README

General Description

Git Manager provides a complete web-based git management and site backup toolset for Exponential / eZ Publish. It is designed for environments where SSH access is not available but git is installed on the server — enabling admins to manage deployments, branches, and site backups entirely through the web admin interface.

Core use cases:

No shell/SSH access to the server — manage git branches and deployments via web UI
Hosting environments where only web/FTP access is available
Teams needing a simple web UI to switch branches without CLI knowledge
Site backup and download from the browser, without needing server access
Secure encrypted offsite backup via browser download

Features

Git Management (Web UI)

Checkout local and remote branches — update your site to any git branch via browser
Review current HEAD commit and diff
Browse commit log with author, date, and range filters
Checkout specific commits by hash
Submodule checkout support

Backup & Caption Manager (Web UI)

Create timestamped backup captions (snapshots) of your site
Four backup types (see below)
Optional AES256 GPG encryption per backup
AGPL-compatible sanitized SQL dumps — strips all private data for public sharing
GPL v2 + AGPL v3 license files bundled in every caption archive for legal compliance
Multi-select delete of old captions
Age indicators (green/orange/red) showing how old each backup is
A status taken from the newest backup — fresh, ageing (older than WarnAfterDays, 7), stale (older than StaleAfterDays, 30) or none, see "Backup Status and Age Warnings"
Secure download of backup files via authenticated controller, streamed (archives of any size)
Automatic cleanup of old captions based on MaxBackups setting

CLI Tools (requires shell access)

backup-create.php — create backups from command line
backup-list.php — list all captions with age indicators
backup-info.php — show detail for a specific caption
backup-delete.php — delete one or all captions

Backup Types

Type	Creates	Use For
Full Site Backup	SQL dump + var/ archive + site files (extensions/, settings/, config.php)	Full site restoration from scratch
DB + Files Caption	SQL dump + var/ archive	Daily backup of database and uploaded files
Database Only	SQL dump only	Before database changes or migrations
Files Only (var/)	var/ archive only	Before bulk file changes

Full Site Backup is the most complete option — it produces 3 separate archives covering everything needed to rebuild the site on a new server, excluding the eZ Publish core files (which come from git).

AGPL-Compatible Public Release Dumps

When creating any SQL-based backup (Full Site, DB + Files, or Database Only), you can check the 🔓 AGPL Compatible Release checkbox. This creates an additional sanitized SQL dump file alongside your normal backup, designed for public sharing or distribution to comply with AGPL/GPL license obligations.

What gets sanitized:

User password hashes (bcrypt, MD5, SHA1/SHA256)
Email addresses
Google Analytics IDs (UA-, G-, GTM-, AW-)
Stripe API keys (live/test secret/publishable)
SendGrid and AWS API keys
reCAPTCHA/hCaptcha site/secret keys
Named settings (Password, ApiKey, AuthToken, WebhookSecret, SMTPPassword, etc.)
Absolute disk paths (/var/www/, /home/, /srv/, etc.)
Database credentials
IP addresses in quoted strings
SMTP credentials
Complete removal of session, audit, pending actions, and notification tables

Result:

Normal backup: sql_2026-06-21_12-00-00.tar.gz (full data, private)
AGPL backup: sql_agpl_2026-06-21_12-00-00.tar.gz (sanitized, shareable)
Marker file: agpl_compatible.txt (explains what was sanitized)
Caption marked with: 🔓 AGPL COMPATIBLE badge in the UI

License Files Included: Every caption directory and compressed archive includes a licenses/ folder with:

LICENSE-GPL-2.0.txt — GNU General Public License v2 (governs eZ Publish)
LICENSE-GPL-2.0.md — Markdown-formatted GPL v2
LICENSE-AGPL-3.0.txt — GNU Affero General Public License v3 (governs AGPL dumps)
LICENSE-AGPL-3.0.md — Markdown-formatted AGPL v3
README.txt — explains why these files are included

This ensures anyone receiving your backup archive has the full license terms as required by open source distribution obligations.

Backup Status and Age Warnings

The top of the Backup page says in one block how fresh the backups are. It is taken from the newest backup only: an old backup next to a recent one is no reason for a warning. (Before 2.0.15 the page took the age of the oldest backup, so it kept warning about a backup from months ago however recent the newest was.)

