Git hook is the excellent alternative to Husky

Backstory

Some time ago I was asked to introduce an automatization which would check if committed files fit linter rules responsible for uniform code formatting and code quality (e.g.: eslint, prettier, stylelint e.t.c.)

After I did some research it came out that the most common way to do that is to use husky with lint-staged. I installed and configured those tools. Everything worked as expected. If the file contained any errors which couldn't be auto-fixed by linter, committing process was interrupted and the error message was shown in the terminal. Unfortunately, this solution has one problem. Running husky and lint-staged takes much more time than I expected. Sometimes it even took more time than the committing process itself (including checking the files for any errors).

Git-hooks

As I had some time left after I completed this task I decided that I will look for another solution. I searched a little more and I found git-hooks. I read a bit more about git-hooks and it came out that git offer native solution to do some custom actions at certain points in git execution for example committing changes. pre-commit caught my attention, which is briefly described like this:

"This hook is invoked by git-commit[1], and can be bypassed with the --no-verify option. It takes no parameters, and is invoked before obtaining the proposed commit log message and making a commit. ..."

From the above text it follows, that before commit becomes submitted we have some time to execute custom operations like linting and auto-fixing staged files. All files changed in this phase can be added and included in the same commit (it means that we do not have to create a separated commit to apply changes from linters auto-fixes). After I read some about shell scripting I was ready to create my first git-hook

pre-commit

#!/bin/sh
RED="\033[1;31m"
GREEN="\033[1;32m"
NC="\033[0m"
linter_exit_code=1
all_ts_files=$(git diff --cached --diff-filter=d --name-only | grep .ts$)
all_scss_files=$(git diff --cached --diff-filter=d --name-only | grep .scss$)
./node_modules/.bin/eslint $all_ts_files --quiet --fix && ./node_modules/.bin/stylelint $all_scss_files --stdin --quiet --fix
linter_exit_code=$?
git add -f $all_ts_files $all_scss_files
if [ $linter_exit_code -ne 0 ]
then
  echo "${RED} ❌ Linter errors have occurred ( ͡ಥ ͜ʖ ͡ಥ)${NC}"
  exit 1
else
  echo "${GREEN} ✔ Eslint and Stylelint did not find any errors [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]${NC}"
  exit 0
fi

What is going on in above code:

• git diff --cached --diff-filter=d --name-only | grep .ts$ → we are collecting all staged files, then we are filtering out deleted ones (if you do not do that your linter will throw an error for those files because this linter won't be able to resolve paths for deleted files) then I am using grep to take only files which I am interested in. In my case, I am collecting .ts files for eslint and .scss for stylelint,
• linter_exit_code=$? → save exit code of last executed action(0 in case no errors or errors that can be auto-fixed by linter or 1 in case of errors not fixable by linters)
• git add -f $all_ts_files $all_scss_files → add files auto-fixed by linters. We need to use -f flag to force git add in case of $all_ts_files and $all_scss_files are empty
• At the end of this script I am displaying proper information basing on exit code value

After we create a git-hook we have to remember to update git configuration or create a symlink between git configuration and created git-hook:

• git command (should work for every operating system)
  

  git config core.hooksPath ./git-hooks
  

• symlink (Linux)
  

  ln -s -f ../../git-hooks/pre-commit .git/hooks/pre-commit
  

It is worth to add above scripts to npm postinstall, because of that every developer which will clone our repository and run npm install script will also configure git-hooks

Summary

Using git-hooks instead of husky and lint-staged came out to be an excellent idea because committing time was sped up about twice. In addition, I got rid of two additional dependencies in the project, what can become very useful especially in case of husky because from Husky 5 documentation we can find out that Husky 5 will be free only for open-source projects.

Seven steps to set up git-hooks

1. In project directory create git-hooks directory
2. Go to .git/hooks directory
3. From the name of hook which you want to use remove .sample
4. Move this hook into created git-hooks directory
5. Create your git-hook body
6. Update git configuration or create a symlink from git-hooks to .git/hooks directory
7. Add the appropriate script to npm postinstall command

Simple example

I prepared a simple repository git-hooks-example to prove that those git-hooks will work on Linux / Windows / Mac. In Redme.md I wrote how you can test this pre-commit hook.