TipsAndTricks

Here are some useful tips and tricks

Aborting on error

If you want your receiver script to stop if any command fails (For instance, during a deployment or a test suite), just put this in the beginning of your bash script and it will abort on any error.

set -e

Handling submodules

As submodules are references to other git repositories, they are not pushed with your git push. If you are using gitreceive as a part of your deployment workflow, you might want to include these, and here is how; in your receive script, just include the following :

echo "----> Unpacking"
mkdir -p /tmp/deploy && cat | tar -x -C /tmp/deploy
cd /tmp/deploy

echo "----> Getting submodules"
# We reinitialize .git to avoid conflicts
rm -fr .git
# GIT_DIR is previously set by gitreceive to ".", we want it back to default for this
unset GIT_DIR
git init .

# We read the submodules from .gitmodules
git config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp '^submodule\..*\.path$' |
    while read path_key path
    do
    	rm -fr $path
        url_key=`echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.url/'`
        url=`git config -f .gitmodules --get "$url_key"`
        # $3 is the username
        # Change it if needed
        git submodule add $3@$url $path
    done

That way, each one of your submodule will be cloned & updated properly.