State	When	Colour
none	there is no backup	red
fresh	the newest backup is at most `WarnAfterDays` old	green
ageing	older than `WarnAfterDays`, at most `StaleAfterDays`	orange
stale	older than `StaleAfterDays`	red
future	every backup is dated more than `FutureToleranceMinutes` ahead of the server clock	orange

The thresholds are in git_manager.ini:

[BackupFreshnessSettings]
WarnAfterDays=7
StaleAfterDays=30
FutureToleranceMinutes=5

How the age is found:

A backup's time is its folder name, Y-m-d_H-i-s, read in the installation's time zone (the one config.php sets; the names are written in that zone too). The folder's mtime is used only for a folder whose name is not such a date (made or renamed by hand), and the list says so. Copying, restoring or adding a file to a backup does not change its age.
The backups are listed newest first, by that time, then by name.
The age is the number of seconds between that time and now, shown in the largest whole unit (1 day, 22 days, 3 months, 1 year), singular and plural each with its own translatable text.
A backup dated in the future does not count as the newest: a wrong clock or time zone must not hide that the real backups are old. The page names such backups in a note.

The texts are chosen from the state alone (GitManagerBackupMessages), the state from the ages (GitManagerBackupFreshness), and the backups are read from the disk by GitManagerBackupCatalogue. bin/php/backup-list.php prints the same status line.

Nothing makes backups on its own: the warning stays until someone creates a backup (on the page or with bin/php/backup-create.php, which a crontab can run; see below).

Best Practice: Create a full caption weekly, and a database-only caption before any CMS upgrades or major content changes.

Using the Backup Manager (Web)

Open Setup → Backup in the admin interface (/git_manager/backup; the address before 2.0.4, /git_manager/dump, redirects there)
Choose one of the four forms under Create a backup
Optionally add a description
Optionally check Encrypt the archives and enter a passphrase
Optionally check the AGPL compatible database dump to create a sanitized SQL dump for public sharing
Click the create button — the backup runs on the server; the page comes back with the result
In Existing backups, download each archive with its Download button (the AGPL compatible dumps too)
Remove a backup with its Remove button, or several with the check boxes and Remove selected

Every form is a POST with the form token of ezformtoken and ends in a redirect to the page, so reloading it repeats nothing; the result is shown once.

Downloads are streamed in pieces with the session closed, so an archive of several gigabytes needs no memory and does not block the user's other pages. A persistent PHP server (Exponential Velocity) keeps a whole response in memory before sending it; there an archive larger than PersistentServerDownloadLimitMB (git_manager.ini, default 128) is marked Too large for this server and refused with a message. Download it through the address served by Apache or PHP-FPM, or copy it from the server.

Tests: php ../../vendor/bin/phpunit in extension/git_manager (or phpunit -c phpunit.xml.dist in a checkout) runs the unit tests of the catalogue, the freshness and the texts. They need no database and make their throwaway backup folders under tests/.tmp (or GIT_MANAGER_TEST_TMP). Run them as the site user as well: two tests about unreadable backups are skipped as root.

Access

The backup page and the downloads need the policy git_manager/backup. Before 2.0.4 this function was called git_manager/dump; roles that grant the old name keep working, and

php extension/git_manager/bin/php/upgrade-policy-dump-to-backup.php --dry-run
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/upgrade-policy-dump-to-backup.php

renames them.

Using the CLI Backup Tools

Run from the Exponential root directory (e.g. /var/www/vhosts/site/doc/site/):

List all backups:

php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-list.php
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-list.php -v -s

Create backups:

# Full site backup (DB + var + site files)
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php fullsite -d "Before upgrade"

# DB + files
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php full -d "Daily backup"

# Database only
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php db

# Files only
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php var

# With encryption
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php full -e -p "yourPassphrase" -d "Encrypted"

Scheduled backups: nothing in git_manager makes backups on its own. A crontab line of the site's user makes them regularly, for example a database backup every night:

30 3 * * * cd /path/to/exponential && php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-create.php db -d "Nightly" >> var/log/git_manager_backup.log 2>&1

MaxBackups in git_manager.ini limits how many are kept (the oldest are removed after a full backup).

