use git smudge/clean to replace file contents

Question

I am attempting to use git to manage deployment to my live website. The problem that I\'m having is that I have a couple of settings files that I don\'t want to be updated w

Answer 1

ideally i want the contents in the repo to be changed before i run git checkout -f not changed in the live copy after

The closest is a filter content driver which will replace the value at the git checkout.

(from Scott Schacon's Pro Git book page on Git Attributes: section "Keyword Expansion")

So in your case: a smudge filter, declared in a .gitattributes file.

See "Can git automatically switch between spaces and tabs?", except you would use a sed to replace local to live (as in this example)