Update frontend theme using git

Frontend themes and templates are incredibly helpful for starting a project or using as a base, letting you focus on what you need—like I’m doing with this blog! I’m using the Astro Paper theme, which includes amazing features for a blog, so I can focus entirely on the content I want to share.

But as time goes on, new features and bug fixes are added, and keeping your site up-to-date with the latest updates from the original theme repository is essential. In this post, I’ll show you a straightforward method to update your blog or website with changes from the original repository, using Git for a seamless upgrade.

Table of contents

Before start

Setup a upstream remote

Create a remote called upstream pointing to original template’s repository, it will be used to get updates.

git remote add upstream https://github.com/satnaing/astro-paper.git

Upstream in one commit

It is really IMPORTANT you keep upstream’s code in one single commit, e.g.

9fefe8a (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) New post: Get Frontend Theme Updates Using Git
27cc000 New post: Decorator pattern from open source code
0e64c87 New post: A beginner's guide to setting up PHP on your computer
1d132e6 [erison.work] new files added
063090b [AstroPaper][erison.work] local changes
+ e66898e Initial commit from Astro (v4.0.0)

I suggest you keep local changes like, file/folder removed in one commit also. as you can see on commit 063090b

Update your project

Run the script

You just need to copy the code bellow and past in your terminal, make sure you are on your master branch. But no worries any change will be applied.

You can pass as argument which branch or tag you want to use, e.g.: main, dev, v5.5.0 and so on.

bash <(curl -fsSl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/eerison/067a40def7492bd3268591dd4de2faba/raw/update-frontend-templete.sh) main

Gist code

A new branch will be created, something like master-preview (it depends your branch’s name). In this branch will contain master and upstream code (The version that you choosed on bash script).

Solving conflicts

Some conflicts appear because you deleted files that you won’t use e.g. src/data/blog, then just track which folder or file you don’t care the changes and discard changes running:

git rm -r src/data/blog

with this you can focus on custom changes that you made.

after finish the conflicts finish the rebase

git rebase --continue

Push changes

After you be sure that everything is working on master-preview (Do not forget test build :P), you can pass the changes to your master and push your changes.

git checkout master \
&&  git reset --hard master-preview \
%% git push -f

I am using push foce, because git tree was changed.