Hosting the Elastic Path Commerce Source Code

To develop Elastic Path Commerce functionality, you will need to clone and re-host the Elastic Path Commerce source code. Before you begin, ensure that you have the following items:

Access to your own Git based SCM (Source Code Management) hosting service.
GitLab specific credentials on code.elasticpath.com.

Obtaining Access To Elastic Path Resources

For information about accessing and locating licensed source code and artifacts, see Code and Artifacts.

Setting up an SSH Key

Set up an SSH key for use with the Git repository. For instructions, see https://code.elasticpath.com/help/ssh/README.md.

Cloning the Git Repository

Navigate to https://code.elasticpath.com/ep-commerce/ep-commerce and clone the Git repository.
```
git clone https://code.elasticpath.com/ep-commerce/ep-commerce
```

Windows File Path Limitation

Do not clone to a directory with a file path greater than 20 characters. Windows file paths are limited to 260 characters. The longest file path in the source code is greater than 230 characters.

tip

Configure Git to convert line ending to LF on input. The command to configure this is:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

Checking out a Release Branch

Each branch contains the source code for the release and all subsequent patches.

Check out the correct branch of a release version of Elastic Path Commerce.

git checkout -b release/<major>.<minor>.x

Where:

major indicates a major release version
minor indicates a minor release version
x indicates patch updates

tip

Enable Watch for the repository to be notified of any updates.

Pushing to Your Repository

Create a development branch in your local repository from the released version branch that you checked out.

The branch name depends on the SCM and your branch naming conventions. For example:
```
git checkout -b <my-org-ep-release-dev>
```
Add the Elastic Path Commerce repository to your own Git hosting service.
```
git remote add <remote-name> <my-git-repo-url>
```
Push the development branch to your own Git hosting service.
```
git push <remote-name> <my-org-ep-release-dev>
```