Re: Git server side "pre-receive" hook to create new repositories

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Mar 19 2019, Jeff King wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 09, 2019 at 10:46:09AM +0000, Dimitri Joukoff wrote:
>
>> Thus, this feature request is asking that the 'pre-receive' hook
>> triggers when someone tries to push to a repository regardless of
>> whether the repository exists.  This would allow automatic creation of
>> new repositories and smooth the work-flow described above.  If the
>> semantics of the existing 'pre-receive' hook are such that it would not
>> be suitable for such a purpose, then an alternative way of providing the
>> call-back ability would be implemented.
>
> The pre-receive hook is a bit too late for this. It runs after the
> server has told the client what it has in the repo, the client decides
> what to push, and the server has received the pack. So receive-pack
> would have to know about this and fake having an empty repository. And
> then figure out where to store the incoming packfile, since we have no
> repo.
>
> So I think it would have to be another hook that runs before the rest of
> receive-pack. I.e., a system-level config option that says "if you are
> asked to accept a push for a repo and it doesn't exist, run this instead
> and then run as usual".
>
> It does feel a little error-prone, though, if the client does not
> positively say "I want you to create this if it doesn't exist".
> Otherwise if I do "git push server:my-misspelled-repo.git", the result
> is going to be rather confusing. And retro-fitting that into the
> receive-pack protocol is going to be tricky.
>
> It would be much easier to have a separate endpoint for the client to
> say "please make this repo if it doesn't exist". And then just run that
> before doing the push.
>
> For an unrestricted client connecting over ssh, we already have that:
> you can just run "ssh $host git init /path/to/repo". There isn't a
> similar thing that can be done over HTTP, though.

Sounds simpler to just change the user's login shell to a wrapper that
checks if the repo exists, and if not create it before proceeding.

The same with http(s). I.e. in whatever webserver that's now pointing to
git-http-backend as a script point to the same wrapper script.