Re: Pushing a git repository to a new server

[Konstantin Khomoutov <kostix+git@007spb.ru>]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:57:51 -0500
Ethan Reesor <firelizzard@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]
> I want to create a git-command that 1) creates a bare version of the
> current repo, 2) and uploads it to the specified path on my server
> (using tar, but that's not the point).

Thanks, it's now a bit more clear.

> My problem is that I have no idea how things like git-push works via a
> user with git-shell. Can you only run certain git commands, like
> git-upload-pack?
[...]

Precisely so.  With additional twist that you can create (or link)
other commands under ~/git-shell-commands, and these will be available
as well.

OK, here's the sketch.
On the server, in the home directory of your "git" user, you create a
wrapper around git-receive-pack, like this:

# mkdir ~git/git-shell-commands
# cat >~git/git-shell-commands/git-receive-new-repo
#!/bin/sh

set -e -u

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
        echo 'Missing required argument: <directory>' >&2
        exit 1
fi

mkdir "$1" && git init --quiet --bare "$1" && git-receive-pack "$1"
^D
# chmod +x $_

Then, on the client side, to push a new repo, you just do

$ git push --receive-pack=git-receive-new-repo --all git@server:repo.git

This will make `git push` to spawn not just `git receive-pack <dir>` as
it usually does but your wrapper, which would first create and
initialize a bare repository and then spawn `git receive-pack` on it
which would then communicate with the client side and receive
everything from it.

You could then create a client-side wrapper script or a Git alias for
such "creative pushing", like this:

$ git config --add --global alias.push-new-repo \
  'push --receive-pack=git-receive-new-repo --all'

So the whole client call is now reduced to

$ git push-new-repo git@server:repo.git