Version Control in Inventories using Git

Version Control in nevisAdmin 4

Each infrastructure inventory is stored in the local nevisAdmin 4 database as a YAML file, which can be exported for version control purposes. See Classic Infrastructure Inventory YAML file format for a description of the file format.

nevisAdmin 4 relies on Git as the remote version control system. For each versioned inventory, nevisAdmin 4 tracks the specified Git repository URL and branch name (which can also be the master*)*. For unversioned inventories, no URL/branch is defined.

note

The repository URL must use the SSH protocol. HTTPS is not supported.

Initial Git Setup

The version control system must be compatible with Git:

• See System Requirements for a list of Git systems that nevisAdmin 4 has been tested with.
• See Git Setup and Best Practices for configuring the credentials needed to connect to the Git server.

Internally, nevisAdmin 4 uses a small subset of Git features related to checkout, commit and push operations. For this, nevisAdmin 4 relies on the third party jgit library. This implies that any known limitations for that library also apply to nevisAdmin 4.

Working with Version Control in Inventories

The following chapters show you how to work with inventories with version control:

• Importing an Inventory from Git
• Connecting Inventories to Git
• Publishing Inventories to Git
• Updating an Inventory from Git