Section: Self-hosting
Order: 310

# Push-to-deploy

Orbit ships its own self-hosted git workflow: a `git push` runs the tests, builds, and publishes —
no external CI required.

## How it works

A **bare git repo** on the server has a `post-receive` hook. On a push to `main` it:

1. Checks out the new commit.
2. Runs `npm ci && npm run test && npm run build` — **gated**, so a broken push never ships.
3. Publishes `dist/` to the web root with `rsync --delete` (keeping a backup for rollback).

The whole loop is one command:

```sh
git commit -m "…"
git push          # test → build → deploy (+ mirror)
```

## The hook (sketch)

```bash
#!/bin/bash
set -e; unset GIT_DIR
WORK=/path/to/checkout; WEBROOT=/var/www/site/app
while read -r _old new ref; do
  [ "$ref" = "refs/heads/main" ] || continue
  cd "$WORK"; git fetch -q self; git reset --hard -q self/main
  npm ci --silent && npm run test && npm run build
  rsync -a --delete dist/ "$WEBROOT/"
done
```

## Bonus: IRC announcements

The same hook hands the commit list to a small bot that posts a GitHub-style summary to the
project's IRC channel. See [The #orbit channel & bot](/wiki/orbit-channel/).