Deploying a Laravel App With Git Push

Self-hosting your git and your app on the same box has a nice property: a push can be the deploy. You need a bare repository and one hook.

The bare repo#

git init --bare /srv/git/myapp.git

Add it as a remote on your laptop and push a branch you deploy from, for example main.

The post-receive hook#

/srv/git/myapp.git/hooks/post-receive, made executable:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
APP=/var/www/myapp
git --work-tree=$APP --git-dir=/srv/git/myapp.git checkout -f main
cd $APP
composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
php artisan migrate --force
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache

checkout -f syncs the working tree to the pushed commit. The artisan steps are the boring, repeatable part of every Laravel release.

Keep it honest#

• Run the hook as a user that owns /var/www/myapp but cannot sudo.
• migrate --force runs unattended, so only push migrations you have tested against a copy of production data.
• If the hook fails, the push still lands in the repo; redeploy by pushing an empty commit or rerunning the hook on the server.

This is one step above “SSH in and pull”. When you outgrow it — zero-downtime releases, rollbacks, multiple servers — that is the point where a real pipeline earns its keep, not before.