Executing Git hooks on Windows

Question

I'm having trouble executing Git hooks on Windows. I have a bare repo and in it's "hooks" folder I put the following into both the "update" and "pre-push" files but the PHP script is never being executed:

"c:/Programs/PHP/php.exe" c:/Data/Scripts/git-pre-push.phpcli %1

Any ideas as to why the PHP script isn't executed?

In the Git console window I see the following when I try to push something to the bare repo:

POST git-receive-pack (437 bytes)
remote: error: hook declined to update refs/heads/master
To https://myuser@mydomain/samplerepo
! [remote rejected] master -> master (hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://myuser@mydomain/samplerepo'

...so I know that the "update" is somehow being executed. When I remove that file the push works just fine.

Answer 1

By default, Git for Windows executes hook scripts using its own Windows port of the bash shell. Certainly, a Unix shell has no idea about %1. Supposedly, Git for Windows has extra hacks in place to detect "common" filename extensions — such as .bat — and take an alternate route in such a case.

I think your fix to your own program is the best, but another approach would be to rewrite your script to read

#!/bin/sh
c:/Programs/PHP/php.exe c:/Data/Scripts/git-pre-push.phpcli "$@"

(the shebang line has no real special sense under Windows other than hinting the next person to edit the script about the meaning of its content).