How to customize a WordPress plugin and upgrade

Sometimes you want to make minor changes to WordPress plugins that no body except your self would want. Then comes the issue of upgrading to new versions of the plugin. git-svn is the perfect tool for this. It has all the cool features of the distributed SCM git and ability to pull from subversion (and push to it as well). Here is how I do it:

  1. Clone the trunk [code language=’shell’ options=’toolbar: false; gutter: false;’]git svn clone http://svn.wp-plugins.org/web-invoice/trunk/[/code]
  2. Make your changes
  3. Commit changes locally [code language=’shell’ options=’toolbar: false; gutter: false;’]git commit -a[/code]
  4. Pull new changes (e.g. new release). Git is very good at merging, you will not have conflicts unless you edit exact same lines in the local version. Still a manual merge shouldn’t be too complicated [code language=’shell’ options=’toolbar: false; gutter: false;’]git svn rebase[/code]

In the example I have taken the svn trunk of Web Invoice WordPress plugin. Hope you find this information useful next time you hack a WordPress plugin.

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