Deploy a GitHub-based static site to Dreamhost

dreamhost-deploy.md

Before begining, make sure your SSH keys are set so you can ssh to your Dreamhost account.

$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [email protected]
(you'll need xxxxxx's password here)
$ ssh [email protected]

On the Dreamhost server you should have a directory for your site (e.g. adubdub.com or ispeed.honeyimlost.com (if not, you'll need to make one). You now need to make a git repository for that site (at the same level in the tree) and initialize a bare repo:

$ mkdir ispeed.honeyimlost.com     # if necessary
$ mkdir ispeed.honeyimlost.com.git
$ cd !$
$ git init --bare

Now you need to create a hook that will, upon a push, copy the contents of the updated repository to the website directory:

$ vi hooks/post-receive (then add the following line)
git --work-tree=/home/xxxxxx/ispeed.honeyimlost.com --git-dir=/home/xxxxxx/ispeed.honeyimlost.com.git checkout -f
ZZ
$ chmod +x !$
$ exit

Now, back on your development machine, in the original git repo, add Dreamhost as a remote that will ALSO get pushed to when you push your updates:

$ git remote set-url --add --push origin ssh://[email protected]/home/xxxxxx/ispeed.honeyimlost.com.git
$ git remote set-url --add --push origin [email protected]:losalamosal/jstest.git
$ git push origin +master:refs/heads/master   # only need to do once: force push

From now on, push as usual:

$ git push origin master
$ git push origin branchname

This is the reference post

Does this still need to execute a build on Dreamhost, as opposed to building locally and pushing the output? The reason is that not all Dreamhost account allow you to execute a build.

@jehtee It's been a long time since I've used Dreamhost. I'm not sure what you mean by a "build" on Dreamhost. As I recall, all this hook does is run a git command to check out (copy) the local repo to another directory (I think Dreamhost requires the site to sit in a directory with the name of the site's domain). So, the entire process is:

1. on your dev machine, add a remote origin that points to the Dreamhost account/machine (requiring SSH keys to work)
2. pushing from your dev machine to GitHub will also push to Dreamhost (as another Git repo)
3. when Dreamhost gets the push the hook will run to copy the contents (via a checkout) to another directory

So, the only thing Dreamhost needs to run is the git checkout command. I can see where some accounts would not allow anything to be run. Mine allowed it. I don't remember how I enabled that. Sorry I can't help more.