Git post-receive hook example. Blog post: http://www.miguelmota.com/blog/deployment-with-git/

post-receive

#!/bin/bash

SITE_NAME="Foo"
SITE_PATH="/var/www/foo.com"
BRANCH="production"

echo "**** $SITE_NAME [post-receive] hook received."

while read oldrev newrev ref
do
  branch_received=`echo $ref | cut -d/ -f3`

  echo "**** Received [$branch_received] branch."
 
  # Making sure we received the branch we want.
  if [ $branch_received = $BRANCH ]; then
    cd $SITE_PATH
    
    # Unset to use current working directory.
    unset GIT_DIR

    echo "**** Pulling changes."
    git pull origin $BRANCH
  
    # Instead of pulling we can also do a checkout.
    : '
    echo "**** Checking out branch."
    GIT_WORK_TREE=$SITE_PATH git checkout -f $BRANCH
    '

    # Or we can also do a fetch and reset.
    : '
    echo "**** Fetching and reseting."
    git fetch --all
    git reset --hard origin/$BRANCH
    '
    
  else
    echo "**** Invalid branch, aborting."
    exit 0

  fi
done

# [Restart/reload webserver stuff here]

echo "**** Done."

exec git-update-server-info