Version Control for a Production Website Environment

Question

Does anyone have any experience using version control with a production website? Would it be a terrible idea to run a website from a repository? I just found a related article but I would like to hear your thoughts/comments.

Answer 1

Makes imho no sense - cheap person's approach.

In larger scenarios you have develop / test / production, so you version control on the develop side, then publish forward to test and production. There is no need to acutally version control once things hit production. You do keep one or two backup versions, for a fast rollback, but otherwise - no need.

Answer 2

The way I've always done it is to have a live & test version be checkouts of the repository. Then my workflow is like this:

1. make changes on my dev checkout
2. commit changes.
3. update test.
4. make sure everything works
5. update production.

Answer 3

Every production manager will tell you the same thing: a (D)VCS has no place in a production environment.

You can maybe have a one "release deployment" server in the production pit, where you do have a VCS allowing you to view the correct delivery, and from that server to copy/rsync it to the right production server.

But on the servers themselves, you only have:

• the application itself
• monitoring process to follow and report
• some diagnostic tools

The reason is that the more elements you have in your release environment, the more possibility you get for one of those elements to go wrong.
Adding a VCS in the mix is not worth it.