Question

I have a post-receive hook inside a Git repository that clones the repository into another directory and then cds into that directory.

#!/bin/bash --login

GIT_REPO="$HOME/oliverjash.me.git"

source "$HOME/.bash_profile"

checkout () {
  BRANCH="$1"
  TMP_GIT_CLONE="$2"

  git clone $GIT_REPO $TMP_GIT_CLONE
  cd $TMP_GIT_CLONE
  git status
}

checkout master "$HOME/tmp/oliverjash.me"
checkout project "$HOME/tmp/project.oliverjash.me"

exit

If I run this script whilst logged in to SSH, git status works fine. However, when the script is executed as the post-receive hook, git status reports this:

remote: fatal: Not a git repository: '.'

I can’t understand why this is!

Answer 1

If you really want to be sure the git command will run properly, you can add:

• --work-tree=$TMP_GIT_CLONE
• --git-dir=$TMP_GIT_CLONE/.git

That way, the git commands will know where is the working tree and the git repo to consider.

git --work-tree=... --git-dir=... clone ...

Or, since git 1.8.5, as detailed in this answer:

git -C=$TMP_GIT_CLONE clone ...