What tools do you use to avoid accidently pushing private information to a github repo on a rails project?

Question

Are there any tools you use to scrub your project before pushing to a public github repo. How do you maintain your private settings, while pushing your source code to a public repo? What is the best practice?

Answer 1

I don't keep database.yml in git. I write it in a cap setup task. For email addresses and other things, I read them at app initialize from a file in the file-system. Again, not under source code management and written to the shared directory during cap setup.

Here's a sample:

namespace :deploy do
  task :start do ; end
  task :stop do ; end

  task :setup do
    run <<-CMD
      mkdir -p -m 775 #{release_path} #{shared_path}/system #{shared_path}/media &&
      mkdir -p -m 777 #{shared_path}/log &&
      mkdir -p -m 777 #{shared_path}/pids &&
      mkdir -p #{deploy_to}/#{shared_dir}/config
    CMD

  end

  require 'erb'

  after deploy:setup do
    db_config = ERB.new <<-EOF
production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: my_fine_database
  host: 127.0.0.1
  username: database_user
  password: database_password
EOF

    email_config = ERB.new <<-EOF
--- 
:user_name: [email protected]
:password: verysecret
:port: 25
:address: mydomain.com
:domain: mydomain.com
:authentication: :login
EOF

    put db_config.result, "#{shared_path}/config/database.yml"
    put email_config.result, "#{shared_path}/config/creds.yml"
  end

and in my environment.rb, I put:

credentials = File.join(Rails.root, 'config/creds.yml')

ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = YAML.load(File.open(credentials)) if File.exists?(credentials)

What other sensitive information might you be storing?

Answer 2

.gitignore file is your friend.

Answer 3

Sometimes you don't want to gitignore an entire file - maybe you'd prefer to just scrub out a line or two of sensitive data. I've written lucido specifically for this purpose.

lucido (pronounced loo-CHEE-dough) is a simple script designed to ... strip and restore sensitive data with ease. Within a git repository, lucido prevents you from committing your sensitive data, and automatically restores it for you after any merges.