Git hooks are a useful tool: they’re great for automating checking up behind yourself. There are already some great hook managers out there, such as Overcommit. I like what they do, but I have some disagreements with the various technical details of their approaches.
Over the past couple of weeks I built Quickhook. It’s a hook runner designed to be fast, self-contained, and Unix’y. Hooks are just programs in the hook directory. Quickhook manages running those programs, collecting exit codes and outputs, and reporting that to Git.
As an example, the pre-commit hook output in the Quickhook repository looks like:
$ git commit -m "Make directory existence check more precise"
go-vet: ok
trailing-whitespace: ok
[master 910179f] Make directory existence check more precise
2 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)
But if you try to commit some code that fails the go vet check it will report the failure. It also exits with a non-zero exit code, which stops Git from proceeding with the commit.
$ git commit -m "Some incorrect code"
go-vet: fail
context/context.go:97: unreachable code
“Manager” isn’t the right word for Quickhook. Runner or coordinator is a better description. It has no knowledge of the implementation of the hook files. You can write hooks in Bash, Ruby, Javascript, or even compiled executables. And all you need in the .git/hooks/pre-commit script is a call to quickhook hook pre-commit. Go check it out on GitHub! You can easily install it via a Homebrew tap.