Hi all,

I'm using Git to manage my website's source code and deployment, and currently have the test and live sites running on the same box. Following this resource http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto originally, I came up with the following post-receive hook script to differentiate between pushes to my live site and pushes to my test site:

while read ref
do
  #echo "Ref updated:"
  #echo $ref -- would print something like example at top of file
  result=`echo $ref | gawk -F' ' '{ print $3 }'`
  if [ $result != "" ]; then
    echo "Branch found: "
    echo $result
    case $result in
      refs/heads/master )
        git --work-tree=c:/temp/BLAH checkout -f master
        echo "Updated master"
        ;;
      refs/heads/testbranch )
        git --work-tree=c:/temp/BLAH2 checkout -f testbranch
        echo "Updated testbranch"
        ;;
      * )
        echo "No update known for $result"
        ;;
    esac
  fi
done
echo "Post-receive updates complete"

However, I have doubts that this is actually safe :) I'm by no means a Git expert, but I am guessing that Git probably keeps track of the current checked-out branch head, and this approach probably has the potential to confuse it to no end.

So a few questions:

1. IS this safe?

2. Would a better approach be to have my base repository be the test site repository (with corresponding working directory), and then have that repository push changes to a new live site repository, which has a corresponding working directory to the live site base? This would also allow me to move the production to a different server and keep the deployment chain intact.

3. Is there something I'm missing? Is there a different, clean way to differentiate between test and production deployments when using Git for managing websites?

As an additional note in light of Vi's answer, is there a good way to do this that would handle deletions without mucking with the file system much?

Thank you, -Walt

PS - The script I came up with for the multiple repos (and am using unless I hear better) is as follows:

sitename=`basename \`pwd\``

while read ref
do
  #echo "Ref updated:"
  #echo $ref -- would print something like example at top of file
  result=`echo $ref | gawk -F' ' '{ print $3 }'`
  if [ $result != "" ]; then
    echo "Branch found: "
    echo $result
    case $result in
      refs/heads/master )
        git checkout -q -f master
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            echo "Test Site checked out properly"
        else
            echo "Failed to checkout test site!"
        fi
        ;;
      refs/heads/live-site )
        git push -q ../Live/$sitename live-site:master
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            echo "Live Site received updates properly"
        else
            echo "Failed to push updates to Live Site"
        fi
        ;;
      * )
        echo "No update known for $result"
        ;;
    esac
  fi
done
echo "Post-receive updates complete"

And then the repo in ../Live/$sitename (these are "bare" repos with working trees added after init) has the basic post-receive:

git checkout -f
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Live site `basename \`pwd\`` checked out successfully"
else
    echo "Live site failed to checkout"
fi