How to send an email after a push to gitolite

This is for the gitolite package on Debian.

# cat /etc/gitolite/VERSION
1.5.4-2+squeeze1 (Debian)

I assume gitolite is working correctly. You can commit, push and pull.

Log in as the gitolite user:

su - gitolite

In my case $HOME is /var/lib/gitolite

Go to the folder $HOME/.gitolite/hooks/common

If the file post-receive exists, then create a copy somewhere else.

cp post-receive /tmp/post-receive

Copy the hook to send an email and rename it:

cp /usr/share/gitolite/hooks/common/post-receive-email post-receive

Make sure privileges are OK:

chowm gitolite:gitolite post-receive
chmod 755 post-receive

Edit $HOME/.gitolite.rc

# edit this line:
$GL_GITCONFIG_KEYS = "";
# for this:
$GL_GITCONFIG_KEYS = ".*";

Then run this to apply the hook to all the repositories:

gl-setup

Now look at one of your repositories. In my case:

ls $HOME/repositories/my_repo.git/hooks

Then you should see the file post-receive.

Finally edit $HOME/.gitolite/conf/gitolite.conf

repo my_repo
    RW+  = user1
    config hooks.mailinglist = destination@test.com
    config hooks.emailprefix = "[my_repo] "
    config hooks.envelopesender = from@test.com
 

Now you can push something to my_repo and should receive an email. Make sure you have setup
an email server correctly.

if you see this message when you push something:

remote: sed: can't read ./description: No such file or directory

It is just a warning. You have successfully pushed your code, but in the email you received, you will see:

It was generated because a ref change was pushed to the repository containing
the project "".

See the empty double quote at the end?

If you want to fix this and the warning message, simply create a file:

vi $HOME/respositorirs/my_repo/description

And inside the file write something, for example:

my_repo

Then if everything is good, the email will look like:

It was generated because a ref change was pushed to the repository containing
the project "my_repo".