumped into issues with it splitting my commit messages. This is just my quick-and-dirty fix at the moment.

Some questions I have:

- Is that a good way to access git? I don’t want to have to install/maintain any libraries, so I suspect that means I’ll be calling the command line git to do the work.
- Is there some way to auto-detect the projects directory path? I couldn’t find anything with a few minutes of searching the manual and forum.
- Is there any way to grab more info about the project change that triggered the event? I would like to have information like which user triggered the save and which project components were updated.

EDIT: Something isn’t quite right with this script since the commit doesn’t always happen. I’m guessing the calls to system.util.execute don’t block for the command to finish. Is that possibly the issue?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2019, 4:48pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/4 "2019-11-26T16:48:14Z")

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What you’ve got there is essentially “correct”, for the limited implementation of the project update script we currently have - we’re definitely planning to revisit in future, and add some of the “obvious” information like project name, modification actor (if available! remember that changes could come directly from the filesystem), etcc.  
I think you’ll need to use something like Python’s builtin [`subprocess`](https://docs.python.org/2/library/subprocess.html) module (eg, `subprocess.call()`) rather than `system.util.execute()` to make the git call block.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2019, 9:45pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/5 "2019-11-26T21:45:12Z")

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Interesting chasing-my-own-tail moment: I just did a `git pull` in the projects directory of one server to bring it in sync with the other, which changed some files, which triggered the project change event, which then tried to add/commit everything!

In this particular case it was okay since the projects directory was in sync with a commit (i.e. the add/commit both did nothing). But, I’m pretty sure there would be some very ugly consequences in many other cases…

Let this be a warning to any other people following this path: don’t enable a project change script like I have above if you will be doing any work in the projects directory that could ever possibly leave the git repo in an incomplete state. I can’t imagine the chaos this would cause if I were doing a `git merge` in the projects directory and hit a conflict.

I imagine a reasonable solution would be a lockout memory tag that indicates that git add/commit should be disabled for the time being. A developer would turn it on before doing git work on the command line, and the script above would do nothing when it was set. This would allow the setting to be changed without changing the project properties.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 5:06pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/6 "2019-11-27T17:06:25Z")

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Incidental nice features: switching from `system.util.execute` to `subprocess.call` will include the output of the git command in the wrapper log, and switching from `print` to a `system.util.getLogger` object also adds in more hints about the source of the trigger.

```auto
INFO | jvm 1 | 2019/11/27 16:54:11 | I [c.revision_helper] [16:54:11]: Updated ignition1:customer project-name=customer, request-origin=1.2.3.4, session-user=jbuser, session-project=customer, session-id=34947258
INFO | jvm 1 | 2019/11/27 16:54:11 | [master e78f6c9] Updated ignition1:customer
INFO | jvm 1 | 2019/11/27 16:54:11 | 4 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
I

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 6:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/7 "2019-11-27T18:04:00Z")

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Hmm, you could try something like this to get your own access to that meta-information. It’s not guaranteed to be available, but you can try:

```auto
from org.slf4j import MDC
user = MDC.get("session-user")
if user is not None:
# you have an actual username

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/8 "2019-11-27T18:40:31Z")

</div>

Should probably use `org.slf4j.MDC` instead.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:14pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/9 "2020-04-14T20:14:28Z")

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In case anyone lands here in the forum first, the IA team just recently put out an excellent whitepaper discussing issues and methods related to deploying Ignition on revision control like git:

> **[Ignition 8 Deployment Best Practices](https://inductiveautomation.com/resources/article/ignition-8-deployment-best-practices)**
>
> This guide is aimed to help you better understand how to deal with deploying Ignition applications and provides some best practices for setting up your development and testing workflow.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![justin.brzozoski](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/justin.brzozoski/32/13452_2.png) [@justin.brzozoski](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/justin.brzozoski)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 6:32pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/10 "2021-12-01T18:32:53Z")

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Hi everyone! Future me, leaving more breadcrumbs of knowledge for others who follow…

As tempting as it may be, do NOT add `resources.json` or `thumbnail.png` to your gitignore, both will cause things to break. (tested circa Ignition 8.1.7)

Ignoring `resources.json` files will cause (sometimes cyclical) thrashing of the project files whenever you sync to a new checkout, but more importantly will totally break the newer method of saving named SQL queries to disk.

Ignoring `thumbnail.png` files would’ve been nice to avoid putting binaries in git, but the first time you update a server and gain views without those files, your log will be full of lines like this:

```auto
Error creating digest for resourceManifest=data/projects/Support/com.inductiveautomation.perspective/views/Page/Monitoring/resource.json, file=thumbnail.png 
Error reading data for file thumbnail.png for resource at com.inductiveautomation.perspective/views/Page/Monitoring 
###Fatal-An error occurred while reading project resources from disk. Disk-to-memory synchronization will not occur! 

