Commit Hooks

Git hooks are scripts that run automatically at various points in the Git workflow (e.g., before committing or pushing changes). They help maintain code quality by performing tasks like linting, formatting, and testing before changes land in the repository.

Learn more about Git hooks here.

Why Use Git Hooks?

Without automated checks, simple issues like linting errors can slip into the codebase, causing pipeline failures and unnecessary “fix-up” commits. By enforcing checks at commit or push time, we keep the commit history cleaner and ensure code quality from the start.

Why Pre-commit?

By default, Git hooks live only on the local machine and aren’t shared with others. This means each developer would need to set them up manually. Pre-commit solves this problem by allowing you to define hook configurations in a shared .pre-commit-config.yaml file. Once committed to the repository, these configurations ensure every contributor runs the same hooks.

Despite the name, pre-commit can manage multiple hook types (such as pre-push). Learn more about pre-commit.

Setting Up

  1. Install pre-commit

    pip install pre-commit
# or
brew install pre-commit  #if you are using macOS

  2. Install the hooks
    The Oakestra repository includes a .pre-commit-config.yaml file. To set up hooks that run before pushing changes, run:

    pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push

We chose pre-push to give developers flexibility. They can commit freely, fix linting issues before pushing, and avoid messy commit histories.

For more configuration details, visit the official pre-commit documentation.

Contributing Code

When you’re ready to push your changes:

  • Perform git push as usual.
  • The configured pre-push hooks will run automatically, checking your code.
  • If issues are found, the push will be aborted so you can fix them before retrying.

By integrating pre-commit hooks into our workflow we ensure consistent code quality and a cleaner commit history.

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