Deploying with a post-receive Git Hook

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Deploying through CI is great, but sometimes you just need to push code to a server with a single git push. The post-receive hook in a bare repository handles this without extra dependencies: push to the server, and the hook automatically checks out files into the working directory.

Schema: bare repo as a deploy trigger

The logic is straightforward:

A bare repository is created on the server (e.g., /srv/deploy/app.git).
The developer adds it as a remote and runs git push origin main.
Git receives the data and triggers hooks/post-receive.
The hook script runs git --work-tree=/var/www/app --git-dir=/srv/deploy/app.git checkout -f main.

Note

A bare repository has no working directory. That is why post-receive must explicitly pass --work-tree so checkout knows where to write files.

Deployment on Lead DevOps

Deploying with a post-receive Git Hook

Schema: bare repo as a deploy trigger