How to Create and store a Symfony2 Project in git

Tip

Though this entry is specifically about git, the same generic principles will apply if you’re storing your project in Subversion.

Once you’ve read through Creating Pages in Symfony2 and become familiar with using Symfony, you’ll no-doubt be ready to start your own project. In this cookbook article, you’ll learn the best way to start a new Symfony2 project that’s stored using the git source control management system.

Initial Project Setup

To get started, you’ll need to download Symfony and initialize your local git repository:

1. Download the Symfony2 Standard Edition without vendors.

2. Unzip/untar the distribution. It will create a folder called Symfony with your new project structure, config files, etc. Rename it to whatever you like.

3. Create a new file called .gitignore at the root of your new project (e.g. next to the deps file) and paste the following into it. Files matching these patterns will be ignored by git:

   /web/bundles/
   /app/bootstrap*
   /app/cache/*
   /app/logs/*
   /vendor/
   /app/config/parameters.yml
   

4. Copy app/config/parameters.yml to app/config/parameters.yml.dist. The parameters.yml file is ignored by git (see above) so that machine-specific settings like database passwords aren’t committed. By creating the parameters.yml.dist file, new developers can quickly clone the project, copy this file to parameters.yml, customize it, and start developing.

5. Initialize your git repository:

   $ git init
   

6. Add all of the initial files to git:

   $ git add .
   

7. Create an initial commit with your started project:

   $ git commit -m "Initial commit"
   

8. Finally, download all of the third-party vendor libraries:

   $ php bin/vendors install
   

At this point, you have a fully-functional Symfony2 project that’s correctly committed to git. You can immediately begin development, committing the new changes to your git repository.

Tip

After execution of the command:

$ php bin/vendors install

your project will contain complete the git history of all the bundles and libraries defined in the deps file. It can be as much as 100 MB! You can remove the git history directories with the following command:

$ find vendor -name .git -type d | xargs rm -rf

The command removes all .git directories contained inside the vendor directory.

If you want to update bundles defined in deps file after this, you will have to reinstall them:

$ php bin/vendors install --reinstall

You can continue to follow along with the Creating Pages in Symfony2 chapter to learn more about how to configure and develop inside your application.

Tip

The Symfony2 Standard Edition comes with some example functionality. To remove the sample code, follow the instructions on the Standard Edition Readme.

Vendors and Submodules

Instead of using the deps, bin/vendors system for managing your vendor libraries, you may instead choose to use native git submodules. There is nothing wrong with this approach, though the deps system is the official way to solve this problem and git submodules can be difficult to work with at times.

Storing your Project on a Remote Server

You now have a fully-functional Symfony2 project stored in git. However, in most cases, you’ll also want to store your project on a remote server both for backup purposes, and so that other developers can collaborate on the project.

The easiest way to store your project on a remote server is via GitHub. Public repositories are free, however you will need to pay a monthly fee to host private repositories.

Alternatively, you can store your git repository on any server by creating a barebones repository and then pushing to it. One library that helps manage this is Gitolite.