Hello, I've just solved a problem that has been bothering me for several years, and I thought I would share it with this group in case anyone else finds it helpful.
There are several software packages out there that encourage you to implement customizations by copying files out of the "core" into a "local" directory, and then modifying the copies. This pattern is useful for several reasons, but one major disadvantage is that, when you update the core, you have to manually check and update all of your local copies. However, with the magic of Git, diff3 and a little Bash scripting, I've figured out a way to automatically propagate changes from core files into local copies of those files (as long as everything is named consistently). This blog post details the solution: http://blog.library.villanova.edu/libtech/2015/07/23/automatically-updating-locally-customized-files-with-git/ The answer is actually pretty simple, but it took me an awfully long time to come up with it! I hope this is of some use to others. Please let me know if you have any questions! - Demian