Inspect a caption:

php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-info.php 2026-06-21_20-20-49

Delete a caption:

php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-delete.php 2026-06-21_20-20-49
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-delete.php 2026-06-21_20-20-49 -f   # force, no prompt
php extension/git_manager/bin/php/backup-delete.php -a                        # delete all

Decrypting GPG-Encrypted Backup Files

Encrypted backup files end in .tar.gz.gpg. To decrypt and extract:

Decrypt only (produces .tar.gz):

gpg --batch --yes --passphrase "yourPassphrase" -o output.tar.gz -d backup_file.tar.gz.gpg

Decrypt and extract in one step:

gpg --batch --yes --passphrase "yourPassphrase" -d backup_file.tar.gz.gpg | tar -xzf -

Test decryption (verify passphrase works without extracting):

gpg --batch --passphrase "yourPassphrase" -d backup_file.tar.gz.gpg > /dev/null && echo "OK" || echo "FAILED"

Only the person who created the backup knows the passphrase. There is no recovery mechanism — store your passphrase securely (e.g. in a password manager).

Configuration (git_manager.ini)

Settings in extension/git_manager/settings/git_manager.ini.append.php:

[GitManagerSettings]
BackupPath=var/site/backups/captions
MaxBackups=10
CompressBackups=enabled
EnableEncryption=enabled
DeleteUnencryptedAfterEncryption=enabled

MaxBackups — automatically deletes oldest captions when limit is exceeded (0 = unlimited)
DeleteUnencryptedAfterEncryption — when enabled, removes the unencrypted .tar.gz after encrypting, leaving only the .gpg file

Using Git Manager (Web)

Go to Git Manager → Dashboard in the admin interface
Switch branch: Select a local branch and click Checkout, or enter a remote branch name
Pull latest: Use the pull/update controls to fetch and apply the latest commits
Review commits: Browse the commit log, filter by author or date range
Checkout commit: Enter a specific hash to roll back to a previous state

Why This Extension?

Problem: Many shared hosting environments and managed servers do not provide SSH access to site admins. Git is installed on the server but can only be invoked by the web server user.

Solution: Git Manager exposes git operations through eZ Publish's authenticated admin interface. Any admin with the git_manager policy can:

Deploy code changes by switching branches — no SSH needed
Create and download site backups — no FTP or server access needed
Review what changed between deployments
Rollback to a previous commit via browser

Security: All operations require admin login. Backup downloads are served through an authenticated PHP controller — backup files are never directly web-accessible. Encryption uses AES256 via GnuPG.

Version

The current version of Git Manager is 2.0.1
Last Major update: June 21, 2026

Requirements

eZ Publish 5.x or higher
PHP 5.6 or higher (PHP 8.x supported)
Git binary installed and accessible to the web server user
GnuPG (/usr/bin/gpg) — required only for encrypted backups
mysqldump — required for database backups

Copyright

See: doc/COPYRIGHT for more information on the terms of the copyright and license

License

Git Manager is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 or later. See doc/LICENSE for full terms.

Version

The current version of Git Manager is 2.0.1
Last Major update: June 21, 2026

Copyright

See: doc/COPYRIGHT for more information on the terms of the copyright and license

License

Git Manager is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The complete license agreement is included in the doc/LICENSE file.

Git Manager is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License or at your option a later version.

Git Manager is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

The GNU GPL gives you the right to use, modify and redistribute Git Manager under certain conditions. The GNU GPL license is distributed with the software, see the file doc/LICENSE.

It is also available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Git Manager in doc/LICENSE. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Using Git Manager under the terms of the GNU GPL is free (as in freedom).

For more information or questions please contact license@se7enx.com

Requirements

The following requirements exists for using Git Manager extension:

eZ Publish version

Make sure you use eZ Publish version 5.x (required) or higher.

PHP version

Make sure you have PHP 5.x or higher.

Git binaries installed on server

Make sure you have the git binary installed on server

Troubleshooting

Read the FAQ

Some problems are more common than others. The most common ones are listed in the the doc/FAQ.

Use our support systems

If you have find any questions not handled by this document or the FAQ you can post a message in the Git Manager: Project Forums
If you find a bug or defect, please report it to the Git Manager: Issue Tracker

se7enxweb / git_manager

Package info

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Statistics

README

General Description

Features

Backup Types

AGPL-Compatible Public Release Dumps

Backup Status and Age Warnings

Using the Backup Manager (Web)

Access

Using the CLI Backup Tools

Decrypting GPG-Encrypted Backup Files

Configuration (git_manager.ini)

Using Git Manager (Web)

Why This Extension?

Version

Requirements

Copyright

License

Version

Copyright

License

Requirements

Troubleshooting