WordPress updates and Git

In my readings (and as mentioned in OP comments) the best practice seemed to be focusing on the /wp-content/ folder, or specific custom contents therein. Syncing all the core files and third party plugins just causes headaches and unnecessary version monitoring.

I had troubles with this myself, but it’s best to remove the mentality that repo act as a mirrored / complete backup, because (from reading & my own experience, as well as your post shows), it doesn’t work well that way.

If it’s just a handful of themes/plugins https://wppusher.com is an incredible tool to handle the deployment from git to production.

This old post stevegrunwell.github.io/wordpress-git/ is a good resource for defining the line between what to include and exclude for the local/git/live workflow. Most notably, slide 13 shares and awesome .htaccess rewrite to use remote media files so you’re not always keeping local in sync.