Git-based website deployment workflow

Remove the repository owned by www-data and follow the solution on this webpage for setting up a post-receive hook in the repository owned by git.

I ended up making the public content owned by the git user, and readable by all. Then, I did the following to set up the hooks:

Assuming the repository is called mysite:

1. Create a detached work tree that will act as the webroot (as the user git)

   mkdir /var/www/mysitecd /path/to/repository/mysite.gitgit config core.worktree /var/www/mysitegit config core.bare falsegit config receive.denycurrentbranch ignore

2. Add a post-receive hook that will update the website and set correct permissions for it

   touch hooks/post-receivechmod +x hooks/post-receivevim hooks/post-receive

   The post-receive script:

   #!/bin/shgit checkout -fchmod -R o+rX /var/www/mysite

Reference:
http://www.deanoj.co.uk/programming/git/using-git-and-a-post-receive-hook-script-for-auto-deployment/

Update: Here is a better solution.

Note: earlier versions of this howto depended on setting the git config variables core.worktree to the target directory, core.bare to false, and receive.denycurrentbranch to ignore. But these changes are not needed if you use GIT_WORK_TREE (which didn't work when I first wrote the howto), and the remote repository can remain bare.