How to deploy any git repository to Netlify

Deploying a static web app takes 2 minutes.

If you don’t know Netlify, it’s one of this great recent outsider in the IaaS/PaaS industry (2015).

We’ve been using them recently to deploy our static web apps (Angular 5+). Performance, ease of use, advanced features like pre-rendering by default etc., makes it really convenient to use.

Not to mention they have a very, very interesting free tier. You can basically run any number of websites with unlimited bandwidth at top performance, period.

You can create a new site by connecting a repo to Netlify with the click of a button thanks to 3 integrations :

As we’re running our own custom GitLab instance, we needed a way to directly connect our repositories to Netlify.

Here’s how to :

• Install netlifyctl https://github.com/netlify/netlifyctl

brew tap netlify/netlifyctl
brew install netlifyctl

• Login

netlifyctl login

• Go to your repo directory

cd path/to/your/repo

• Checkout your master branch
• Run

netlifyctl init --manual

• Follow the instructions
• Make sure to correctly setup the “Publish directory”. It’s generally /dist
• The command line will output a public key, be sure to add it to your project settings on whatever Git hosting service you use. On GitLab you can do it on https://gitlab.(domain).com/profile/keys
• Configure the web hook the cli gives you, depending on what you need. Obviously “push” is required 😀

Test your configuration, you’re good to go 👍

You just have to push to master, and voilà!

If your git remote is named origin :

git push origin master

You’re left with basic configuration : domains, SSL etc. Netlify manages this fantastically, this is insanely simple.

Make sure to add the SSH Keys to your site : gitlab.com/profile/keys otherwise the web hooks won’t have the permission.
The profile obviously need correct permissions :)