What is it?

Git-Auto-Deploy consists of a small HTTP server that listens for Webhook requests sent from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket servers. This application allows you to continuously and automatically deploy your projects each time you push new commits to your repository.

How does it work?

When commits are pushed to your Git repository, the Git server will notify Git-Auto-Deploy by sending an HTTP POST request with a JSON body to a pre-configured URL (your-host:8001). The JSON body contains detailed information about the repository and what event that triggered the request. Git-Auto-Deploy parses and validates the request, and if all goes well it issues a git pull.

Additionally, Git-Auto-Deploy can be configured to execute a shell command upon each successful git pull, which can be used to trigger custom build actions or test scripts.

Getting started

You can install Git-Auto-Deploy in multiple ways. Below are instructions for the most common methods.

Install from PPA (recommended for Ubuntu systems)

Using Debian? Have a look at this answer for instructions.

Add our PPA repository.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:olipo186/git-auto-deploy
sudo apt-get update

Install Git-Auto-Deploy using apt.

sudo apt-get install git-auto-deploy

Modify the configuration file to match your project setup. Read more about the configuration options.

nano /etc/git-auto-deploy.conf.json

Optional: Copy any private SSH key you wish to use to the home directory of GAD. Check out this document for more on SSH keys

sudo cp /path/to/id_rsa /etc/git-auto-deploy/.ssh/
sudo chown -R git-auto-deploy:git-auto-deploy /etc/git-auto-deploy

Start Git-Auto-Deploy and check it’s status.

service git-auto-deploy start
service git-auto-deploy status

Install from repository (recommended for other systems)

When installing Git-Auto-Deploy from the repository, you’ll need to make sure that Python (tested on version 2.7) and Git (tested on version 2.5.0) is installed on your system.

Clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/olipo186/Git-Auto-Deploy.git

Install the dependencies with pip, a package manager for Python, by running the following command.

sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

If you don’t have pip installed, try installing it by running this from the command
line:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python

Copy of the sample config and modify it. Read more about the configuration options. Make sure that pidfilepath is writable for the user running the script, as well as all paths configured for your repositories.

cd Git-Auto-Deploy
cp config.json.sample config.json

Start Git-Auto-Deploy manually using;

python -m gitautodeploy --config config.json

To start Git-Auto-Deploy automatically on boot, open crontab in edit mode using crontab -e and add the entry below.

@reboot /usr/bin/python -m /path/to/Git-Auto-Deploy/gitautodeploy --daemon-mode --quiet --config /path/to/git-auto-deploy.conf.json

You can also configure Git-Auto-Deploy to start on boot using an init.d-script (for Debian and Sys-V like init systems) or a service for systemd.Read more about starting Git-Auto-Deploy automatically using init.d or systemd.

Install and run GAD under Windows

GAD runs under Windows but requires some requisites.

1. Install Python 2.7 using the Windows installer.
2. Verify that Python is added to your system PATH. Make sure C:\Python27 and C:\Python27\Scripts is part of the PATH system environment variable.
3. Install pip using the get-pip.py script
4. Install Git using the official Git build for Windows
5. Verify that Git is added to your system PATH. Make sure that C:\Program Files\Git\cmd is added (should have been added automatically by the installer) as well as C:\Program Files\Git\bin (not added by default).
6. Continue with the above instructions for installing GAD from the repository

Alternative installation methods

• Install as a python module (experimental)
• Install as a debian package (experimental)
• Start automatically on boot (init.d and systemd)

Command line options

Below is a summarized list of the most common command line options. For a full list of available command line options, invoke the application with the argument --help or read the documentation article about all available command line options, environment variables and config attributes.

Command line option	Environment variable	Config attribute	Description
–daemon-mode (-d)	GAD_DAEMON_MODE		Run in background (daemon mode)
–quiet (-q)	GAD_QUIET		Supress console output
–config (-c)	GAD_CONFIG		Custom configuration file
–pid-file	GAD_PID_FILE	pidfilepath	Specify a custom pid file
–log-file	GAD_LOG_FILE	logfilepath	Specify a log file
–host	GAD_HOST	host	Address to bind to
–port	GAD_PORT	port	Port to bind to

Getting webhooks from git

To make your git provider send notifications to Git-Auto-Deploy you will need to provide the hostname and port for your Git-Auto-Deploy instance. Instructions for the most common git providers is listed below.

GitHub

1. Go to your repository -> Settings -> Webhooks -> Add webhook
2. In “Payload URL”, enter your hostname and port (your-host:8001)
3. Hit “Add webhook”

GitLab

1. Go to your repository -> Settings -> Web hooks
2. In “URL”, enter your hostname and port (your-host:8001)
3. Hit “Add Web Hook”

Bitbucket

1. Go to your repository -> Settings -> Webhooks -> Add webhook
2. In “URL”, enter your hostname and port (your-host:8001)
3. Hit “Save”

More documentation

Have a look in the docs directory, where you’ll find more detailed documentation on configurations, alternative installation methods, and example workflows.