It's easiest to use a git branch to manage the rollout of updates to my website. I wanted to add a message to the `git push` output when the commit is pushed live. The documentation notes that the post-recieve hook has access to the the ref-name. This script is placed in dylanstestserver.git/hooks/post-receive to do this. It took me some time to realize there are no arguments, the information is available on stdin.
if ! [ -t 0 ]; then
read -a ref
fi
IFS='/' read -ra REF <<< "${ref[2]}"
branch="${REF[2]}"
if [ "live" == "$branch" ]; then
git --work-tree=/var/www/dylanstestserver.com/ --git-dir=.. checkout -f
echo 'Changes pushed live.'
fi