Using a git post-receive hook for easy production deploys

20 February 2013

I have a git repository on my dev machine, which I use for developing and testing code locally. When I’m ready to deploy to production, I simply push that git repo to the server and use a post-receive hook there to move the code into the proper places. Here’s what my setup looks like.

My ~/.ssh/config has a Host entry called prod for the production server that specifies where it lives and how to authenticate.

In .git/config, I have a remote section for the production server:

[remote "prod"]
    url = ssh://prod:~/web.git
    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

web.git on the server is set up as a bare repository. In the hooks folder, I have a post-receive file like this:

#!/bin/sh
# Check out the source tree without .git
GIT_WORK_TREE=/home/ubuntu/stage/web git checkout -f

# Turn off debug mode, if enabled
sed -i -e "/^DEBUG = True$/s/True/False/" /home/ubuntu/stage/web/settings.py

# You can do any other configuration here to transform the code
#  from development to production.

# Restart Apache
sudo apache2ctl restart

Permissions are set on the /home/ubuntu/stage/web folder and the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ file points to that folder as the DocumentRoot.

That’s all it takes. Now every time I do a git push prod master on my dev machine, the code is uploaded to the server, properly configured for a production environment, and fed to Apache.