Web application deployment with git-ftp

This post has been updated after its initial publication.

In web application development, it happens sometimes that you are stuck with an only way to upload files on your webserver: FTP. If you are used to push changes to a git server like and then pull the changes on your webserver through a SSH connection, there are chances you just can't do that.

I had this problem recently, but I luckily found a very nice shell, git-ftp, that allows me to push changes to the webserver via FTP, recognizing all the files that I updated (or added, or deleted) on my local git repository.

My development / deployment cycle goes now simply like this:

$ # the ordinary "git" stuff...:
$ git add files_to_add

$ git rm files_to_remove
$ git commit -a -m 'description of the changes'
$ git push

$ # now push the changes on the deployment server:

$ git-ftp push

The credentials that have to be used to access the deployment server are stored with the ordinary git config command. From the man page of git-ftp:

$ git config git-ftp.user john

$ git config git-ftp.url ftp.example.com

$ git config git-ftp.password secr3t

$ git config git-ftp.syncroot path/dir

$ git config git-ftp.cacert caCertStore

$ git config git-ftp.deployedsha1file mySHA1File

$ git config git-ftp.insecure 1

You can also use git-ftp in dry-mode, to just see what would happen, and in verbose mode, if you are curious about what actually happens.

Update: for a different project, I needed to use sftp, which is not supported by libcurl with a default Ubuntu installation. Anyway, I followed the instructions found on zeroset and I managed to have it working with no problems.