local/remote sync workflow setup notes -- one "source of truth" production repo with no intermediary (ie: github|bitbucket|etc) -- useful for flat file CMSes (Statamic, Kirby, etc, etc) or static site setups with production-side content management abilities

setup--git-remote-source-of-truth.md

[remote] Intialize Remote Repo:

# ssh into remote
# initialze empty repo
git init

[local] Setup Local:

# where "user@ip:/path/to/repo.git" is your specific remote user, ip, and path
git remote add production user@ip:/path/to/repo.git
# note: The path to remote should lead to where your .git 
#       directory is - likely the root of your site

[local] Initial Push:

# Initial push to remote, settup upstream
# from the local production branch
git push -u

[remote] Configure Remote:

# checkout the newly pushed production repo
git checkout production

# enable repo to receive pushing from your localhost
git config receive.denyCurrentBranch updateInstead
# Why is this necessary?
# Because git push is designed for bare repos (ie: repos created for 
# sharing, not managing changes). The recommended way in this case is to 
# pull into the repo. But one of the goals of this workflow is to prevent
# having to SSH into the server... to keep things as simple and frictionless
# as possible.

# setup post-receive hook to reset remote working tree to newly pushed head
echo '#!/bin/bash' >> .git/hooks/post-receive
echo 'git --work-tree=/path/to/repo/root/ reset --hard' >> .git/hooks/post-receive

# make the post-receive hook executable
chmod a+x .git/hooks/post-receive

---

Debugging:

# View git config:
cat .git/config

# Test post-receive hook (from production root):
.git/hooks/post-receive

# View post-receive hook (from production root):
cat .git/hooks/post-receive

---

Dev-flow:

# Work... 
# Make good use of Git's core goodness
git checkout development # or whatever branch
git add .
git commit -m "adds good commit message"

# Merge new code
git checkout production
git merge --no-ff development # or whatever branch

# Push
git push production
# or - leave our the "production" bit:
git push
# ...assuming the production branch is 
# checked out and that its only remote 
# is set to the production remote.
# eg (relevant bits, not comporehensive): 
# > cat .git/config
# [remote "production"]
#   url = user@ip:/path/to/repo.git
# [branch "production"]
#   remote = production

Switched to using updateInstead for receive.denyCurrentBranch as a better approach to allow pushing into non-bare repo than ignore. This option available as of git 2.3.0 (Feb 2015). Hat-tip to this SO answer where I learned of this.

If hitting server issues with git-receive-pack, see here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6037707/git-git-upload-pack-command-not-found-while-pushing-to-remote-server#answer-6039982