Can I use git to keep a remote server up to date?

Question

I'm using git to track a project, and if it's possible, I'd like to set things up so git handles all my code staging, I can have a local repository for testing, and then push changes to the server with git to make them live. However, in trying to use standard git push calls, I just end up with inconsistent branching and a terrible mess of conflicting histories. Is there a way to manage staging using git?

Answer 1

You have in this blog post an example of Git repo used for staging:

IDE => local Git repository => remote bare Git repository 
                                   => Git repository with the live web application

It involves a post-update hook on the bare repo side, in order to trigger the update of the repo on the live web server side.

The final step is to define the “post-update” hook script on the bare repository, which is called when the bare repository receives data.
To enable the “post-update” hook, we have to either make hooks/post-update executable or rename hooks/post-update.sample to hooks/post-update, depending on the Git version.
In this script, we simply change to the folder of the live application, and start the pull operation:

#!/bin/sh
cd $HOME/example.org
unset GIT_DIR
git pull bare master

exec git-update-server-info

The reason there is a bare remote repo is because it is “discouraged” to do a push into a repo with a working directory.