how do I deploy multiple branches to different directories via git push?

Question

In production, I maintain two sites - beta and release. Each points to a different directory via a soft link (e.g.)

beta_public_html -> /home/scott/myapp/         


        

Answer 1

The article Git push is worse than worsless has an interesting discussion about a similar issue.

One of its solution and conclusion involves:

• a bare repository on the production server
• a cloned repository with a hook to pull what has been pushed into the bare one

So in your case,

• one bare repo on which you can push beta and release branches
• two cloned repo 'beta' and 'release' with a hook to pull their respective branches from the bare repo.

In short: one step: git push. No more link to manage (since the directory no longer represent a branch in Git, unlike SVN)

---

Regarding the hook part, a post-receive hook in the bare repo could be all what you need

See Git Tip: Auto update working tree via post-receive hook

$ cd bare
$ chmod +x .git/hooks/post-receive

with a post-receive hook like

#!/bin/sh
cd ../../beta
env -i git reset --hard
cd ../../release
env -i git reset --hard

Note:

the post-receive hook starts out with the GIT_DIR environment variable set to the repo/.git folder, so no matter what path you 'cd' into it will always try to run any following git commands there.
Fixing this is simply a matter of unsetting the GIT_DIR.

'env -i' does just that: it ignores the inherited environment completely and uses only the supplied variables and values.