git clone different repository in git hooks creating trouble

Question

We have a specific requirement in which we have to push all files which arrive for being committed to a certain branch.

We are planning to achieve this via git hooks specifically commit-msg hook.

While doing so what we do is we clone branch to temporary location (/tmp/) and then in git commit-msg hook, attempt to commit arrived files to certain branch.

But what happens now is we see all files as deleted in /tmp/.

Crude commit-msg script is as under:-

#!/bin/bash
#
#!/usr/bin/env bash

#git config credential.helper store
REPOSRC="https://<USER>:<PASS>@<REPO_URL>"
LOCALREPO="<LOCAL_REPO_DIR>"

echo "Pulling code to temporarry location";

cd /tmp && git clone "${REPOSRC}" || (cd "${LOCALREPO}"; git pull;)

#here when I navigate to /tmp/<LOCALREPO> all files are listed as DELETED

git diff --cached --name-status | while read st file; do

    echo "file == $file and status == $st";

                    if [ "$st" == "A" ]; then
                        cd "${LOCALREPO}" && git add "$file" && git commit "$file" -m "$COMMIT_MSG" && git push origin "$branch"
                    else
                        cd "${LOCALREPO}" && git commit "$file" -m "$COMMIT_MSG" && git push origin "$branch"
                    fi
done

What can be the root cause for this?

EDIT:

GIT_INDEX_FILE shows path of index file from which commit was initiated and not /tmp/ path. Is there any way to change this variable? Also index file prints something like next-index-32419.lock. Regards

Answer 1

Whenever a hook changes folder, it is important to check the value of:

• GIT_DIR (which should reference the right .git repo folder in your case)
• GIT_WORK_TREE (which should not reference the expected folder)

That is why, for any Git command, you would need to replace git with:

git --work-tree=$(pwd) ...

(or /path/to/your/working/tree)