It took me a while to track down how to set up a new git repo on my remote server hosted by DreamHost. I imagine that most, if not all, of this stuff probably applies to any shared hosting service. Here’s what I have to do — in case I forget:

One time only

Before I do anything else, I need to make sure that git is installed on the dreamhost server. If it isn’t, I need to install it. I can easily find instructions elsewhere, so no need to reproduce them here.

Also, I should have a common location where I can store all my git repos on the server. I’m putting them in /home/username/git/, where user name is my actual user name.

Each new git project

For the following instructions, assume that you’ve already set up a local git repo. Also, replace username, mydomain, and PROJECTNAME with the appropriate values.

1. ON LOCAL: SSH into mydomain.com

ssh username@mydomain.com

2. ON REMOTE: create new bare remote git directory

cd /home/username/git/
mkdir PROJECTNAME.git
cd PROJECTNAME.git
git  init --bare

3. BACK ON LOCAL: cd into local git repo. do an initial commit

git push --all ssh://username@mydomain.com/home/username/git/PROJECTNAME.git

git remote add origin ssh://username@mydomain.com/home/username/git/PROJECTNAME.git
git config branch.master.remote origin
git config branch.master.merge refs/heads/master
git fetch
git merge master

Combined with the rake deploy command, this little git setup makes updating and versioning my blog pretty painless.

Hold the phone!

After writing this post, I came across a really nice explanation that goes into more detail and even shows how to set up a post-receive hook on the remote server. In fact, using a post-receive hook appears more convenient than what I’m doing. I may have to revisit my deployment situation.