GIT Operations with Python Scripting.

As we all know that Python is a great platform to automate infrastructural operations like Deploying across multiple platforms, Scheduled handler operations, Notification and alert management and more. Automating GIT Operations is highly needed in Infrastructure automation. Especially, when we have a job to publish or modify the code back to GIT Repositories. Let’s discuss some useful GIT Operations with Python Scripting.

In this tutorial, we will take Python3 for the example. Comment if you need the tutorial in multiple versions of tools and platforms. So, the knowledge required for this tutorial is:

• Git Operations.
• Python Scripting

Let’s create a python file to workaround. Here, I have created git-python.py to run Git operations. Also, GitPython is one of the great libraries to interact with Git Repositories. So, we are going to use the GitPython library for the tutorial purpose. We can import the GitPython library in our python script as mentioned below

from git import Repo

By this, we are initiating GitPython Library and from there we are importing Repo Module

Basic Git Operations.

We will see how the following basic Git Operations are handled in the python script.

• Git Init
• Git Clone
• Git Checkout
• Git Fetch
• Git Add
• Git Commit
• Git push
• Git Pull
• Git Merge
• Git Reset

Let’s see how these Git Basic operations in Python GitPython one by one.

Git Init

To initiate is to create the bare Git repo in the specified directory.

from git import Repo

# To initiate new Git repo in the mentioned directory
repository = Repo.init(repo_path)

Git Clone

Clone an existing repository into a new directory,

import  git 

git.Git(repo_path).clone("https://github.com/digitalvarys/test.git")

Git Checkout

To replace the current working files with files from a branch:

import  git

repo.git.checkout('branchename')

Also, if you are checking out with a new branch:

repo.git.checkout('-b', 'branchename')

Git Fetch

Then, To Grab the latest changes from a remote repository into the local repository:

import  git 

repo = git.Repo('name_of_repo')
repo.remote().fetch()

Git Add

To put current working files into the current index:

import  git 

repo.git.add('--all')  # to add all the working files.
repo.git.add('index.html’,’style.css’)  # to add specific working file(s).

Git Commit

To commit indexed changes to a local branch in the local repo.

import  git 

repo.git.add('--all')  
repo.git.commit('-m', 'commit message from python script', author='test_user@test.com')

Git push

To push all the committed changes in branch from the local repository to the remote repository.

import  git 

repo.git.add('--all')
repo.git.commit('-m', 'commit message from python script', author='test_user@test.com')
origin = repo.remote(name='origin')
origin.push()

Git Pull

To fetch all the changes from the remote repository to the local repository:

import  git 

repo = git.Repo('name_of_repo')
origin = repo.remote(name='origin')
origin.pull()

Git Merge

To Merge the current branch to the master (or any specified) branch:

import  git 

repo = git.Repo('.')
master = repo.branches['master']
current = repo.branches['feature']
root = repo.merge_base(current, master)
repo.index.merge_tree(master, base=root)
repo.index.commit('merging master into current branch', parent_commits=(current.commit, master.commit))

Git Reset

To point the current branch to some specific revision or branch and replace all files with the specified revision or branch.

import  git 

repo = git.Repo(‘.’)
repo.git.reset('--hard')

Then, there are many more Git operations which we are using for day by day activities and for automating some Git operations. Mention the missing Git operations in the comment. I will try my best to add the content you are looking for.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed some useful GIT Operations with Python Scripting to automate DevOps Operations like CICD Automation, Release process and more. However, Python is much more capable to automate more operations of platforms and tools. So, In our upcoming articles and tutorials, we will see all the infrastructural and platform automation with python. Stay tuned and subscribe DigitalVarys for more articles and study materials on DevOps, Agile, DevSecOps and App Development.