Tracking Branches in Dependencies

One common use case of gitman is to track versions of related product sub-components such as a web app that depends on an API.

Sample Configuration

A web app's gitman.yml might look something like:

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location: vendor/gitman
sources:
- name: api
  repo: https://github.com/example/api
  rev: develop
sources_locked:
- name: api
  repo: https://github.com/example/api
  rev: b2730855c9efaaa7448b25b82e5a4363785c83ed

with a working tree that results in something like:

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package.json
node_modules

gitman.yml
vendor/gitman/api  # dependency @ b27308

app
tests

Understanding Locked Sources

In the config file, the sources_locked section identifies that commit b27308 of the API was last used to test this web app -- the last time $ gitman update was run.

The sources section identifies that the develop branch should be used when checking out a new version of the API.

Development Workflow

  1. Run $ gitman install during continuous integration to test the web app against a known working API
  2. Run $ gitman update locally to determine if newer versions of the API will break the web app
  3. When both components are working together, commit gitman.yml