a pre-receive hook to allow both: feature branches and agile CI

pre-receive.groovy

// a git pre-receive hook 
// that automatically merges all pushes to feature branches 
// into a dedicated continuous-integration (ci) branch.
// Since we cannot merge in a bare repo, we work on a temporary clone.
// Dierk Koenig

def ciBranch  = 'master' 
def mergeName = 'merge'

def hereDirPath = new File('.').canonicalPath
def tempDir     = new File('../temp')
def mergeDir    = new File(tempDir, mergeName)

System.in.eachLine { line ->
	def (parent, commit, ref) = line.split()
	def branch = ref.split('/').last()

    // pushes to the ciBranch are not merged - cut endless loop
	if (branch == ciBranch) System.exit(0) 
	
	println "branch $branch was pushed: auto-merge into $ciBranch"
	
	cmd "rm -rf $tempDir.canonicalPath"
	tempDir.mkdirs()
	cmd "git clone -b $ciBranch $hereDirPath $mergeName", tempDir
	cmd "git merge $commit", mergeDir 
	cmd "git push origin $ciBranch", mergeDir
	
	println "done"
}

void cmd(String command, File dir = null) {
	Process proc = command.execute([], dir)
	if (dir) println "in dir: $dir.canonicalPath"
	println command
	proc.waitFor()
	def out = proc.in.text;  if (out) println out 
	def err = proc.err.text; if (err) println "! $err"
	if (proc.exitValue()) System.exit(1)
}

a) there are a lot of scripts where an additional jvm startup time (~ 1 second on my machine) is not relevant. The above is one example.
b) groovyserv eliminates even this additional second and has always worked reliably for me.

Yeah, I thought a pre-receive would block the client which is pushing. Now if you tell me you're using groovyserv for your hooks… sounds like I'm gonna have to convert my hooks ! :)