Pushing Git Where It Doesn't Belong

In this talk, I present our approach to using Git in an environment where it conceptually does not belong: Business Operations.

As a custom CMS provider, we asked ourselves: could we somehow force communication officers, marketing gurus, bloggers and content editors to fall in line with our PHP coders and adhere to common version control principles? And if so, what would we gain? Would we find a stream of seamless pull requests, or a never-ending disaster of merge conflicts, blames, and end-user frustration?

I will share how we saw a bit of both, describe challenges of managing content like code, and our approaches for integrating Git with a powerful XML/XSLT templating engine.

But also, I hope to discuss the enormous gains that can be achieved when mapping DevOps processes onto the business world.

Transcript

1. Pushing Git Where It Doesn’t Belong
2. Markus Latzel Founder of Palomino Inc, Maker of WebPal Cloud Server @mlatzel @webpalcloud @palominoinc markus@palominosys.com
3. “ We shall win only by working together. Gnassingbe Eyadema
4. This story is about: ▷ Coders and Clients working Together. ▷ On the same App. ▷ Without Disasters.
5. The Characters in no particular order...
6. The Content Editor All about “Copy”. Knows Wordpress. And Word. Expects everything to just work. “Like Apple!” Averaging 5 PPM (publishes-per-minute), all to the live site.
7. The Developer Sometimes considerate of client’s urgency. Juggling bug reports. Totally blase about the business.
8. The Product Manager Impossible to tap into every details of dev cycles and unable to balance change requests at a fine-grained level.
9. The Process Is there?
10. Common Scenario Content Editors (Client) Edit pages. Preview. Publish. Edit some more. Preview. Publish. Edit. Edit. Publish. Preview. Preview. Edit. Publish. Preview. Edit. Edit. Publish. Edit. Edit. Publish. Preview. Edit. Developer Code. Test. Go-Live. Code. Test. Go-Live. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Code. Test. Go-Live. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Code. Test. Go-Live. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. Fix bug. …………. PM Project, project, project, project. Launch. Hand-over to Support.
11. The “Wordpress” Cycle Edit Preview Publish Live
12. The Real Cycle Future Site Launch Edits Feature A UTA Testing
13. Bigger Team = Bigger Problem!
14. Needs & Approach There are many...
15. Developer Needs ▷ need all the functions available in Git ▷ conventions are easy ▷ my own sandbox ▷ automated tests ▷ short feedback cycle Client Needs ▷ prefer simple publish cycle ▷ extensible content structures ▷ concurrent contributors ▷ frequent content updates ▷ build out larger releases in parallel ▷ manual UAT tests / stage / preview
16. ▷ Most CMS separate content from code ◦ PHP code ◦ HTML Templates ◦ Resource Files ◦ CDATA blobs in DB ▷ Counter-examples ◦ Statamic ◦ Gitbook
17. Benefits of combined code & content ▷ Resolves Dependencies ▷ Extensible Structures ▷ Crosses Barriers ▷ Git Version Control
18. Git + XML + CI Collaboration + Content + Convention
19. Git ▷ Commit ▷ Branch ▷ Merge ▷ Clone
20. XML & Co. XSLT XSD XML
21. Continuous Integration ▷ UATs & Reviews ▷ Preview & Stage ▷ Go-Live Tests ▷ Compliance Tests
22. A Primer on XSL Better than you think...
23. ▷ Laravel Sites ◦ XML flat-file CMS ◦ Default XSL Templates ◦ Laravel Core ▷ WebPal Cloud Server ◦ Dev Platform ◦ Web UI & API ◦ Git
25. XSL Template
26. XSL Template
27. Multi-modal traversion
28. Git What a horrible syntax. Let’s translate...
29. Translating Client Processes “I need to make a quick edit to the contact-us page” > git pull origin master > edit > git commit -m “quick edit” -a contact-us.xml > git push origin master > webpal publish production
30. Translating Client Processes “We are starting work on a new re-launch of our site and need a sandbox to work in” > webpal clone-site git@github.com:palominoinc/site-demo.git sandbox sandbox > git pull origin master sandbox > git branch re-launch sandbox > git checkout re-launch sandbox > edit edit edit
31. Translating Client Processes “The developers need to test new feature A with our latest content” > webpal clone-site git@github.com:palominoinc/site-demo.git stage stage > git pull origin master stage > git merge origin feature-a stage > webpal run-tests stage > git push origin master
32. Translating Client Processes “While we work on the new re-launch, we need a focus group to do UAT” > webpal clone-site git@github.com:palominoinc/site-demo.git uat uat > git pull origin master uat > webpal publish uat56 uat > webpal clone-db production uat56
34. Devs Need Control what else is new!
37. Keys for Success ▷ Control is good, but: ▷ Need to comply to conventions, at all times! ▷ Allow for novice team members
38. Conflicts & Diffs different strokes for different folks...
41. TGIF one last thing...
42. > date Fri Nov 4 16:59:03 > git merge origin feature-a > webpal run-tests && webpal publish production testing… publishing… done. > exit
44. Any questions? Slides: @mlatzel markus@palominosys.com