Is there a way to “freeze” a file in Git?

Question

I\'m in a situation where I want to open source my project, however there\'s a single source file that I want to release a \"clean\" version of, but use a separate version l

Answer 1

Greg's approach very adequately and precisely answers your question.

Let me make an addition that takes into account what I infer to be your high-level objectives:

• Don't release local data to the wild
• Release a clean version into the wild

The simplest (and in my experience, best attested) way to accomplish this is to use the following structure:

Versioned

./application.code
./config.code
./config.local.code.sample
./.gitignore

application.code

include('./config.code')
if is_file('./config.local.code')
  include('./config.local.code')
end

config.code

username = 'root'
password = 'password'

config.local.code.sample

username = 'replace with your local username and rename file to config.local.code'
password = 'replace with your local password and rename file to config.local.code'

.gitignore

config.local.code

Unversioned (optionally)

./config.local.code # will not be picked up by git due to .gitignore

config.local.code

username = 'Suan'
password = 'myownpass'

Result

As you can see, you avoid releasing config.local.code, which actually contains your sensitive information, into the wild. The default configuration (cloned straight from a remote) will work for a reasonable, if rare, case where username root and a password password is valid. And the aptly named config.local.code.sample provides local customization instructions.