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 automatically deploy a website to a server. I have a bare repo in a protected area of the server and a post-receive hook that checks out the contents and systematically copies over certain files into a public_html folder. (Inspired by this tutorial)

I got tired of modifying the post-receive hook manually on the server, so my post-receive hook now actually copies over a new version of itself from the repo:

#!/bin/sh  rm -rf ~/../protected/* GIT_WORK_TREE=~/../protected git checkout -f  # Rewrite over this file with any updates from the post-receive file cp ~/../protected/post-receive hooks/post-receive  # Delete public_html # Copy stuff public_html 

The problem, of course, is that the new post-receive hook never gets run. A seemingly simple solution would be merely to push again, but now everything is already up to date. This is annoying, because it requires me to fake a new commit every time I update the post-receive hook. Is there a way to invoke the post-receive hook without faking a commit or sshing in?

What I tried

git push git push -f 

Answer 1

Use '--allow-empty'

After the initial push replacing the script, you can do this :

git commit --allow-empty -m 'push to execute post-receive' 

The --allow-empty flag overrides git's default behavior of preventing you from making a commit when there are no changes.

Use an alias and make your life even easier

Add the following to ~/.gitconfig

[alias]     pushpr = "!f() { git push origin master;git commit --allow-empty -m 'push to execute post-receive';git push origin master; }; f" 

Now Just do git pushpr

git pushpr 

This will push any changes to master, which in your case will trigger your post receive replacement script, then it will push again (using the --allow-empty flag) which will then execute your updated post-receive script.

Answer 2

I know this probably going to be considered "dangerous" but I like to live on the edge.

I just delete the remote branch and then push it again. Make sure your local branch is up-to-date first to limit the chance of losing stuff.

So if I want to trigger post-receive, in my case to get the testing branch to provision, all I do is:

$ git push origin :testing $ git push origin testing 

Don't accept this as the answer though. It's more of a just FYI thing.