Force git to run post-receive hook, even if everything is “up-to-date”

Question

How do I force git to run a post-receive hook on a server even if I don\'t have a new commit to push?

Background

I use git to aut

Answer 1

I'm afraid you have to ssh to the server and run the hook script manually. git push doesn't make the server run the pre-push, pre-receive and post-receive hooks if there was nothing added (i.e. when git prints Everything up-to-date).

The rest of the answer is about version-tracking the post-receive hook, so you can modify it without sshing to the server.

Add a shell script named do-post-receive to the local repository:

$ ls -ld .git
$ echo 'echo "Hello, World!"' >do-post-receive
$ git add do-post-receive
$ git commit do-post-receive -m 'added do-post-receive'

Replace your hooks/post-receive hook on the server with:

#! /bin/sh
while read OLDID NEWID BRANCH; do
  test "$BRANCH" = refs/heads/master && eval "$(git show master:do-post-receive)"
done

(Make sure to chmod 755 hooks/post-receive on the server.)

Push your changes from the local repository to the server, and watch your do-post-receive code run:

$ git push origin master
...
remote: Hello, World!
...