easyHooks

An easy, simple way to share, install and run git hooks, with no external dependencies. just ./scripts/install_hooks.sh and edit hooks.json

Intro

Git hooks are a built-in feature of git that allows you to execute scripts before/after certain git events. Git hooks are run locally. Hooks can be used for various tasks: formatting code, running inspections or notifiying remote servers.

All hooks are stored in the hooks subdirectory of the Git directory, usually .git/hooks.

The problem

The .git is usually a scary hidden place we usually don't interact with, and that's a problem on itself, but the worst part is that anything in the .git folder isn't commited to your repo. This is a problem when you want to have a set of hooks in your project, shared by all team members.

The solution

easyHooks! easyHooks is made up of the following scripts:

./scripts/base-hook - template script that will run as the hook, once installed. this script looks in hooks.json and runs the hooks defined.
./scripts/install_hooks.sh - installs base-hook to the .git/hooks directory, one for every git hooks event.
hooks.json - sits in your repo root directory, defines the hooks to run for every event.

Installation is simple as running ./scripts/install_hooks.sh and setting your hooks on hooks.json From that point on, your hooks will run, and because everything is in your repo, the files can be commited and share with your team! 🎉

Example

Let's say you have a script that checks code formatting and prints a list of unformatted files.prevents commits if code isn't formatted:

`check_format.sh`

#!/bin/bash

# get all relevant staged files and run clang-format to check formatting
files=()
for file in `git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACMRT | grep -E "\.(m|h)$"`; do
  if ! (clang-format ${file} | cmp ${file} -s -) then
    files+=("${file}")
  fi
done

# print the names of files not formatted correctly 
if [ -n "${files}" ]; then
  echo Format error within the following files:
  printf "%s\n" "${files[@]}"
  exit 1
fi

If we want to prevent a commit if we have unformatted files all we need to do is define our hooks like so:

`hooks.json`

{
  "pre-commit":"bash ./scripts/check_format.sh"
}

Hook installation (./scripts/install_hooks.sh) only needs to happen once, after cloning, and from that point on, you only modify and touch ./hooks.json

SO SIMPLE WOW!

The sky is the limit!

This is a very simple example, but hooks can be used for anything, from enforcing code styles, to automating task managment (creating tasks from // TODO comments :O) and more!

hezi / easyHooks