Useful git hook - prepare-commit-msg with repo path, branch and last commits
I've been using this as a prepare-commit-msg hook everywhere for couple years now:
#!/bin/bash
msg_file=$1 commit_src=$2 hash=$3
[[ -z "$msg_file" || "$GIT_EDITOR" = : ]] && exit 0
[[ -z "$commit_src" ]] || exit 0 # cherry-picks, merges, etc
echo >>"$msg_file" '#'
echo >>"$msg_file" "# Commit dir: ${GIT_PREFIX%/}"
echo >>"$msg_file" "# Repo dir: $(realpath "$PWD")"
echo >>"$msg_file" '#'
git log -10 --format='# %s' >>"$msg_file"
Which saves a lot of effort of coming up with commit-messages, helps in monorepos/collections and to avoid whole bunch of mistakes.
Idea is that instead of just "what is to be comitted", comment below commit-msg in $EDITOR will now include something like this:
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
# modified: PKGBUILD
# new file: 9005.do-some-other-thing.patch
#
# Commit dir: waterfox
# Repo dir: /home/myuser/archlinux-pkgbuilds
#
# waterfox: +9004.rebind_screenshot_key_to_ctrl_alt_s.patch
# waterfox: fix more build/install issues
# waterfox: +fix_build_with_newer_cbindgen.patch
# waterfox: update to G5.0.1
# +re2g-git
# waterfox: bump to G4.1.4
# +mount-idmapped-git
# telegram-tdlib-purple-*: makedepends=telegram-tdlib - static linking
# waterfox: update for G4.1.1
# +b2tag-git
It helps as a great sanity-check and reminder of the following things:
Which subdir within the repo you are working in, e.g. "waterfox" pkg above, so that it's easy to identify and/or use that as a part of commit message.
With a lot of repositories I work with, there are multiple subdirs and components in there, not to mention collection-repos, and it's useful to have that in the commit msg - I always try to add them as a prefix, unless repo uses entirely different commit message style (and has one).
What is the repository directory that you're running "git commit" in.
There can be a local dev repo, a submodule of it in a larger project, sshfs-mounted clone of it somewhere, more local clones for diff branches or different git-worktree dirs, etc.
This easily tells that you're in the right place (or where you think you are), usually hard to miss by having repo under local simple dev dir, and not some weird submodule path or mountpoint in there.
List of last commits on this branch - incredibly useful for a ton of reasons.
For one, it easily keeps commit-msgs consistent - you don't use different language, mood and capitalization in there by forgetting what is the style used in this particular repo, see any relevant issue/PR numbers, prefixes/suffixes.
But also it immediately shows if you're on the wrong branch, making a duplicate commit by mistake, forgot to make commit/merge for something else important before this, undo some reset or other recent shenanigans - all at a glance.
It was a usual practice for me to check git-log before every commit, and this completely eliminated the need for it.
Now when I don't see this info in the commit-msg comment, first thing to do is copy the hook script to whatever repo/host/place I'm working with, as it's almost as bad as not seeing which files you commit in there without it. Can highly recommend this tiny time-saver when working with any git repos from the command line.
Implementation has couple caveats, which I've added there over time:
[[ -z "$msg_file" || "$GIT_EDITOR" = : ]] && exit 0 [[ -z "$commit_src" ]] || exit 0 # cherry-picks, merges, etc
These lines are to skip running this hook for various non-interactive git operations, where anything you put into commit-msg will get appended to it verbatim, without skipping comment-lines, as it is done with interactive "git commit" ops.
Canonical version of the hook is in the usual mk-fg/fgtk dumping ground:
https://github.com/mk-fg/fgtk#git-prepare-commit-msg-hook
Which might get more caveats like above fixed in the future, should I bump into any, so might be better than current version in this post.