```

I hope that maybe IA can resolve the second and allow Ignition to sync up projects from disk without PNG files, but we’ve gotta leave them in for now.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kevin.Herron](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.herron/32/7259_2.png) [@Kevin.Herron](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Herron)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/11 "2021-12-01T18:35:39Z")

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> [@justin.brzozoski](#):
>
> I hope that maybe IA can resolve the second and allow Ignition to sync up projects from disk without PNG files, but we’ve gotta leave them in for now.

No, we have no intention of doing this.

A resource is comprised of everything inside the resource directory. You should ignore _nothing_.

We are, however, likely going to stop writing back an "externally modified" entry to the resource upon scanning it and noticing the signature is incorrect. We'll just let it be wrong in the file and the in-memory / UI representation will still indicate there is a mismatch when necessary.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ryanjmclaughlin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/ryanjmclaughlin/32/4318_2.png) [@ryanjmclaughlin](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/ryanjmclaughlin)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2021, 10:06pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/12 "2021-12-01T22:06:19Z")

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> [@justin.brzozoski](#):
>
> Ignoring `thumbnail.png` files would’ve been nice to avoid putting binaries in git, but the first time you update a server and gain views without those files, your log will be full of lines like this:

I for one love this. Our devs commit to Azure dev ops and I get the thumbnail of the view along with the code diff. Lots of time I don't even need to open the designer to review changes. Just signoff right from the git commit.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mwd123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@mwd123](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mwd123)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 6:21am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/13 "2022-10-12T06:21:58Z")

</div>

Any news on the gateway event script? I have been looking for a script to run on gateway (ignition docker filesystem repo + git) for updating GitLab on save etc.

This is not documented in the Best Practice etc, only showing how to work with git on local PC.

Best regards  
mwd123

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/14 "2022-10-12T15:28:11Z")

</div>

What are you looking for, exactly?  
The project update script was updated in 8.1.14 to have additional contextual information; `actor` and `resources`:  
[https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Gateway+Event+Scripts#GatewayEventScripts-UpdateScript](https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC81/Gateway+Event+Scripts#GatewayEventScripts-UpdateScript)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mwd123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@mwd123](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mwd123)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 5:15am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/15 "2022-10-13T05:15:01Z")

</div>

What I was looking for actually was this:

```auto
logger = system.util.getLogger("GW_UpdateScript")
logger.info("Running git update!")
project = system.util.getProjectName()
path="/usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/"
import time
try:
	system.util.execute(["git","config","--global","user.name","XXX - XXX"])
	system.util.execute(["git","config","--global","user.email","XXX@XXX.com"])
	system.util.execute(["git","-C",path+project,"add","."])
		time.sleep(5)
	dateStr=str(system.date.now())
	system.util.execute(["git","-C",path+project,"commit","-m","Designer save @ "+dateStr])
	time.sleep(5)
	system.util.execute(["git","-C",path+project,"push"])
	logger.info("git update done!")
except Exception as e:
	logger.infof("error, errorMsg: \n",e)

```

Edit: Now added system.util.getProjectName and it seems to work fine.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 12:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/16 "2022-10-13T12:04:49Z")

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You are taking your chances with `system.util.execute`. I don't think it waits for the process to run, so those three commands could execute out of order. Use java's `ProcessBuilder` to ensure things are sequential (and you can check for success).

{ Also, please format your code properly. Edit your comment, highlight the code, and click the \</\> button. }

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mwd123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@mwd123](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mwd123)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 12:26pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/17 "2022-10-13T12:26:29Z")

</div>

Fixed the code highlight, thanks 🙂 new to the forum and sadly don't have enough coding experience for doing anything else than a simple bash-script ☹

But with that in mind I assume its smarter to call the bash-script instead. Will change to that! Thanks for pointing this out.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 12:30pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/18 "2022-10-13T12:30:41Z")

</div>

Oh, and if you make sure things are sequential, you won't need to use `sleep()`, which is evil and should never be used in Ignition. /:

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mwd123](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@mwd123](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/mwd123)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 12:38pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/19 "2022-10-13T12:38:14Z")

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time.sleep(5) is in the Best Practices from IA for using git.  
Sadly I don't know how to code it on my own, abit surprised that there is no real good working example that covers what I do in the script I posted earlier.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/best-practices-for-svn-git-on-projects/30218/20 "2022-10-13T13:10:41Z")

</div>

> [@mwd123](#):
>
> time.sleep(5) is in the Best Practices from IA for using git.

Oy!

Since I don't have to do this myself, I hadn't run across that. IA should fix that. ☹

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