Developing from another repository

If an application’s code will be developed in a separate GitHub repository before pushing to a VIP repository, there are a few factors to consider:

• The VIP team may occasionally need to push security or performance-related hotfixes to a wpcomvip repository. This is usually done through pull requests for greater visibility. It is important to have a process that merges the changes back to the main development repo.
• It is recommended for a development repository to mirror the structure of the wpcomvip repository directly to minimize complexities when pushing or pulling between them. For the same reason, it is recommended to sync all commits (instead of doing large batched ones).
• Before syncing pull requests, review the pull requests in GitHub for automated code scanning comments added by VIP’s automation to flag possible PHPCS issues.
• For external dependencies (e.g. plugins), subtrees are recommended. Private submodules are not supported, and third-party public submodules are discouraged.