Automatically replacing variables in PHP files when doing "git add"

.gitattributes

*.php	filter=subvars

.gitvars

%%PackageName%%=My Project
%%CopyrightHolder%%=Me <[email protected]>

README.md

1. Place .gitattributes in your home directory

2. Add .gitvars to your project directory and customize it

3. Execute:

    git config --global core.attributesfile ~/.gitattributes
    git config --global filter.subvars.clean 'php -r "echo file_exists(\".gitvars\") ? strtr(file_get_contents(\"php://stdin\"), parse_ini_file(\".gitvars\")) : file_get_contents(\"php://stdin\");"'
   

4. Set up your IDE to create new PHP files similar to template.php

5. Enjoy ;)

ATTENTION: One caveat of a filter on *.php files is that checkouts of branches with many PHP files become quite slow. I had to disable the filter again for this reason.

template.php

<?php

/*
 * This file is part of the %%PackageName%% package.
 *
 * (c) %%CopyrightHolder%%
 *
 * For the full copyright and license information, please view the LICENSE
 * file that was distributed with this source code.
 */

...

It might be better to write a small plugin for your IDE to allow injecting the variables into your template on class creation based on the ini file